Kelli Anderson

As a Digital Artist and Multimedia Producer, through storytelling, Kelli Anderson’s works have explored identity, culture, and community. Her wealth of skills and professional experience include digital outreach campaigns, interactive web publishing, arts education, film/video production, and last but certainly not least, portrait photography. As a Black woman, she is passionate about telling stories that uplift BIPOC that center on futurist ideas and are affirmed by cultural history.
Anderson’s works have been featured at The Making of...Live at SFMOMA, The John F. Kennedy Center Millennium Stage, and Smithsonian Latino Virtual Museum. She provided educational outreach for the Smithsonian Latino Virtual Museum(LVM) during their Annual Dia de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead) Celebration in 2012 and 2013 through social media and curation of the Smithsonian LVM interactive Tumblr blog. She also hosted events at the museum’s virtual location in SecondLife. During Fall 2014 Anderson worked as the social media strategist and interactive media artist for Ceremonies of Dark Men, a 5×5 Public Art Project commissioned by the DC Commission of the Arts & Humanities. For this public art installation, she enhanced large-scale art banners in communities around D.C. with original augmented reality video featuring the works of five prominent Black male visual artists and poets. She spent nine years teaching new media part-time at Duke Ellington School of the Arts in the Literary Media and Communications department (until 2018) while developing and managing the school’s social media presence until 2020. In 2019 Anderson co-produced, Everlasting, a short sci-fi fantasy that explores the ways social media has changed how we connect to loved ones during life-changing moments. Everlasting was an official Selection at Cannes Short Film Festival in 2020 and received the Audience Choice Award.
Anderson’s latest project, A Black Toy Story @black.toystory, is an exploration of black history and culture past and present guided by toys and imagination. This tiny adventure features toy versions of black historic figures Matthew Henson and Benjamin Banneker (History In Action Toys, HIA Toys) where these historical figures from the past discover present-day life. She creates original micro-short films presented as scenes using Instagram Reels which are accompanied by a written screenplay. Biographical details, historical elements, and related media are curated along with the narrative to give the audience context into the true lives of Matthew A. Henson and Benjamin Banneker.
Anderson is originally from Dallas, TX, and is a proud Howard University Alumna living in historically black Ward 8, east of the Anacostia River in Washington, D.C. Currently, she enjoys working full-time from home managing creative projects under her company Sojournals Brand Creative and exploring apartment gardening as a budding new plant parent. You can follow her on Instagram @sojournals (personal blog), @sojournals.creative (professional), and @black.toystory (imaginative fun).