Aja Edwin Mujinga

Overview

I am an art historian specializing in modern and contemporary art of the African diaspora, with particular attention to the ways that Black art and ideas intersect with those of Indigenous artists and thinkers in and beyond the Americas to echo, complicate, and amplify each other’s creative and critical concerns. Drawing from my dissertation, Firelei Báez: Trickster Methodologies and Practices of Survivance, my current book project explores how trickster figures such as Ciguapa and Coyote appear as both subject and methodology in artworks by Firelei Báez and others. 

Here at Cornell, I will be supporting the Active Learning Initiative within the Department of History of Art and Visual Studies. I will be conducting pedagogical research informed by over a decade of teaching experience, which includes designing and teaching art history courses for the innovative “Experience One” experiential learning program at the University of Montana Western (UMW) as well as the University of Kansas, Kansas City Art Institute, and Avila University.

I received a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin in 2026, following the completion of an MA in Art History and MFA in Studio Art from the University of Montana in 2017. I completed my undergraduate studies in Postcolonial Studies and Literature at Sarah Lawrence College in 2011. I was awarded the Philanthropic Educational Organization Scholar Award in 2026 and received the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in Modern and Contemporary Art at the Blanton Museum, TX in 2021.