2025 ILLUMINATIONS GRANT FINALIST
sophie harpo
Image courtesy of the artist.
Sophie Harpo is a Black comics artist who defies categorization, prompting us to reconsider the boundaries of fine art, commercial visual culture, and everyday life. Harpo draws inspiration from pop art, history, cartoons, drag, and vaudeville to depict the adventures of Left Handed Sophie, “a young albino Black woman coming of age in the Gotham-esque setting of O’Shea City.” Through comics stories she depicts Left Handed Sophie–alongside other members of The Young Americans–using a divination framework borrowed from cultural, spiritual practices combined with modern pop culture. The intricate drawings, with original characters, expertly explore, “the intersections of race, gender, magick, and mythology,” seduce the viewers into a fictional, illustrated universe that, at times, mirrors dark corners of reality, a dispatch to the diaspora.
