Raél Jero Salley is an artist, cultural theorist and art historian. He holds degrees from The Rhode Island School of Design (BFA), The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (MFA), and The University of Chicago (PhD). His research interests include modern and contemporary art and visual culture, with a focus on Blackness and African Diaspora.

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His artwork addresses a wide range of human experience. His practice struggles through issues of representation, broadly. It is grounded in the history and tradition of painting, and the creative work addresses its subjects in non-linear, non-narrative ways. In his work he responds creatively to things and ideas that strike him as interesting—space, movement, landscape, abstraction—big ideas, and also small ones too.