Wanda Medina’s works generally begin as paintings on burlap and often incorporate different media. Influenced by her family, Medina was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, to first-generation Cape Verdean American parents. Her paternal grandparents immigrated to Massachusetts from Fogo, and her maternal grandmother emigrated from Brava to Nantucket. Her maternal grandfather, also from Brava, stowed away in a whaling ship at the age of thirteen and worked the whaling routes around the Massachusetts South Coast.
