March 23 – April 5
Artists: Ahema Odeng-Otu, Natalie Furtado, Navarre Iliff, Rayane Prudo Nunes, and Matthew Braunginn
Reception: Wednesday, March 25, 6-8pm
Location: Common Wealth Gallery 100 S Baldwin St, Madison, WI
The 19th Annual Line Breaks Festival Visual Art Exhibition featuring selected 2D, 3D and mixed media works, including 1997 by Ahema Odeng-Otu, a world inspired by the wedding of their parents in Accra, Ghana. The reception is free and open to the public with light refreshments provided.
As a Ghanaian-American, Ahema Oforiwaa Odeng-Otu is interested in how wisdom is expressed in West African visual art. Her approach is to use proximity to Ghanaian expression as a starting point for understanding creative thinking more broadly. It’s common knowledge that creativity and Western philosophical thinking converged to create what is known as the Renaissance. However, not many venture into the realm of African philosophy and its own creative renaissance. What is often regarded as art history follows a thorough line across Western eras of thinking, a line that only follows eras directly impacting the present. We incorporate non-Western influences only if they affect the trajectory of that line. Our thinking, therefore, is limited to Western modes of thought, defining the philosophies we align with and the art we value. Odeng-Otu’s range of influences is broad, including anonymous Ghanaian woodworkers, El Anatsui, JC Leyedecker, and Yoshitaka Amano, to name a few. She focuses on graphic design and illustration, using primarily watercolor or acrylic.
Natalie Furtado is a multidisciplinary artist born and raised in Las Vegas, Nevada, but is currently pursuing a dual degree in Pharmacology & Toxicology and Biology, with certificates in Global Health & 3D Studio Art from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She is a young professional that is developing her skills across 2D, 3D, and 4D mediums. Natalie pushes the boundaries of realism and surrealism in her artworks and explores controversial topics in hopes to spark conversation. She has had artwork on display in Congressional offices, university galleries, and national web-galleries; and has participated in live shows in Las Vegas, NV, as well as Madison, WI. She continues to perfect her craft through personal projects as well as commissioned works that bring creativity to the community.
Raised in the South Island of New Zealand and St. Paul, Minnesota, and currently attending UW-Madison as a sophomore, Navarre Iliff is an artist and a scholar in the First Wave and STAR programs. Living in St. Paul since 2014, her work is heavily impacted by the murders of George Floyd, Daunte Wright, Renee Good, and many others at the hands of the justice department, and the resulting mass protests. Working primarily with oil and acrylic paints on canvas, Iliff explores topics of dissonance relevant to her everyday life through portraiture and surrealism. Utilizing human and animal subjects in her work, she invites the audience into a conversation about the difference between belief and action, perception and reality, justice and morality, and the effects they have on our relationships with others. In a broader context, Iliff aims to contribute to the long tradition of visualizing reactions and resistance to a violent system.
Rayane (pronounced Hi-ani) Prado Nunes is a Brazilian artist, researcher and scholar. She grew up dancing multiple styles, from ballet to hip hop, since she was 4 years old. In college, Rayane expanded her practice in visual art and began her work in photography and videography. Always informed by her heritage, different philosophical approaches, and their research in social psychology; Rayane seeks to uplift marginalized voices and tell stories of diaspora, authenticity, sifting and becoming. Through her work, Rayane’s goal is to connect those who wouldn’t otherwise be connected, question our paradigms, and create belonging.
2026 Featured Guest Artist Matthew Braunginn (Higgs) is a self-taught artist from Madison, Wisconsin. He started painting in 2017, as he had to step away from activism due to the emergence of a chronic illness. Becoming a self-taught painter was a surprise in how it drew him in. Much of his work falls within a non-objective, contextual approach to abstract expressionism, mixing in more subjective expressions, starting in acrylics and now using oils.
His work is an exploration of what might be called contextual expressionism, a meeting point between his internal world and the external world, whether interpersonal relationships or global events. In doing so, they are a presentation and reflection of the context in which their creation exists, forcing the world and those observing the work to see the world, and their own intersection within the context in which they exist, including both the good and the bad— effectively they become a masculine act of creation and expression, during a time when masculinity is being sold as domination, power, and destruction. Matthew rejects that.
Drawing on his own lived context, growing up in a house filled with Black art, especially Jazz, and his experiences as a member of a mixed-race family, he infuses his art with the abstractness of Black music. Each piece is created within a musical soundscape of Jazz, R&B, Soul, Funk, and Hip-Hop. Musical movements and feelings are interwoven in the DNA of each piece, as he processes his contextual existence, and while his works are a part of his self-expression and creation, their existence shifts depending on each observer.