Exhibition Reception - Beauty and the Beads

Join us for our opening reception of Beauty and the Beads: Divine Fire and Color in Transatlantic Beaded Art by Moyo Okediji.

About the Exhibit

This exhibition presents a transformational moment in the history of glass beads, arguably the most popular artistic medium in Africa. It details, with the use of expressive objects, videos and photographs, the process through which the indigenous traditions of beaded glassmaking transform from three-dimensional tubular shapes to flat geometric figural forms. The works in the exhibition were produced at the Nigeria and Ghana studios of the Akodi Orisa research facilities founded and managed by Moyo Okediji, an artist, curator and art historian teaching at the University of Texas, Austin.

About the Artist

Moyo Okediji is an art historian, artist, and curator. He studied fine arts at the University of Ife, before proceeding to the University of Benin, where he did an MFA in African Art Criticism, Poetry, and Painting. At the University of Wisconsin, Madison, he received a PhD in African Arts and Diaspora Visual Cultures. He has apprenticed with several indigenous African artists working in both sacred and secular mediums including mat weaving, textile designs, terra cotta, shrine painting, and sculpture.

After teaching for several years in Nigeria, Okediji relocated to the United States in 1992. For ten years he was the curator of African and Oceanic arts at the Denver Art Museum. He has taught at various colleges in the United States, including Wellesley College, Gettysburg College, University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the University of Colorado at Denver. He has also exhibited at various places including the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, The Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC,. the Corcoran Center, London, and the National Museum Gallery, Lagos Nigeria. He is the author of books and exhibition catalogues including African Renaissance, Old Forms, New Images in Yoruba Art; and The Shattered Gourd: Yoruba Forms in Twentieth Century American Art.