Raél Jero Salley is a creative artist, author, professor, & speaker. You may know of their varied roles, which include: Producer and Lead Curator of the 'Making Art History Now' Symposium (Yale University & the Venice Biennale), Founding Director of ‘The Space for Creative Black Imagination’, Chair of the Art History, Theory, and Criticism Department at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), and Faculty at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. In other moments, Raél (rah-EL) teaches martial arts, leads yoga classes, feeds a dog named Biko, waters plants, and is Mazie’s grandson.

Artworks are represented by Gallery MOMO (Johannesburg, South Africa). Salley is a contributing editor to The Postcolonialist journal, and their writing has appeared in The Queer Africa Reader; Kerry James Marshall: Who's Afraid of Red, Black, and Green; Third Text; Social Dynamics; African Arts, and other outlets. Salley initiated ‘the names we give' public forum (2011), the ‘Exuberance Project’ (2012), and ACTSA (Africana Art, Culture, Theory, and Society), a diversity research initiative.

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