A New Documentary Celebrates Elizabeth Catlett’s Legacy

Nia ShumakeMon, April 20, 2026 at 2:42 PM UTC

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A New Documentary Celebrates Elizabeth CatlettGetty Images

In 2005, Oprah Winfrey celebrated the contributions of 25 Black women at her famous Legends Ball, including Toni Morrison, Diana Ross, Tina Turner, Diahann Carrol, Cicely Tyson, and Rosa Parks. Also among them was an equally powerful yet more obscure character: fine artist, activist, and enemy of the state Elizabeth Catlett. Exiled for nearly a decade due to her views on international solidarity, the sculptor and printmaker was considered dangerous to the U.S.’s imperial conquests. As a champion of the working class and civil rights, she lived under surveillance by the FBI, the United States, and Mexico. She was arrested for participating in the Union of Railroad Workers strike in Mexico City in 1958, and by 1962 she was officially labeled an “undesirable alien” by the State Department. In spite of Catlett’s isolation and demonization, her work became emblematic for Black revolutionaries, bringing humanity, voice, and dignity to Black women and working-class people.

Cartlett regained her American citizenship in 2003 and later found mainstream acceptance. The Legends Ball was a moment of triumph, a chance to bask in the laurels of her artistry and sacrifices. In a sea of entertainers, standing in white family-reunion-style tents, Catlett was accompanied by her granddaughter Naima Mora, just a month shy of Mora winning the reality show America’s Next Top Model.

Tyra Banks’s competitive reality show was a mainstay of reality TV during the aughts. Now, the show has been critiqued for promoting anti-Blackness and for all-around cultural and personal insensitivity. On America’s Next Top Model, contestants were ridiculed for having large noses or being full-figured, a completely different take on femininity and beauty than what’s in Catlett’s sculptures and portraits. Considering her life and legacy, granddaughter Naima Mora’s presence on the show appears paradoxical.

Elizabeth Catlett attending a gallery opening for an exhibition of her work in New York, 2009Andrew Lepley

The world of the Legends Ball and reality TV was drastically different from the one Elizabeth Catlett was born into in Washington, D.C., in 1915. Catlett attended Howard University after being rejected by Carnegie Institute of Technology because of her race. She excelled studying under artists James Porter, Louis Mailou Jones, and James Ceserne Wells. After graduating from Howard, Catlett studied under Grant Wood at the University of Iowa, becoming the first Black woman to receive an MFA in sculpture from that institution. Wood at the time encouraged her to create art stemming from what she knew, a philosophy that inspired work exploring race, gender, and class in the United States and Mexico.

A prominent artist during the Harlem Renaissance, Catlett received a Julius Rosenwald fellowship to travel to Mexico, where she created a series of linoleum cut portraits to showcase the contributions of Black women at the Taller de Gráfica Popular. Her works were centered on an ideology of art as a revolutionary practice, one that serves, represents, and empowers its people. Through her devotion to craftsmanship in Mexico City, her artwork and advocacy counteracted Black people’s erasure in Mexico and showcased the contributions of Indigenous people. It drew parallels between the struggles for Black and Mexican liberation and gestured toward Black and Mexican solidarity, showing a willingness to connect anti-Blackness in the United States to the global apparatus of political oppression, a connection that is crucial to understanding politics today. It was this work in Mexico that led to her persecution and eventual exile by the United States government. Also in Mexico, Catlett divorced her first husband and married the Indigenous Mexican artist Francisco Mora. They would stay together for 50 years, with Catlett forgoing the luxuries of life during the Harlem Renaissance for a different kind of wealth as a working artist in Mexico.

Catlett giving a lecture to faculty at Jackson State UniversityJackson State University

Today, there have been more than 50 exhibits of Catlett’s work on display in galleries, museums, and public spaces like the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Smithsonian, the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Studio Museum of Harlem.

Catlett’s sculptures often pay homage to the bond between mother and child. At the Pennsylvania Academy of the Arts is a marble figurehead, crafted in 2001, titled Naima, named after Catlett’s granddaughter.

Naima Mora in 2007Stephen Lovekin

Naima Mora, the daughter of jazz percussionist Francisco Mora Catlett, is originally from Detroit. She traveled to New York to pursue dance. When she appeared on America’s Next Top Model, the show was massive, garnering 100 million viewers in 182 countries. After winning the show, Mora appeared in print ads for Covergirl that were in Elle and Us Weekly and even on TV shows such as Veronica Mars, The Tyra Banks Show, and, more recently, Diarra From Detroit. As a model and multidisciplinary artist herself, Mora has seemed to live the more glamorous life Catlett gave up for the revolutionary cause. Seeking to showcase her grandmother’s life and voice, she is on the cusp of post-production of her directorial debut, the documentary Elizabeth Speaks.

Harper’s Bazaar spoke with the new director on dignity, what she learned from her time on reality TV, and her grandmother’s legacy.

What was your grandmother like in later years?

