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Emergent (Crystal Mouths)

by Harold Offeh • November 2022 • Artist commission

Emergent (Crystal Mouths) is a series of new photographs from Harold Offeh’s ongoing Crystal Mouths project (2021–). Specially commissioned for this issue, these photographs present a series of rocks and crystals emerging from Offeh’s mouth.

The mouth or opening becomes a topographic feature from which the object is emanant. There is a juxtaposition of moist and soft flesh with hard crystalline forms. In choosing the rocks and crystals Offeh was interested in their origins and the links of such materials as quartz, pyrite (fool’s gold) and amethyst to the African landscape and the extraction of natural resources. 

 

About the author

Harold Offeh

is an artist working in a range of media including performance, video, photography, learning and social arts practice. Offeh is interested in the space created by the inhabiting or embodying of histories. He employs humour as a means to confront the viewer with historical narratives and contemporary culture. He has exhibited and performed widely in the United Kingdom and internationally, including Tate Britain and Tate Modern, London; South London Gallery; Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge; Wysing Art Centre, Cambridge; Studio Museum Harlem, New York; MAC VAL, Paris; Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen; and Art Tower Mito.


Offeh studied Critical Fine Art Practice at the University of Brighton and has an MA in Fine Art Photography from the Royal College of Art, London, and a PhD in Contemporary Art and Performance from Leeds Beckett University. He lives in Cambridge and works in London and Oxford. He is a Senior Tutor in Art at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford, and a tutor in MA Contemporary Art Practice at the Royal College of Art, London.

 

See also

Horse Opera
Horse Opera

Horse Opera

by Moyra Davey • Artist commission

Closest to nowhere
Closest to nowhere

Closest to nowhere

by Adjoa Armah • Artist commission