Willie Cole (born 1955 in Somerville, New Jersey) is a contemporary American sculptor, printer, and conceptual and visual artist.

He also has used Dada’s readymades and Surrealism’s transformed objects, as well as icons of American pop culture or African and Asian masks.

[2] He used the marks to suggest the transport and branding of slaves, the domestic role of black women, and ties to Ghanaian cloth design and Yoruba gods.

[3] Through the repetitive use of single objects in multiples, Cole’s assembled sculptures acquire a transcending and renewed metaphorical meaning, or become a critique of our consumer culture.

Cole’s work is generally discussed in the context of postmodern eclecticism, combining references and appropriation ranging from African and African-American imagery, to Dada’s readymades and Surrealism’s transformed objects, and icons of American pop culture or African and Asian masks, into highly original and witty assemblages.

[4] Some of Cole’s interactive installations also draw on simple game board structures that include the element of chance while physically engaging the viewer.

[6] Cole's work is included in the Afrofuturist Period Room exhibition Before Yesterday We Could Fly at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

[25] In 2000, Cole was artist-in-residence at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center Arts/ Industry Program in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.

In 2002, he received the Augustus Saint-Gaudens Memorial Fellowship, an award presented to an emerging artist practicing in the United States.