Elizabeth Axtman

Elizabeth Axtman is an American artist who uses video, photography, performance, and painting to explore "the complexities of race and humor." She lives and works in Oakland, California.

Work Axtman is interested in exploring and molding historical and contemporary representations of American racialization, including the sub-themes of racial passing and the trope of the tragic mulatto. Several of her pieces involve reworking found video and audio, and she often inserts herself—her voice, her face—into her work. In noting that her work draws comedic inspiration from the likes of Richard Pryor and Paul Mooney, she has stated that: "Humor has always been a part of what I do. It helps me to talk about things, but it keeps me safe too."

In her 2005 video American Classics, Axtman stares into the camera at close range and mouths the words to various racially charged film dialogues and monologues, including snippets from the 1934 movie Imitation of Life.

The 2006 video Where’s The Party At? depicts Axtman, in a white track suit, dancing around a burning cross as the video's eponymous dance track (a song by R&B group Jagged Edge) plays in its entirety. The video was shot on the grounds of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, where Axtman was an artist in residence in 2006. a Franklin Furnace Fund grant, and was an artist-in-residence with Harvestworks in NYC 2012.

Axtman also produces paintings, drawings and mixed media works. She has cited Otabenga Jones, Kehinde Wiley, Guillermo Gomez-Pena, and Adrian Piper as artistic inspirations. Axtman's work has been exhibited at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, the Hyde Park Art Center, the Renaissance Society, the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, and many other museums and galleries.