About

Shabazz Larkin

Visual Artist, Author & Creative

About Shabazz Larkin

Norfolk → Seattle → New York → Nashville I make monuments out of paint, canvas, wood, paper, bronze, nails, words and history. I make monuments when I speak. Sometimes it stands in bronze, sometimes it lives on canvas, and sometimes its just a poem. A monument exists to tell history and to inspire communal pride and spiritual resistance. My work draws from portraiture, memory, and the sacred traditions of the Black diaspora, exploring fatherhood, spirit, buddhist teachings and the stories our communities carry in the struggle for liberation. +

Contact Information:
For general inquiries or to request a commission:
studio@larkinart.co
To collect existing work from Shabazz:
gallery@larkinart.co
For booking, partnerships, speaking and teaching engagements: projects@larkinart.co
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Links:
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Brief Biography
Shabazz Larkin is an artist, author, and former creative director based in Nashville, Tennessee. He’s the son of a Jamaican immigrant and a Navy man from the Midwest, and he grew up in Norfolk, Virginia along the Chesapeake Bay. Being raised around water, ships, and movement shaped the way he thinks about memory, history, and what lasts.
After graduate school his path took him through Seattle, London, and New York, where he spent about twenty years in the creative industry. As a writer, filmmaker, and creative director he worked with companies and institutions like Google, The Obama Foundation, and Sony, picking up many of the biggest awards in advertising along the way, including a Cannes Lion.
At the same time he was building another lane as a storyteller and illustrator. He’s published several children’s books, including The Thing About Bees: A Love Letter to My Sons, and illustrated a special edition of Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. In 2021 he was an artist-in-residence inside the Amazon Spheres in Seattle.
Today Larkin lives in Nashville with his two boys. His studio practice centers on painting, sculpture, and public installations that deal with history, spirit, fatherhood, and the stories communities carry. Drawing from portraiture and the language of monuments, his work is about making objects that hold memory and presence over time.
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Artist Statement
Shabazz Larkin is a multidisciplinary contemporary American artist working across painting, sculpture, murals, public art, and text. Drawing from portraiture’s long tradition and the enduring language of the monument, he approaches each work as a structure built to hold presence against time. Whether in a gallery or on a city wall, Larkin treats every piece as a monument. His figures emerge through the visual language of the sacred and the ornamental, shaped by Black diasporic traditions and American history. His work exists in conversation with artists who expanded the language of contemporary art. Like Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger, using text as form and material. Like Andy Warhol and Norman Rockwell, he engages the mythmaking of American life, while echoing Marcel Duchamp and Virgil Abloh’s tradition of recontextualizing everyday objects as cultural artifacts. Language enters the work as literature, inscription, and invocation, sharpening the image into communal testimony. Anchored by themes of fatherhood and community and guided by contemplative spiritual practice, Larkin’s works act as both empathetic witness and cultural protection. Through portrait, sculpture, and public installation, his monuments hold space for tenderness and power to coexist, where presence itself becomes the central act.
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Shabazz Larkin on the southern most tip of Africa. Cape Town, South Africa.

Selected Exhibitions, Installations & Residencies
2025, Julia Martin Gallery, Nashville, TN, This Is What It Is Right Now
2025, Frist Art Museum, Nashville, TN, Fabric of America
2025, Zeitgeist Gallery, Nashville, TN, To Gather: Together
2025, Rockwall Gallery, Nashville, TN, Bloomville
2025, The Forge Gallery, Nashville, TN, Demons & Flowers (Solo Show)
2025, Banker’s Alley Hotel, Nashville, TN, Selected Works
2024, Soho House - Nashville, TN, Porche Food Festival
2024, Zeitgeist Gallery, Nashville, TN, This Place Between Us
2024, Zeitgeist Gallery, Nashville, TN, Vessels (Group Show)
2024, Wonderful People Farm, Nashville TN, Bronze Sculpture Installation
2024, Frist Art Museum, Nashville, TN, Monuments & Myths
2024, The Forge (STATE Residency), Nashville, TN, Artist Residency
2022, 1010 Church Street, Nashville, TN, Music City Pillars
   – Monument honoring Fisk Jubilee Singers
   – Monument honoring Little Richard
2021, NKA Gallery, Nashville, TN, Rest in Peace While You Are Alive
2021, The Amazon Spheres, Seattle, WA, Artist-in-Residence
2020, Scalehouse Gallery, Bend, OR, Fragile Black Man
2019, Sony DMPC, Los Angeles, CA, Storyteller’s Creative Installation
2018, Vanguard Art Show, Nashville, TN, God Speaks Project
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Selected Books, Publications & Film
2023 · Museum of Presence – Community-based newspaper and podcast 
2022 . The Oracle - A Series of Notes from God (Illustrated Book)
2021 · I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – 50th Anniversary Illustrated Re-edition
2019 · The Thing About Bees: A Love Letter to My Sons (Children’s Book)
2016 · My Brother’s Keeper – Film for The Obama Foundation
2015 · Push: A Film About Motherhood – Launched on International Women’s Day
2014 · A Moose Boosh – A Few Choice Words About Food (Children’s Book)
2013 · Farmer Will Allen and the Growing Table (Children’s Book)
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Commercial Creative Experience
Head of Content / Creative / Production
True Voice App (Quantsy & Associates), 2020–2025
Creative Director, 2013–Present
Client list: Sony, EyeBuyDirect, Matter Unlimited, World Vision, Merck for Mothers, Google, YouTube, Lonely Leap, The White House, My Brother’s Keeper, Ford Motor Company, DeLeón, Sean Combs, Bad Boy, Revolt TV, Cîroc, Nokia
Confidant Agency, Nashville, TN, 2018–2020
Matter Unlimited, Creative Director, 2016
Blue Flame, Executive Creative Director, 2015
J. Walter Thompson, New York, Sr. Art Director / ACD, 2010–2013
Creature Seattle, Seattle, Art Director, 2008–2010
Wieden + Kennedy, Portland, Art Director, 2008
Mother London, London, UK, Creative Intern, 2007
CRT/Tanaka, Richmond, Designer & Video Editor, 2004–2006
Clients serviced through the agencies above:
Nike, Macy’s, Smirnoff, Nuun, Bayer, Pepsi, Diageo, Pacifico, Seattle’s Best Coffee, Bing, Microsoft, Hotmail, Heineken, UK Anti-Drug Commission, Rolex, Bill Gates
Awards
2018 — Cannes Lion, Health
Reverse, Merck for Mothers
2017 — Clio Award, Health
Push: A Film About Mothers, Merck for Mothers
2017 — Cannes Lion, Bronze, Health
Push: A Film About Mothers, Merck for Mothers
2017 — Cannes Lion, Bronze, Health
Push: A Film About Mothers, Merck for Mothers
2016 — Salisbury Sonya Sadler Award
Farmer Will Allen and the Growing Table
2015 — Sustainable Literature Award
Farmer Will Allen and the Growing Table
2011 — World’s Funniest Commercials, Gold
Sierra Mist: Liquid Sunshine
2010 — One Show Pencil, Silver, Package Design
Nuun: Rebrand
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Submit
Thank you! I'll hit you up soon. if you want to get me sooner - email studio@Larkinart.co
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Keep playing and see what happens.
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- Shabazz Larkin
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