LaKela Brown (b. 1982, Detroit) received a BFA in 2005 from the College for Creative Studies in Detroit. She is a multi-media artist working primarily in sculptural works with the expansive quality of still life as her foundation. Her adornment-focused works evoke ancient art forms such as hieroglyphic sunken reliefs and cuneiform tablets while her botanical works which she refers to as "bouquets,” reference ancient Roman and Greek art and architecture, often incorporating ideas of Ethnobotany, history, and the enduring culinary and cultural connections between African-Americans and Western Africa. The subjects of her work range from the adornment pieces, initially popularized in hip-hop during the 1980s, to botanic arrangements inspired by her culinary experiences during family gatherings. Brown also has an ongoing series which explores currency as a tool or barrier to access essentials, an object of representation, as well as the embodiment of power throughout the Western world. Brown's work presents these objects as important cultural artifacts that disrupt traditional notions of still life format and subjects broadening beyond painting as default in their manifestation of Bas-relief and three-dimensional sculptures. Brown presents a meditation on methods of representation, historicity, and abstraction in a museological context.

LaKela’s work is featured in collections of museums nationwide, including the Cranbrook Museum, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, The Mint Museum, Detroit Institute of Arts, Smart Museum of Art, The Studio Museum in Harlem, California African American Museum, Harvard Art Museums, and Wayne State University.