Eugene Ofori Agyei is a Ghanaian-born artist and educator living in Alfred, New York. His work explores the feeling of dislocation through themes of cultural identity, the concept of home, material ritual, and material history. By sharing his personal experience, he aims to address the broader experiences of dislocation in contemporary society.
Eugene graduated from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana, with a BA in Industrial Art, majoring in Ceramics, in 2018. He received his MFA from the University of Florida in 2023. He is the recipient of the 2020–2021 University of Florida Grinter Fellowship and the 2023 Harold Garde Graduate Studio Art Award. He was also nominated for the 2022 and 2023 Outstanding Master’s and Professional International Student Awards at the University of Florida. The artist has exhibited his work in both group and solo exhibitions across Florida, as well as in Maine, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Ohio, Virginia, Connecticut, California, and New York. Eugene had his first solo museum show at the Rollins Museum of Art, Florida, in 2023. Internationally, his work has been exhibited in Turkey. His pieces have recently attracted the attention of prominent German art collector Franz, Duke of Bavaria, who acquired three of Agyei’s works and committed to placing them in museums.
Agyei also received the 2022 National Council on Education for Ceramic Arts (NCECA) Graduate Student Fellowship, the 2022 NCECA Multicultural Fellowship award, and the Best of Show from The In Art Gallery’s social change and open theme exhibition. He completed artist residencies at the Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts through the 2021 Zenobia Award and at the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Maine through the 2022 Artaxis Fellowship. Eugene is the recipient of the 2023–2026 Robert Chapman Turner Teaching Fellowship in Ceramic Art at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, where he currently serves as the Turner Teaching Fellow.
Visit Eugene Ofori Agyei’s website and Instagram page.
Featured work
Selected works, 2021-2024
Eugene Ofori Agyei draws inspiration from his past to bridge the gap between his present, exploring the emotional connections between the two places he calls home—Ghana and the United States—through a multicultural use of materials. Ceramics, fabrics, yarns, and altered everyday objects are chosen for their complex histories, with the memories and sentiments they evoke serving as the starting point of the art-making process. To highlight the values and importance of cultural elements in the diaspora, he employs the coil technique, traditionally used by Ghanaian women from the Akan community. Eugene integrates this technique as a way to share his heritage through a unique contemporary lens, combining rich, heavy textures with a diverse array of materials. This approach serves as both a visual metaphor and a means of expressing the complexity of the diaspora as an internal and outward experience.
