Some artists work quietly, letting their creations speak for them. Eugene Ofori Agyei is one of them: his art speaks powerfully, even without words. Using clay, batik, and everyday materials, he shares stories about memory, identity, and the experience of living between places. Born and trained in Ghana, and later shaped by his academic journey in the United States, Eugene creates work that holds traces of home, distance, and the spaces in between.
Eugene studied ceramics at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Ghana and later earned an MFA from the University of Florida, graduating with honors. His education in both countries has shaped how he works with materials, especially clay, fabric, and found objects, thus pushing him to explore how these materials can carry memory and personal stories.
His pieces are quiet but intentional disruptors. In What’s Behind? (2024), In-Between (2024), and Days Are Numbered (2023), Eugene reaches into cultural memory using African batik, yarn, and found objects, turning his experience of living between places into artworks you can see and touch.
Additionally, in his 2022 work Help Me Carry My Bag; “Ghana Must Go”, Agyei employed earthenware clay, batik fabric, and yarns. These pieces exemplify his practice of integrating culturally significant materials to convey narratives of migration and identity. Each object carries a kind of psychic residue, a reference to home, departure, and the uncertain terrain in between.
His installations are spatial but equally spiritual. In Complex Journey, curated by Dr. Rebecca M. Nagy at Kudos Shed in Connecticut, the narrative unfolded like an altar, evoking his Ghanaian upbringing while navigating the anxieties of a transplanted life. Similarly, his MFA thesis show, Do You Feel What I Feel?, staged at the Gary R. Libby Focus Gallery and later shown at North Dakota State University, created space for conversation about belonging, difference, and the rituals that sustain identity in transit.
Ceramics, in Eugene’s practice, becomes less about permanence and more about inquiry. He uses ceramics to explore ideas rather than to create something permanent. He also adds fabric, maps, and other materials to the clay to show that his work is about asking questions and staying open to different meanings.
His work has found international attention, from the back cover of African Arts magazine to a full feature in Ceramics Now (January 2025 issue). Interviews with platforms like Al-Tiba9 Contemporary Art Magazine and a profile by Asra Voredith on KNUST’s platform have further deepened engagement with his ideas, establishing Eugene not only as a ceramicist but as a thinker of material histories.
A key moment came when he co-chaired a roundtable discussion with Emeritus Rebecca Nagy at the 19th ACASA Triennial Symposium on African Art. Titled “Ghanaian-United States Nexus in Art Pedagogy and Practice,” the panel interrogated the flows between African and Western artistic contexts, mirroring Eugene’s practice.
In teaching, too, he continues to shape futures. His appointment as the 2023–2026 Robert Chapman Turner Teaching Fellow at Alfred University marks a significant chapter as a space for reimagining ceramic art education through diasporic lenses. His long-term goal is grounded in return: to teach art in Ghana, helping forge a new generation of ceramicists who understand the medium not only as craft, but as culture and dialogue.
Group exhibitions at institutions like Weber State University’s Shaw Gallery (Permanence of Earth), North Dakota State University (A Deep Devotion), and the Black History Museum (via NCECA’s Multicultural Fellowship Exhibition), American Museum of Ceramic Art (Fahrenheit 2024) and Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (True and Real); further confirm Eugene’s growing presence within international contemporary art conversations. But he doesn’t simply exhibit, he invites. His works lean toward the participatory; viewers are asked to reflect, question, and carry something with them.
Eugene Ofori Agyei was confirmed as the winner of the Pathways 2022: Carlos Malamud Prize, which includes a $10,000 award. This achievement follows earlier nominations and affirms the growing recognition of his work within diasporic art conversations. His accolades also include the University of Florida Grinter Fellowship, the NCECA Graduate Student Fellowship, the NCECA Multicultural Fellowship, the Harold Garde Graduate Studio Art Award, and a fellowship from Artaxis.
His Adinkra Series builds upon this dialogue, drawing on Ghanaian visual lexicons to reflect changing ideas of heritage. These symbols, once printed in ink and now cast in ceramics and multimedia assemblage, offer a continuum between the traditional and the re-imagined; between what was inherited and what is being reformed through diaspora.
Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of Eugene’s work is how he deals with contrasts. His art exists between opposites: action and calm, home and distance, weakness and strength. His materials also reflect this balance: clay from the earth, batik from African markets, and yarn and found objects from everyday life in the U.S.
In many ways, Eugene’s practice walks with Frantz Fanon’s words: “In the world through which I travel, I am endlessly creating myself.” His journey doesn’t end in exhibitions or academic accolades. It continues in classrooms, studios, and conversations: in shaping clay that remembers things people often forget to tell.
For Eugene Ofori Agyei, art is a way of engaging with history, identity, and the changes that happen when people are no longer tied to one place. And in that reckoning, he creates sculptures and spaces where the experiences of the diaspora are visible and where the past is reshaped.
To see more of Eugene Ofori Agyei’s work and stay updated on his exhibitions and creative process, follow him on Instagram @eugeneagyeiarts or visit his website at eugeneagyeiarts.com.
