Client: Institute of Contemporary Art San Jose

Overview

The imagery in A Chapter of Love will center around community, family, and child-rearing inspired by Egyir’s experience growing up in West Africa. The artist references the saying “it takes a village” as touchstone for this project. Egyir’s Facade Project will encompass the entirety of the building and onto the sidewalk, celebrating the ICA as a space for diverse perspectives and community engagement.

Goals

The ICA San José presented the first and largest West Coast exhibition of work by Conrad Egyir. Egyir is a Ghanaian artist based in Detroit, working in figurative narratives of the African Diaspora. His work blends religious and West African folk iconography within domestic scenes, portraying a deep understanding of the history of portraiture. He utilizes shaped canvases and relief elements to reference stamps and postcards as metaphors for migration; journals, books, binder tabs, and chapters as metaphors for time and the archiving of ideas.

Additional Information

Egyir’s portraits portray close friends and sometimes the artist himself, exploring the assumptions and presumptions made when looking at others. The artist connects the theme of identity and book imagery through the age-old idiom “don’t judge a book by its cover.” Conrad Egyir: Chapters of Light will premiere a series of monochromatic works in which Egyir blends the subject’s clothing, surroundings, and background with a nod to the graphic style of Pop Art. In addition to paintings, the exhibition will feature a charcoal drawing, a large vinyl installation, and an interactive portrait room where visitors can build their own scene for a self-portrait.