Jonathan “radbwa faroush” Mayers is a Louisiana Creole artist born and raised Istrouma or Baton-Rouj (Baton Rouge), Louisiana. His passion for reconnecting with his heritage community and reclaiming his family’s languages, Kouri-Vini (the endangered Creole language of Louisiana) and Louisiana French, which were lost two generations earlier due to Americanization, led Mayers to do more linguistic and cultural research. Mayers paints images of mythological beasts and monsters in familiar, often local, landscapes, and incorporates that same physical landscape into his work. Using his heritage languages, he writes micro-stories and poetry, which often provide a brief, yet rich narrative accompanying his work. His visual and literary work comment on social, environmental, and cultural happenings mainly in the Gulf South region and fall under a form of Louisiana Creole art that melds visual art, language, and physical place called Latannyèrizm. Mayers is a Doctoral Fellow of Francophone Studies at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette where he is pursuing his interests in the effects that literature, visual art, and social media have had on the Kouri-Vini language revitalization movement spearheaded by Louisiana Creoles such as Dr. Christophe Landry, Clif St. Laurent, and Adrien-Guillory Chatman, among other dedicated community members.

Jonathan “radbwa faroush” Mayers is an artist, poet, independent curator, and cultural activist from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Mayers earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Art: Painting from Louisiana State University (2007) and a Masters of Fine Arts from the University of New Orleans (2011). He served as Baton Rouge Poet Laureate 2021-2023 and speaks Kouri-Vini, the endangered Creole language of Louisiana. Mayers is represented by Arthur Roger Gallery in New Orleans, LA, where he has had two notable solo exhibitions, L’Éparpillage (2017) and Nostalji ki fé rékòt (2023). He was an artist-in-residence at Est-Nord-Est in Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, Québec (2022), and at A Studio in the Woods in New Orleans, Louisiana (2018). Mayers is the co-editor of Févi (2022), and his work can be found in Latær lèv (2023), Folklore Figures of French and Creole Louisiana (2021), Ancreages No 30. Traces, The Iron Lattice, and multiple Feux Follets. His latest curatorial project, Mitoloji Latannyèr/Mythologies Louisianaises, opened on October 21, 2023 at the Capitol Park Museum in Baton Rouge, LA.

Mayers is also the current president and founding member of Chinbo, Inc., a nonprofit dedicated to the reclamation of Kouri-Vini which provides educational and learning resources to the Louisiana community and its diaspora.

(radbwa faroush means “feral opossum” in Kouri-Vini)