My grandmother was intimidating. But I know why now. In her later years, she was a little bit softer—sweet but very serious still. She enjoyed eating at Las Manitas in Cuernavaca [Mexico] and getting her nails done. I often painted them, and we would gossip and talk. She had fine tastes, and I think it’s something she struggled with when she decided to commit herself to being a revolutionary. She would talk about how my grandfather, who is Indigenous [Purapecha], grew up very humble and taught her that she didn’t need to have a lot of money or nice things to have a really beautiful life. But she was coming from a community of Harlem socialites. When she took the trip to Mexico with her first husband, Charles White, she met my grandfather, and they fell in love. She then went back to New York and divorced Charles, sacrificing her whole life to live modestly. But she liked cashmere and silks. She was always knitting something. When she was a bit older, I moved to New York for the Dance Theatre of Harlem, and I would go to [our family] apartment, and together we’d watch Law and Order. She also loved novels by John Grisham and Dick Francis. I think she saw a lot in me because I was pursuing ballet and modeling. She had this sense of glamour and vanity, although she sacrificed so much of it to do what she did.

What does it look like for you to preserve your grandmother's legacy?

Outside of my production company, I want to publish her memoirs. When I found them, there was a bookmark in the back of the notebook that she was writing in, and it was from a publishing company. I really want to finish the process of publishing for her. I want to live in the fullness of my Black Mexican identity and devote myself in the same way that she did. I also want to work with artists that carry her legacy.

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What was her creative process like?

She would work with her studio open and was very influenced by the Taller de Gráfica Popular, where she met my grandfather when she moved to Mexico in 1946. Part of their work ethic was collaborative work. It’s interesting, a Black woman in exile in Mexico, finding inspiration in her artistic practice with a group of international but mostly Mexican artists to work collaboratively. She would also invite us in and ask our opinions on what she was doing. She created with the intention of considering how her art would be received. It wasn’t a selfish process. It was a consideration of the impact it would make with the people.

Catlett’s sculpture of Phillis WheatleyJackson State University

Do you utilize any of her approaches yourself? In her thesis, she talks about stone needing to be worked with before it’s understood.

I think that you have to have a grasp and understanding of your material before it can fully serve the purpose of your intention, and that’s what I’ve been working on with this film for three years. My grandmother would say, “You have to know the language of what you’re speaking in order to speak clearly.” So she was a lifelong student, as well as an educator, and I take that on myself.

What are some of your earliest memories of your grandmother?

I’m here in her house that she built with my grandfather, and one of the beautiful memories I have is when we used to do jigsaw puzzles together when I would come visit her and my grandfather in the summers. She, my twin sister, and I would spend a whole week doing them together. It’s interesting because we had these really beautiful moments of connection, but she was in her studio almost all the time until she died.

She was devoted.

Devotion is the word, and she was so devoted. Her politics were rooted in humanity, and while she could not always outwardly express, it gave her a foundation for where to focus her artwork. People were killed at the time for having political beliefs rooted in humanism. And so what was at stake for her, if she didn’t show up to her studio, she wasn’t showing up for us or for herself. She was uncompromising, and it was until the day she died.

What were you expecting, going into America’s Next Top Model?

I didn’t know what to expect. I just thought I had to work as hard as I could, but when I got on the plane to South Africa, I realized I could actually win. I recall sitting with myself, looking at the stars one night during one of these judging panels, and deciding that I was going to win.

And you would say that’s probably the biggest takeaway that you took from the show?

When you lead with your heart and authenticity, people will respond. I think with television and media, our values become a little skewed, but fame can be a vehicle to a larger goal that we serve as artists. My fame was overnight. When Top Model was airing, I was working at a coffee shop in New York, and I wanted to work there because I left Dance Theatre of Harlem due to changes with their artistic director and funding. I got casted for Top Model while I was working there because some of the casting directors saw me, took a Polaroid, and asked me to do the show. I went to film and came back to work. When the show aired, one day I was just working at a coffee shop, and the next day people were chasing me down the street. Within months, I was on flights for international interviews and talk shows. It was a lot all at once, but after the madness subsided, I was able to take care of myself for a couple years. After a couple years off, I went back to work. I didn’t realize how impactful it was, but here I am 20 years later and people still write me every day.

A Catlett sculptureChristina House

Much of your grandmother's work revolves around dignity. Could you elaborate on this and how you approach dignity in your work?

One of the reasons I’m making this film is because it’s my journey to sobriety. Three and a half years ago, I committed myself to a life of sobriety because I had to save my life. People don’t often talk about the sober journey so publicly because there’s a lot of taboo around it. When I was living a double life of having a public persona while also struggling, I was looking for something to pull me out of it because it felt impossible. I had a memory of my grandmother touching my life and inspiring me to fight for my life in my early 20s, and it pulled me back into reclaiming my life. From that moment, I wanted to rediscover myself and learn to perceive myself through her eyes, because when I stepped into recovery, I was full of shame and guilt. I decided I was going to make this documentary on seeing myself through her eyes, and it was so transformative. I got word of traveling exhibitions that were happening of her artwork and my grandfather’s artwork, and I began to document it. They were the first times that I had witnessed her artwork in a sober capacity, and I was surrounded by her power that she imbued within it. It allowed me to perceive my dignity through the pain, because despite all the challenges I went through, I understood by meeting her as a woman in this season of clarity that my life still had dignity despite it. I went searching for her voice and found memoirs she was writing right before she passed away. Through the film, I bring her memoirs and stories to life in motion. Her perception of dignity moves and compels me to create a film worthy of her, as she created artwork that was worthy of us as women.

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