Ryan Cosbert USA, b. 1999

Ryan Cosbert (b. 1999, Brooklyn, NY) is an African-American conceptual artist whose work investigates abstract form alongside political and historical narratives related to the African diaspora. Drawing on her Haitian and Guyanese ancestry, Cosbert uses color, texture, and mixed media to create multilayered paintings and sculptures that engage with the viewer on both intellectual and emotional levels. Her compositions often employ grids, tiles, and color fields, generating a sense of order while simultaneously evoking depth, rhythm, and spatial complexity.

Cosbert’s works explore the historical and generational consequences of subjugation, oppression, and resilience within Black communities. Her approach merges abstraction and narrative, using geometric and textural elements to create three-dimensional effects and a dynamic visual language.

Cosbert has held solo exhibitions at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, New York (2025), Luce Gallery, Turin (2022–2023), and Undercurrent, Brooklyn (2021), and has participated in selected group exhibitions at leading institutions and galleries, including Phillips Auction, New York; Bode Projects, Berlin; PM/AM, London; and the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair in London and New York. Her works have also been presented at ART021 Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair and Roma Arte in Nuvola, Rome, among others.

A graduate of the School of Visual Arts, New York (BFA, 2021), Cosbert was recognized as a Barnes Foundation Scholarship Grantee and has received multiple awards for her contributions to contemporary art. Her work is held in private collections internationally, and she continues to live and work in New York, developing a practice that challenges formal and conceptual boundaries while foregrounding the narratives of the African diaspora.