Harold Offeh was born in Accra, Ghana in 1977, moving to London, England, when he was two years old. He studied at the University of Brighton and earned an MA in Fine Art Photography at the Royal College of Art. His artistic practice encompasses a wide range of media including performance, video, photography, learning and social arts practice. Offeh is interested in how the body can be used to explore the connections between historical narratives and contemporary culture.
Artist Harold Offeh was born in Accra, Ghana on 1 January 1977 , moving to London, England, when he was two years old. He went to school to north London, later recalling that his art teachers were extremely dedicated and invested in the young people’s welfare ‘so there were amazing transformations. I think that’s why I’ve always been committed to teaching’ (Tir Journal interview). Offeh studied Critical Fine Art Practice at the University of Brighton (1996–99) and earned an MA in Fine Art Photography at the Royal College of Art, London (RCA, 1999–2001). In 2020, he completed a PhD by practice, at Leeds Beckett University, exploring the activation of the images on Black album covers through durational performance. The resulting performance project Covers has evolved through major commissions from The Studio Museum, Harlem, USA (2014) and the Live Art Development Agency, London (2015). Offeh used his body, durational actions and physical re-enactment, as established by performance methodologies of the 1970s by artists such as Adrian Piper and Marina Abramovic. Through photography, video and live performance he re-enacted archival album sleeve photographs by black singers from the 1970s and 80s, creating static, durational, tableaux poses. Offeh declared that ‘I'm really interested in histories and narratives and who shapes the structures of history. I’m interested in the body as a primary tool of investigation and discovery’ (Studio International). Offeh’s artistic practice encompasses a wide range of media including performance, video, photography, learning and social arts practice. He often uses humour as a means to confront the viewer with historical narratives and contemporary culture and is interested in the space created by the inhabiting or embodying of history. Recent projects have explored encounters with museum artefacts, forgotten queer histories and intersections of the body and technology. Offeh’s approach involves using performance, collaboration and conversation to develop projects that respond to places, situations and histories. His work includes both very solo performances, just using his body, to large scale collaborations. He draws on multiple influences, including popular music, film and mainstream cultural trends, while challenging the acceptance of political, class, gender and racial ‘norms’.
His first solo exhibition was held at the Kulturhuset, Stockholm (2008) and he has since then exhibited widely in the UK and internationally, including at Tate Modern (2013), South London Gallery (2018, 2020) and Kettle's Yard, Cambridge (2018). His research project Being Mammy(2004–2006), which culminated in an exhibition at the Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth, England (2006), examined the life and career of actress Hattie McDaniel, who played and won an Oscar for her role as ‘Mammy’ in the iconic film Gone with the Wind (1939). Towards the end of her life, McDaniel was singled out by Civil rights activists for perpetuating negative stereotypes, to which she responded ‘Why should I complain about making $700 a week playing a maid? If I didn’t I’d be making $7 a week actually being one’. Offeh’s series focused on the world of the Mammy caricature and documented the tragedy of the type cast actor doomed to recreate and replay the same role. In the video installation Joy Inside Our Tears, commissioned by the Wellcome Collection in 2020, he investigated the history of social dance as healing for societal trauma. In 2017, Offeh was Open House artist in residence, participating in a creative programme with Kettle’s Yard and communities in North Cambridge funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation and Cambridge City Council. The exhibition We Came Here (2022) was the result of Offeh’s three-month residency at Van Gogh House, London in 2021, during which he became intrigued by the idea of Van Gogh as a ‘migrant’ in London in 1873. Offeh investigated Lambeth Archives, Black Cultural Archives and other historical sources researching the history of immigration to Stockwell and Brixton. The show featured an imagined dialogue between 20-year old Van Gogh who had just arrived in Stockwell in 1873 and 20-year old Olive Morris, a Jamaican-born, Brixton-based community leader, who in 1972 was campaigning for feminist, black and squatters’ rights.
Harold Offeh currently lives in Cambridge and works between London and Leeds. He declared that ‘my identity is really tied in and tied up with London. […] all my formative life has been in London […] the whole dynamic of the city is in my being’ (Tir Journal interview). He is a Reader in Fine Art at Leeds Beckett University and tutor in MA Contemporary Art Practice and a visiting lecturer in MA Print at the Royal College of Art. He has also been a Visiting Lecturer at Goldsmiths College, Slade School of Art, the Royal Academy Schools, Central St Martins and School of the Art Institute in Chicago, USA. Offeh was the recipient of the 2019 Paul Hamlyn Visual Arts Award. His work is represented in the UK public domain in Leeds Art Gallery and the Government Art Collection.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Harold Offeh]
Publications related to [Harold Offeh] in the Ben Uri Library