Kalila Abdur-Razzaq PROGRAM MANAGER
Center for Black Visual Culture
NYU Institute of African American Affairs
Kalila Ain (b. 1998 in New York City) began her formal education at the High School of Art & Design and the Art Students League of New York; she earned her bachelor's degree in painting and art history from SUNY Purchase and studied fresco restoration at Istituto Lorenzo de' Medici in Florence, Italy. Kalila Ain's painting and printmaking practice is grounded in healing from breaking; her stellar compositions illuminate sources of reconnection succeeding fragmentation.
While design motifs and iconography within her work can be widely interpreted, her visual language is fully concretized through the lens of her cultural and religious practice, Lucumí. Kalila Ain holds two permanent installations at the Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital in New York City, her painting The Reneissance Woman featuring Reneissance Francis, resides in the permanent collection of The Colored Girls Museum of Philadelphia, PA.
She is the illustrator of children's book Life is Fine and her painting My Mother Named me Beloved was selected by New York University’s Center for Black Visual Culture to represent their Black Rest Project Initiative.