Burden of Proof will highlight the mixed media art of Japheth Asiedu-Kwarteng, an Edinburg, TX based artist who serves on the faculty of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley School of Art and Design.
Asiedu-Kwarteng, who primarily works in ceramics, is largely inspired by traditional Ghanaian symbolism. His research and creative practice are drawn from Kente cloth, a hand woven fabric from Ghana, and its history in materiality (expanding its symbolism) and explore the communicative potential of fabric and fibers to discuss movement, transition, and navigation of tangible and intangible foreign spaces.
For this exhibition, he intends to exhibit an artwork including over 140 elements that investigate by his personal use of the USCIS website (US Citizenship and Immigration Services), which he uses as an immigrant himself, as well as for his family. It will also include mixed media ceramic sculptures that incorporate Kente design.
Asiedu-Kwarteng is a member of the International Academy of Ceramics, Artaxis and National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA). He has exhibited his works extensively in Ghana and the United States including in the 2022 and 2021 NCECA Annual and Multicultural Fellowship exhibitions.
A free gallery guide handout with an essay by Kendra Paitz, director and chief curator at University Galleries of Illinois State University, will be available.
Japheth Asiedu-Kwarteng: Burden of Proof is generously funded in part by awards from the Texas Commission on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Edaren Foundation, the City of Beaumont, the Wesley W. Washburn, M.D. and Lulu L. Smith, M.D. Endowment Fund, the C. Homer and Edith Fuller Chambers Charitable Foundation, Beaumont CVB, Jefferson County and the members of the Art Museum of Southeast Texas.
To find out more about how National Endowment for the Arts grants impact individuals and communities, visit www.arts.gov.
The second exhibition will feature work by El Paso based artist Adrian Esparza. The exhibit, entitled Remnants of Distance, will include large scale “constructions,” made from serape thread wound on wooden supports and mixed media paintings. Esparza explores material culture by “re-instilling lost value in found objects.”
Esparza first drew international appreciation through his deconstruction of the Mexican serape. Drawing inspiration from modern architecture, physical landscapes, and mid-century minimalist artists, Esparza depicts dramatic one and two-point perspectives to form striking dimensionality and volume. The artist diffuses color and expands space by weaving serape thread around nails to form a grid. Geometric structures present in his drawings and sculptures re-imagine his own Mexican-American cultural heritage.
Esparza’s works can be found in many public and private galleries as well as several corporate and public spaces, including Fidelity Investments, Houston Airports, Microsoft and Soho House.
A free gallery guide handout with an essay by independent curator and writer Leslie Moody Castro will be available to the public.
Adrian Esparza: Remnants of Distance is generously funded in part by awards from the Texas Commission on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Mamie McFaddin Ward Heritage Foundation, the Edaren Foundation, the City of Beaumont, the Wesley W. Washburn, M.D. and Lulu L. Smith, M.D. Endowment Fund, the C. Homer and Edith Fuller Chambers Charitable Foundation, Beaumont CVB, Jefferson County, an anonymous donor and the members of the Art Museum of Southeast Texas.
To find out more about how National Endowment for the Arts grants impact individuals and communities, visit www.arts.gov.
Art Museum of Southeast Texas
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