Jun 16, 2022

Artist and activist Wildcat Ebony Brown started her career as a professional model. Today she’s just as comfortable behind the camera as she is in front of it, serving as a production assistant on music videos for The Roots and crafting capes for the political art collective the Wide Awakes, which she got involved with through close friend Hank Willis Thomas. (Look to her to break the ice and get the dancing started at a block party, empowering bystanders to let loose their best moves.)

The Tulsa-born talent calls Ditmas Park home, where she draws inspiration from the neighborhood’s vibrant multiculturalism. “I love that I hear different accents around me as soon as I walk out of my apartment,” Brown told Brooklyn Magazine last October. “I love that I see all different shades of skin around me. I love that people bring their culture to New York City and it thrives in communities such as this.”

Brown flies under the mainstream radar, but those in the know see her everywhere. Her artwork has been showcased in group exhibitions like September 2020’s “We Will Meet Again,” curated by Rob Aloia of Outlaw Arts and Bari Schlosser in collaboration with New Apostle Gallery at Williamsburg’s Dobbin Street Event Space. In March 2021, ArtNet highlighted Brown’s first-ever feminist crypto art drop celebrating International Women’s Day, alongside artists Michele Pred and Bud Snow. Three months later Brown appeared on the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art in Fort Greene as the looming central figure of a mural by Helina Metaferia celebrating Black female activists.

She’s wielding bright colors and radical joy against the powers that be in new ways every day, like when she joined Questlove for the Winter Jazz Fest at House of Yes in January 2022. With a fashion line of her own on the horizon, you won’t even need to catch Brown in person to see her on Brooklyn’s streets.