SUNI MULLEN (b. 1994 in Los Angeles, CA) is a Black American post-modern conceptual artist who blends abstraction with conceptual messaging. Everyday objects, symbols, and text are transformed to challenge and disrupt cultural narratives. Mullen's work interrogates racial and social hierarchies, using bold statements, calls to action, performances, and videos to confront viewers with the harsh realities of systemic inequality. Mullen meditates not only with these transgressions, but also with the lexical alchemy that occurs which allows the cultural portal of blackness to navigate unassuming playgrounds in an Act of Agency.
By incorporating three-dimensional collage elements and confronting cultural taboos around language and representation, she creates a direct and uncompromising call for truth. Through her use of an array of mediums, including found materials, domestic household items, metal, paint, and more recently, condoms, Mullen expands her artistic vocabulary, engaging viewers in a dynamic dialogue. These elements are activated to express a unique perspective which expound upon the intersections of being a Black American woman in specific places and spaces in time: observed, lived-in, and meditated with, to refute or claim.
Her raw, spontaneous mark-making evokes a tension between creation and destruction, as her work seems to continually evolve in response to the present moment. Mullen's art feels in constant motion, never static. Ultimately, her work fuses visual expression with sharp social critique, balancing abstraction with clarity in a way that invites deep reflection and engagement from her audience. Obsessed with the cultural arrangements of American English as it relates to the Black American, Mullen engages in writing and discoursing with a global cohort of thinkers and tinkers publishing her theories on Substack under the pseudonym MAXX UR AGENCY, FREEMAN. In short, MAXX FREEMAN. The first name excerpts itself from her thesis “Properly American” (2023). The surname odes to newly freed black Americans who were enslaved—-> detaching themselves from their slavers’ name, using Freeman.
Suni Mullen earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Otis College of Art & Design with a primary focus in painting. Mullen has also earned her Masters Degree from the Royal College of Art in London majoring in Contemporary Art Practice, a habitual practice in conceptual art. In recognition of her generative academic and artistic achievements, Mullen was selected as the recipient of the Duff Family Scholarship, Otis Presidential Scholarship, and MAF LA Young Creatives Grant. Mullen currently lives and works in the U.S.
By incorporating three-dimensional collage elements and confronting cultural taboos around language and representation, she creates a direct and uncompromising call for truth. Through her use of an array of mediums, including found materials, domestic household items, metal, paint, and more recently, condoms, Mullen expands her artistic vocabulary, engaging viewers in a dynamic dialogue. These elements are activated to express a unique perspective which expound upon the intersections of being a Black American woman in specific places and spaces in time: observed, lived-in, and meditated with, to refute or claim.
Her raw, spontaneous mark-making evokes a tension between creation and destruction, as her work seems to continually evolve in response to the present moment. Mullen's art feels in constant motion, never static. Ultimately, her work fuses visual expression with sharp social critique, balancing abstraction with clarity in a way that invites deep reflection and engagement from her audience. Obsessed with the cultural arrangements of American English as it relates to the Black American, Mullen engages in writing and discoursing with a global cohort of thinkers and tinkers publishing her theories on Substack under the pseudonym MAXX UR AGENCY, FREEMAN. In short, MAXX FREEMAN. The first name excerpts itself from her thesis “Properly American” (2023). The surname odes to newly freed black Americans who were enslaved—-> detaching themselves from their slavers’ name, using Freeman.
Suni Mullen earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Otis College of Art & Design with a primary focus in painting. Mullen has also earned her Masters Degree from the Royal College of Art in London majoring in Contemporary Art Practice, a habitual practice in conceptual art. In recognition of her generative academic and artistic achievements, Mullen was selected as the recipient of the Duff Family Scholarship, Otis Presidential Scholarship, and MAF LA Young Creatives Grant. Mullen currently lives and works in the U.S.