Lenhardt Lecture | Conferencia Lenhardt

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Wednesday March 22

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7:00 PM  –  8:00 PM

 

Lenhardt Lecture: Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe in conversation with Larry Ossei-Mensah

March 22, 2023

7pm

Whiteman Hall

 

TICKETS: Free for members, $5 general admission 


Join us for the spring 2023 Lenhardt Lecture featuring a conversation between Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe and Larry Ossei-Mensah.


Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe's (b.1988, Accra, Ghana; based in Portland, OR) figuration is built upon a palette where color becomes its own language of transformation, be it social, political, or personal. His are images of empowerment and redemption, sophistication and humility, curiosity and quietude. Each figure becomes a symbol of the reclamation of cultural dignity, embracing the idea of origin and personal narrative as it relates to gender and race dynamics.

 

“When I first see my subjects, whether in real life or in photos, I see in them their resilience, their power, their inner strength. These are the character traits that arrest me, that jump out at me and grab my attention… My subject’s attitude is very important to me. I try to put myself in their place. See what they see, experience what they experience, be who they are.”

 

Certainly, the colors reflect the subject's state of mind and suggest a more complicated and celebrated relationship to the world around them. The specificity of the palette used – bright oranges, Yves Klein blues, lurid yellows and cherry reds – suggest a fearlessness of intention as well as creating an electrified emotional space where the artist endeavors to capture the essence of each of his subjects, including their own personal sense of style and fashion.

 

Quaicoe attended the Ghanatta College of Art and Design for Fine Art in Accra, Ghana, with a focus on painting. His second solo show, ONE BUT TWO (Haadzii), opened Summer 2021 with a presentation of new works continuing his idiosyncratic perspective on Diasporic culture through the celebrated form of Black portraiture. This followed Black Like Me, Roberts Projects' inaugural presentation with the artist and his first solo gallery exhibition in the United States, which took place in January 2020.


Larry Ossei-Mensah uses art as a forum to redefine how we see ourselves and the world around us. The Ghanaian-American curator, cultural critic, and angel investor has organized exhibitions and programs at commercial and nonprofit spaces featuring artists such as Firelei Baez, Steve McQueen, Catherine Opie, Nick Cave, Guadalupe Maravilla, Ebony G. Patterson, Judy Chicago, Stanley Whitney, to name a few. He has also collaborated on several Web3-related projects with creatives such as Derrick Adams x Jay-Z, Marco Brambilla, and Mikael Owunna. The global venues Ossei-Mensah has collaborated with on exhibitions include such spaces as The MCA Denver, Ben Brown Fine Arts in Hong Kong & London, MASS MoCA, and the 7th Athen Biennale in Athens, Greece, which he co-curated with OSMK Social Club. 


Ossei-Mensah is also the former Susanne Feld Hilberry Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCAD), Detroit. Currently, he serves as Curator-at-Large at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). Ossei-Mensah also curated Ghanaian painter Amoako Boafo’s first museum solo exhibition, Soul of Black Folks, at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) in 2021, San Francisco, and the Contemporary Art Museum Houston in 2022. Upcoming iterations of the show will be on view at the Seattle Art Museum and Denver Art Museum during the latter part of 2023. 


A native of The Bronx, Ossei-Mensah co-founded ARTNOIR, a nonprofit whose mission is to drive racial equity in the art world by centering creatives, curators, collectors, and communities of color. Via ARTNOIR, he has worked with brands like UBS, Twitter, Coca-Cola, 1stDibs, and Mailchimp on projects that operated at the intersection of art and culture. Ossei-Mensah has been profiled in publications, including the New York Times, Artsy, WWD, Frieze, Dazed, Robb Report, The Finacial Times, and Cultured Magazine. He has also moderated/spoken on panels at Art Basel Miami Beach, The Earn Your Leisure Podcast, and The Fog Art Fair, to name a few. You can follow Ossei-Mensah at @larryosseimensah (Instagram) and @youngglobal on Twitter. 


About the Lenhardt Lectures 

The Lenhardt Lectures are a key component of the Dawn and David Lenhardt Contemporary Art Initiative. The annual events engage Valley audiences with some of the most acclaimed contemporary artists in the world. Previous Lenhardt Lectures have featured Shara Hughes, Jim Hodges, Daniel Joseph Martinez, Arcmanoro Niles, Teresita Fernández, Amalia Mesa-Bains, Derek Fordjour, and Rashid Johnson.

 

$5.00