Collection: Afi Ese Collection

Afi Ese is a Houston-based narrative portrait artist working in oil, soft pastel, and charcoal. Her work reclaims Black history through fashion activism and symbolism- centering things like denim, lace, gold teeth, and natural hairstyles as visual tools of resistance and remembrance. African and Southern birds appear in many portraits as placeholders for ancestors erased from the historical archive.

As a full-time wheelchair user living with aggressive rheumatoid arthritis, Afi paints with fused wrists and deformed hands, transforming limitation into power. Her portraits radiate dignity, grief, and defiance with each figure holding space for stories long overlooked.

Rooted in ancestral memory and the beauty of Blackness, her art is both a personal survival and a communal altar. Afi’s work invites you to witness, to remember, and to never look away.