Eugene Ofori Agyei ( He/Him )

My work explores the feeling of dislocation through themes of cultural identity, the concept of home, material ritual, and material history. I draw inspiration from my past to circle the square of my present, exploring my emotional links between the two places I call home – Ghana and the United States through multicultural use of materials. Ceramics, fabrics, yarns, and altered everyday objects are used for their complex history, and the memories, and sentiments that they evoke serve as the starting point of the art-making process. To depict the values and importance of cultural elements in the diaspora, I use the coil technique that has been used for years by Ghanaian women from the Akan community. I use that as a method of sharing my heritage through a unique contemporary lens by incorporating rich and heavy textures with a diverse array of materials, as well as a metaphor to imply the complexity of the diaspora as an internal and outward experience.

Eugene Ofori Agyei is a Ghanaian-born artist and educator living in Alfred, New York. He graduated from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana, witha BA in Industrial Art, majoring in Ceramics, in 2018 and received his MFA from the University of Florida in 2023. He is the 2020–2021 University of Florida Grinter Fellowship recipient andthe 2023 Harold Garde Graduate Studio Art Award. He was nominated for the 2022 and 2023 Outstanding Master’s and Professional International Student Awards at the University ofFlorida. The artist has shown his work in both group and solo exhibitions across Florida as well as in Maine, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Ohio, Virginia, Connecticut, California and New York. Hehad his first solo museum show at the Rollins Museum of Art, Florida in 2023.  Internationally, his work has been exhibited in Turkey and recently attracted the attention of prominent Germanart collector Franz, Duke of Bavaria, who acquired three of Agyei’s works and has ultimately committed to place them in museums. Agyei also received the 2022 National Council on Education for Ceramic Arts (NCECA) Graduate Student Fellowship, the 2022 NCECA Multicultural Fellowship award, and the Best of Show from The In Art Gallery’s social changeand open theme exhibition. Also completed artist residencies at Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts on the 2021 Zenobia Award and at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Maine on the 2022 Artaxis Fellowship. In April 2022, the Morean Arts Center named him as one of its Fresh Squeezed 6: Emerging Artists in Florida. He is the winner of the Pathways 2022: CarlosMalamud Prize at the University of Central Florida Gallery and Rollins Museum of Art, which comes with a $10,000 prize. Agyei is the recipient of the 2023-2026 Robert Chapman TurnerTeaching Fellowship in Ceramic Art at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. He works as the Turner Teaching Fellow at Alfred University.