Noah’s inspiration is drawn between the fusion of cultures and the creation of palaces of memory, through an 'appropriation of Manifesto of the Anthropophagus', published in 1928 by the Brazilian poet and polemicist Oswald de Andrade, a key figure in the cultural movement of Brazilian Modernist.

Edmonia Lewis was the first sculptor of African American and Native American descent to achieve international recognition. Edmonia's Neoclassical works exploring religious and classical themes won contemporary praise and received renewed interest in the late 20th century.

Prince Demah was an American painter of African ancestry who was formerly enslaved and active in Boston in the late 1700s. Demah is "the only known enslaved artist working in colonial America whose paintings have survived." In 1773 William Duguid sat for Prince Demah, a painter of African descent, who was then owned by a merchant named Henry Barnes.