Rashaad Newsome draws from diasporic traditions of improvisation, advertising, the internet, art history, and Black and queer culture to produce counter-hegemonic work that walks the tightrope between creative computing, social practice, abstraction, and intersectionality. Collage acts as a theoretical, conceptual, and technical method to construct a new cultural framework of power that celebrates Black contributions to the art canon and creates innovative and inclusive forms of culture and media.

Newsome was born in 1979 in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he received a BFA in Art History at Tulane University in 2001. In 2004, he received a certificate of study in Digital Post Production from Film/Video Arts Inc. and studied MAX/MSP Programming at Harvestworks Digital Media Art Center. He has exhibited and performed extensively in galleries, museums, institutions, and festivals, including the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Brooklyn Museum, MoMAPS1, SFMOMA, New Orleans Museum of Art, Centre Georges Pompidou, and The Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, Moscow.