Oakland-based mixed media artist Demetri Broxton is one of five artists in The Museum of African Diaspora's Emerging Artists Program 2026-27 cohort. Selected from hundreds of applicants, each artist in the cohort will present solo exhibitions at MoAD. Broxton's solo exhibition, Ancestral Echoes — Crops of Empire, will open on June 10.
Ancestral Echoes — Crops of Empire explores the role of African Americans in cultivating the South's foundational cash crops: cotton, tobacco, sugar, and rice. Using archival photographs, textile-based portraiture, and ritual adornment, Demetri Broxton reimagines ancestral figures as icons of labor, resistance, and spiritual endurance. At the center of the exhibition is a mobile altar featuring living tobacco plants grown by the artist, inviting community participation and reflection. Through material storytelling and embodied memory, this work examines the violent histories behind these crops while honoring the cultural knowledge and resilience passed down through generations of Black life in the Americas.
Learn more at moadsf.org.
