Christa David is a visual artist, writer, and researcher raised in Harlem but now based in Atlanta. Inspired by the artistic works of Romare Bearden, Wangechi Mutu, and Alma Woodsey Thomas, and the literary works of James Baldwin and Toni Morrison, she fuses the media of painting, collage, and assemblage to create and recreate stories about home, belonging, faith, and identity. She is a two-time Columbia University alumna, holding a bachelor’s degree and a Master of Public Health. In 2016, after years of “making art in the cracks” (nights and weekends) alongside her demanding work as the founding Senior Director of Policy, Planning, and Performance for the Center for Health Equity (CHE) at the New York City Health Department, she leaped into making art full-time.
Before her leap, Christa spent more than a decade conducting equity research and designing and evaluating public health programs aimed at transforming community health in high-need neighborhoods across New York City. In her role as senior director, she had the privilege of setting strategic direction for all of CHE’s planning, research, and evaluation efforts across the city, including those focused in predominantly Black and Brown neighborhoods made vulnerable by structural racism and disinvestment. Since her leap, she founded The Blackprint Institute LLC, a public health consulting firm that provides strategic planning, research, and evaluation support to social justice-focused organizations across the United States.
Christa’s public health practice and art practice are cut from the same cloth and ask the same questions: How do we get free? What does liberation for all Black and Brown people look and feel like?
