The Universal Negro Improvement Association: A Movement Embodied in Visual Form The Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), founded by Marcus Garvey in 1914, is perhaps an unusual subject for a biographical art essay. It wasn’t a single artist but a mass movement—a powerful, pan-African organization that sought to uplift and unite people of African descent globally. However, the UNIA *was* profoundly visual, employing imagery as a core tenet of its strategy for liberation and self-determination. To understand the UNIA is to understand its deliberate construction of identity through f…