Ta-coumba T. Aiken (born 1952, Evanston, Illinois) is a painter and public artist who identifies his work as superlative realism.
His father worked as a garbageman and brought home damaged paint sets for his son from stores that had thrown them in the trash.
[10][4] He initially intended to head for Madison's art scene but got lost and stopped to buy gas in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, where he asked where the nearest town was with more Black people.
[6] He has worked in places across Minnesota, including creating a 1987 mural on a grain elevator in Good Thunder Township,[2] a large mural on the side of the Jax building across from the Union Depot light rail station in downtown Saint Paul,[2] etched glass for the Capitol River Watershed District,[11][12] murals on a new apartment building in the Rondo neighborhood of Saint Paul,[13][14] and the ceramic fireplace on the fourth floor of the Minneapolis Central Library.
[8] His work is in the collections of the Walker Art Center,[18] the McKnight Foundation, the Minneapolis Central Library,[15] and Augsburg University,[19] among others.
[20] In 1992, they created "Shadows of Spirit," a series of sculptures in the form of human silhouettes cast in bronze that were embedded in the Nicollet Mall wide sidewalks as a commission by the City of Minneapolis.