Tina Tona
- Hayeon Kwak
- Jul 13, 2024
- 2 min read
“It was perceived as something for the wealthy. Like there’s this place in the white world where you can go and see art. I guess maximalism became a way of reclaiming art making from my own perspective, not the perspective taught to me through arts education.”
At first glance, the mix of bright colours and shapes is overwhelming. Each part of the picture is a piece from another whole that artist Tina Tona has taken to create her world. Through collages, Tina Tona tells her story: a child growing up in Uganda, Rwanda, California, Maryland, and Canada discovering her identity.
Constantly moving from place to place, young Tina Tona tackled her frenzied identity between North America and Africa through art. In the absence of traditional art materials, Tina Tona made do with scissors, glue, and magazines littered throughout her home, constants in her life that remained wherever she went. She stuck images atop each other, turning unfamiliar photos and piles of messy scraps into a new whole that spoke to her and made sense.
Filmmaking and photography didn’t speak to her. Tona’s true medium was in collages. As she continued to explore collages and art in her adolescence, Tona realized “the Black aesthetic is not just images, [...it’s] a practice of maximalism and resourcefulness for being able to use materials in their entirety.”
As a child, Tona never thought of her collages as art. For her, art was the classic paintings of Roman gods and Romance nobles in museums. However, as Tona continued to make collages and discover her identity as a woman, a child in Uganda, Rwanda and LA, she realised that art could be whatever she wanted. As Tina Tona learned more about the cultural nuances between her homes dotted across the world, she developed a better understanding of her art. In both her life and art, Tina Tona flourished.
Explosive bursts of vibrant colours and juxtaposing symbols in her work represent Tina Tona’s identity. Tina Tona’s collages shed light on many viewpoints that highlight her unique childhood and her experiences as a black woman, allowing the audience to take in multiple themes within one frame.
While Tina Tona once felt the need to express the black experience through the many viewpoints she had insights into, she now creates collages as a creative outlet rather than one for her frustration as a child struggling with her identity. In her 2022 piece Heavy is the Head, Tina Tona presents her thoughts on the beauty standard amongst black women and the Western world, juxtaposing the goddess Venus with wigs and black models to consider a spectrum of themes including deification and heritage.
Today, Tina Tona is a 23-year-old multimedia artist creating pieces for household names such as the New York Times, The Atlantic, Teen Vogue, Bon Appetit and many more. With her colourful collages, Tona enraptures onlookers as she spreads her wings, progressing rapidly in her young career.
Written by Hayeon Kwak
All collages featured in this article is by Tina Tona and can be accessed on her website linked below
Links to other resources:
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