Join Austin-based Nigerian artist and art scholar Moyo Okediji for a discussion about his exhibition “Beauty and the Beads.” Okedjiji takes traditional beaded art in new directions, using the indigenous traditions of beaded glassmaking and transforming three-dimensional tubular shapes to flat geometric figural forms.
“Beauty and the Beads: Divine Fire and Color in Transatlantic Bead Art” continues through April 27 at The Gallery at Austin Central Library.
Okediji is an artist, curator, and professor of art history at the University of Texas at Austin. He studied fine arts at the University of Ife, before proceeding to the University of Benin, where he did an MFA in African Art Criticism, Poetry, and Painting. At the University of Wisconsin, Madison, he received a PhD in African Arts and Diaspora Visual Cultures. He has apprenticed with several indigenous African artists working in both sacred and secular mediums including mat weaving, textile designs, terra cotta, shrine painting, and sculpture.
