Who are the Artists in TIME’s 100 Most Influential People of 2022?

Faith Ringgold 1930-2024, United States Follow +

Faith Ringgold is one of the artists listed alongside actors such as Zendaya and Zoë Kravitz, as well as sports stars such as Nathan Chen and comedian Pete Davidson. Thelma Golden, director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, describes Ringgold in a short essay that accompanied the listing as ‘A Renaissance woman born in Harlem during its own Renaissance.’

Ringgold is indeed an accomplished polymath, who has created narrative paintings and quilts, performed, taught, and written children’s books, and has cultivated a legacy of ‘portraying Blackness with nuance and clarity’ as Vivian Chui wrote for Ocula Magazine in March 2022.

Her work has received particular attention with two recent major retrospectives. Faith Ringgold: American People at the New Museum, New York, closes on 5 June, and Faith Ringgold, organised by Serpentine Galleries, was presented at Glenstone Museum in Maryland last year.

Nan Goldin b. 1953, United States Follow +

Nan Goldin has been named a Pioneer, alongside other change-makers such as indigenous activist Sônia Guajajara and professional basketball player Candace Parker, for her public campaign against the Sackler family’s involvement in the opioid crisis.

Goldin, who was addicted to OxyContin after a surgery, led a series of protests urging major art institutions to sever their ties with the Sackler family. One photograph, showing the artist and fellow protesters lying on the ground at the Guggenheim Museum in February 2019, was named one of the Top 100 Photos by TIME that year.

Journalist and author Patrick Radden Keefe, whose book Empire of Pain (2021) covers the history of the Sacklers and their role in the crisis, writes that Goldin led the campaign ‘with her impeccable eye and the zeal of a survivor’.

In the Icons section, Maya Lin appears alongside journalist Hoda Khamosh and singer-songwriters Mary J Blige and Adele. Ghost Forest (2021), which saw the artist plant 49 Atlantic white cedar trees in New York’s Madison Square Park, proffers ‘an eerie glimpse into the future’ as novelist Celeste Ng writes—a hauntingly quiet warning about the decimation of forests.

A small number of artists make it into the 100 Most Influential People each year, with recent alumni including Mark Bradford, Barbara Kruger, and Julie Mehretu. —[O]

Main image: Faith Ringgold, Dancing at the Louvre: The French Collection Part I, #1 (1991) (detail). Quilted fabric and acrylic paint. 186.7 x 204.5 cm. The Gund Gallery at Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, Gift of David Horvitz '74 and Francie Bishop Good, 2017.5.6. © Faith Ringgold/ARS, NY and DACS, London. Courtesy ACA Galleries, New York.