Senam Okudzeto is an artist, writer, and lecturer.
Born in Chicago to U.S and Ghanaian parents, she has lived and worked in Lagos, Accra, London and New York. While completing her BA in Fine Arts from the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, she created a student exchange program with the Art Institute of Chicago. She holds an MFA in Painting from the Royal College of Art, London and is a graduate of the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, New York. Okudzeto was a candidate in the Cultural Studies doctoral program at the London Consortium, University of London until the institution was dissolved.

Her multimedia research and practice explores diverse themes; economics as an archive of social relations, readings of Lacan in relation to race, performance and the gendered body, memory and African modernities in the context of art, architecture and material culture. Previous exhibitions include Dada Afrika, Museum Rietberg (2016); the 14th Istanbul Biennale (2015), The Progress of Love, the Menil Collection, Houston, (2012); Dance/Draw, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2011); Informaliteit: kunst, economie, precariteit, Stedelijk Museum Bureau, Amsterdam (2011; Portes-Oranges, solo project at PS1 MoMA (2007); Africa Remix, Center Pompidou (2005); and Freestyle, Studio Museum in Harlem (2001). She represented the USA and Diaspora in the 2006 Dak’art Bienalle.

She has published peer reviewed texts and a number of articles; including “Lyle Ashton Harris,” Aperture, Queer issue 218, Aperture Foundation, New York ( 2015) “Emotive Histories; The Politics of Remembering Slavery in Contemporary Ghana,” The Journal of Atlantic Studies, (Routledge, 2012); and “Feminist Time: A Conversation, Rosalyn Deutsch, Aruna D’Souza, Miwon Kwon, Ulrike Müller, Mignon Nixon, Senam Okudzeto,” Grey Room, MIT Press, 2008. Okudzeto sat on the editorial board of the College Art Association’s Art Journal (2004– 2008), and was a board member of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council for the Role of the Arts in Society, in Geneva, Switzerland (2012–2014). She is the Founder and Director of the NGO Art in Social Structures (AiSS) which creates initiatives to foster the visual arts and heritage in Ghana.

She was artist in residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem (2000–2001), the Stiftung Laurenz Haus, Basel (2002) and the Binz, Zurich (2003). She was awarded a fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University (2003–04) and was the Edith Bloom/Jesse Howard Jr. Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome (2015–16). Okudzeto received a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies for research and production of an art installation relating to architecture and memory in Ghana (2017–2018).

Her work is in the permanent collections of the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Perez Museum in Miami, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Amistaad Research Center, New Orleans and the Radcliffe Center for Advanced Studies at Harvard University.

Okudzeto is Visiting Professor at Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Arts de Paris-Cergy.

This talk is presented by the Open Practice Committee of the Department of Visual Arts and the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture.

This event is free and open to the public.

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Tags: Chicago, Department of Visual Arts at The University of Chicago, Hyde Park, Senam Okudzeto