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Body Vessel Clay: Black Women, Ceramics & Contemporary Art
Body Vessel Clay: Black Women, Ceramics & Contemporary Art brings together three generations of groundbreaking Black women artists whose work with clay explores the medium鈥檚 multilayered cultural and political significance. Featuring over fifty works across ceramics, film, photography, and archives, the exhibition draws connections between the legacy of renowned Nigerian potter Ladi Dosei Kwali (1925-1984) and contemporary artistic practice. Through these lines of influence and innovation, the show traces how Black women artists have transformed the field of ceramics over the past seventy years鈥攄isrupting conventions, challenging hierarchies, and expanding the possibilities of clay as a medium.
Following critical acclaim at Two Temple Place in London and York Art Gallery in 2022, this landmark exhibition makes its U.S. debut on the centenary of Kwali鈥檚 birth, honoring her powerful work鈥檚 deep and broad influence over time and place. Curated by Dr. Jareh Das, this iteration of the exhibition features new works and includes three U.S.-based artists: Adebunmi Gbadebo, Simone Leigh, and Anina Major. It challenges dominant narratives in ceramics history by celebrating matrilineal, Indigenous African pottery techniques and clay鈥檚 enduring presence as both an artistic and functional form of expression. Dr. Das鈥檚 revelatory curation will immerse visitors in a contemplative space for reflecting on the layered histories of ceramics and the radical potentials of form, gesture, and the material memory of clay. The transformative qualities of the featured works become amplified in conversation with each other across generations, redefining and pushing the boundaries of ceramics.
The artists in Body Vessel Clay share a deep fascination with testing the medium鈥檚 properties to create new, personal, political, collective, and visionary aesthetics across geographies and temporalities. By tracing lines of continuity between past and present, Body Vessel Clay repositions clay not as peripheral but as central to global art histories and as a vessel for memory, defiance, and transformation.
The exhibition features work by artists including Halima Audu, Phoebe Collings-James, Jade de Montserrat, Chinasa Vivian Ezugha, Adebunmi Gbadebo, Ladi Kwali, Simone Leigh, Anina Major, Bisila Noha, Magdalene Odundo, and Julia Phillips. It also includes a rich selection of Abuja Pottery ceramics (Michael Cardew, Asibi Ido, and George Sempagala), and archival material鈥攃orrespondence, press clippings, and photographic documentation鈥攔elated to the Pottery Training Centre in Abuja, drawn from the collections of Doig Simmonds, the Crafts Study Centre, and the W.A. Ismay Archive at York Museums Trust. Exquisite, research-led exhibition design by Ayo Design and graphic design by NMutiti Studio invite visitors into a dynamic, contemplative journey across the show鈥檚 layered themes and interconnections.
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Body Vessel Clay: Black Women, Ceramics & Contemporary Art brings together three generations of groundbreaking Black women artists whose work with clay explores the medium鈥檚 multilayered cultural and political significance. Featuring over fifty works across ceramics, film, photography, and archives, the exhibition draws connections between the legacy of renowned Nigerian potter Ladi Dosei Kwali (1925-1984) and contemporary artistic practice. Through these lines of influence and innovation, the show traces how Black women artists have transformed the field of ceramics over the past seventy years鈥攄isrupting conventions, challenging hierarchies, and expanding the possibilities of clay as a medium.
Following critical acclaim at Two Temple Place in London and York Art Gallery in 2022, this landmark exhibition makes its U.S. debut on the centenary of Kwali鈥檚 birth, honoring her powerful work鈥檚 deep and broad influence over time and place. Curated by Dr. Jareh Das, this iteration of the exhibition features new works and includes three U.S.-based artists: Adebunmi Gbadebo, Simone Leigh, and Anina Major. It challenges dominant narratives in ceramics history by celebrating matrilineal, Indigenous African pottery techniques and clay鈥檚 enduring presence as both an artistic and functional form of expression. Dr. Das鈥檚 revelatory curation will immerse visitors in a contemplative space for reflecting on the layered histories of ceramics and the radical potentials of form, gesture, and the material memory of clay. The transformative qualities of the featured works become amplified in conversation with each other across generations, redefining and pushing the boundaries of ceramics.
The artists in Body Vessel Clay share a deep fascination with testing the medium鈥檚 properties to create new, personal, political, collective, and visionary aesthetics across geographies and temporalities. By tracing lines of continuity between past and present, Body Vessel Clay repositions clay not as peripheral but as central to global art histories and as a vessel for memory, defiance, and transformation.
The exhibition features work by artists including Halima Audu, Phoebe Collings-James, Jade de Montserrat, Chinasa Vivian Ezugha, Adebunmi Gbadebo, Ladi Kwali, Simone Leigh, Anina Major, Bisila Noha, Magdalene Odundo, and Julia Phillips. It also includes a rich selection of Abuja Pottery ceramics (Michael Cardew, Asibi Ido, and George Sempagala), and archival material鈥攃orrespondence, press clippings, and photographic documentation鈥攔elated to the Pottery Training Centre in Abuja, drawn from the collections of Doig Simmonds, the Crafts Study Centre, and the W.A. Ismay Archive at York Museums Trust. Exquisite, research-led exhibition design by Ayo Design and graphic design by NMutiti Studio invite visitors into a dynamic, contemplative journey across the show鈥檚 layered themes and interconnections.
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Body Vessel Clay at the Ford Foundation Gallery spans three generations of artists who embody continuity, molding the past and present.
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