“Fihankra,” an exhibition by ceramic artist Eugene Ofori Agyei, will open Thursday, Feb. 12 at the Alfred Ceramic Art Museum. The museum will host a reception from 5 to 7 pm to accompany the opening, and the exhibition will be on display through July 19.
“Fihankra” (“You did not say goodbye when you left home”), consists of a body of work made during Agyei’s work at Alfred University as a Turner Teaching Fellow in the School of & Design, New York State College of Ceramics. The sculptures begin with the creation, in clay, of a large Adinkra symbol atop a solid support. The Adinkra is a visual system of signs from the Akan ethnic group of Agyei’s homeland of Ghana, in which a single symbol can encapsulate a complex proverb, philosophical idea, or moral teaching.
According to Benjamin Evans, ACAM’s Wayne Higby Director and Principal Curator, Adinkra may also be interpreted as a call for those dispossessed by colonialism to return home, but maintains an ambiguity for the contemporary diaspora who might maintain connections to multiple homes. It can also be taken as a symbol of the security found in solidarity, literally representing a safely enclosed house.
Evans notes that Agyei brings these layered symbols together with wooden benches of the type common from his youth. They are symbols, Evans says, of community, tradition, and also of play, as they were sometimes used as structures for hide-and-seek games in his childhood. The bench forms are often inverted or balanced on end to support the ceramic works, and these elements are further transformed through the incorporation of colorful batik fabric, yarn and occasional found objects.
The assembled, improvised, yet carefully crafted nature of the work reflects Agyei’s own complex personal history, Evans says. Originally born into a family in the Akan ethnic group, he moved as a boy into an Ewe community following his parents’ divorce, which created a nascent sense of being an outsider. Adaptation to shifting cultural boundaries are key themes in this work.
The Alfred Ceramic Art Museum will host a reception from 5 to 7pm to open its exhibition of Eugene Agyei artwork.
Agyei holds a degree in Industrial Art from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana, and an MFA in Ceramics from the University of Florida. He has been awarded two NCECA fellowships, an Artaxis fellowship, and the 2022 Pathways Carlos Malamud Prize. His sculptures have appeared in group exhibitions across the United States, at the American Museum of Ceramic Art, the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia, and the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, among others. Solo shows have taken him to the Rollins Museum of Art in Florida, North Dakota State University and Die Neue Sammlung (The Design Museum in Munich). He is currently Assistant Professor of Art at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois.
The exhibition will be accompanied by the 2026 Perkins Lecture in April, which will feature a conversation between the artist and independent curator Larry Ossei-Mensah, who also has Ghanaian roots. Ossei-Mensah has curated exhibitions on four continents, worked with a host of leading artists, and is also a co-founder of ARTNOIR, a nonprofit supporting artists and curators of color.
