Lester Julian Merriweather
Lester Julian Merriweather (born 1978) is an American visual artist and curator, known for his collage. He lives in Memphis, Tennessee.

Biography 
Lester Julian Merriweather was born in 1978 in Memphis, Tennessee, into an African-American family. He received a BA degree in 2000 from Jackson State University; and a MFA degree in 2002 from Memphis College of Art. Merriweather also attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2002.

In response to a lack of support and spaces for Black artists in Memphis, Merriweather, working alongside Frank D. Robinson, Jr., Vitus Shell, and Jerry and Terry Lynn (or Twins) created the NIA Artist Collective in 2001. He worked as a curatorial director at the Martha and Robert Fogelman Galleries at the University of Memphis.

In his early career he worked in painting and sculpture. Merriweather's collage art is often made from fashion magazines and advertising. He uses images that focus on racial prominence, and systems that perpetuate social privilege, and then the images are re-contextualized in the collage with the goal of dismantling stereotypes and confronting institutional racism. He has exhibited his work at the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, Poland. His work is in the museum collection at the Birmingham Museum of Art.

See also 
 List of African-American visual artists
 Sandra Payne (artist), another collage artist

References

External links 
 Q&A; with Lester Merriweather (2014) from Memphis Flyer

1978 births
Living people
21st-century American male artists
African-American artists
American collage artists
Artists from Memphis, Tennessee
Jackson State University alumni
Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture alumni
Memphis College of Art alumni