Leah Ra’chel Gipson is a multidisciplinary artist and scholar based in Panama City, Florida, and Chicago, Illinois. Panama City is the traditional homelands of Chatot, Yuchi, Muscogee (Creek) Nations. Chicago occupies the homelands of the Council of the Three Fires: The Potawatomi, Odawa, and Ojibwe Nations, and the Ho’Chunk, Meskwaki, Sauk, and Miami Nations. Leah Ra’chel facilitates hyperlocal, community projects that engage Black culture and imagines critical “call and response” environments. She explores issues of race and gender through family history, popular media, and archives using image, sound, textile, installation, and film. Her practice is a mix of traditions rooted in Black feminism and Black church.

She is an Associate Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been featured at the South Side Community Art Center, Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Netflix Queue, Project Row Houses, Nawat Fes, Morocco, and the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing. She was awarded a 2024 Creative Capital Award for the Staring at the Dark, a documentary film and environmental justice project.