Makeela Amani
All That Glitters Oshun
Makeela B. Amani is a prolific Canadian-born, Brooklyn-based artist who works in various mediums, including painting, sculpture, web design & development, sterling silver jewelry design, and music as a spoken word artist, composer and producer.
Makeela produces poetry and visual art containing beautiful, loving and depictions of people in their daily lives, or harsh, revolutionary images that are said to smack convention with their anti-oppression themes. In some of her art showings, she has performed her hard-hitting lyrics to augment her her visual work. In her time she has shown and performed most notably at Afrikan Liberation Day Celebrations in Washington D.C., Maryland, and New York City; Ladies on the Mic; Wordstock Poetry and Music Festival; Madison Square Garden's International Film Festival; and the Black L.U.V. Festival in Washington DC and UCLA in Los Angeles. Most recently she worked with non-profit arts organization, Travelled Rhodes in Brooklyn, NY, with the late Bill Simpson.
She debuted her talents publicly at the African Poetry Theatre with a series of revolution-inspired paintings which she entitled, the “Blood Boiling Blues” art series, so named after her late father's (Odimumba Kwamdela) third book of poetry. Her first book, Journey Free: The Eighth House, was followed by an album of poetry KeyVisions: The Poetik Rantings of Makeela Amani, a 2nd book of poetry, Potions & Plots Unraveled from my Locs, and the 2019 art and poetry book featuring a mash-up of poetry and art, called, Stratosphere: Astrology, Orisha, Art, & Verse.