Croydon Plays Itself, 2019
Exhibition installation view at Turf Projects, London, 2019. Created in response to artefacts from the Museum of Croydon’s collection and working with individuals and local groups. Photo: Tim Bowditch.
Harold Offeh
Harold Offeh (born 1977) works in a range of media including performance, video, photography, learning and social arts practice. Offeh often employs humour as a means to confront the viewer with historical narratives and aspects of contemporary culture. He is interested in the space created by the inhabiting or embodying of history. Recent projects have explored encounters with museum objects and artefacts, forgotten queer histories and intersections of the body and technology. Through performance, collaboration and conversation, he develops work that responds to places, situations and histories.
He has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally including Tate Britain and Tate Modern, London; the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; South London Gallery, London; MAC VAL, Paris; Kulturhuset, Stockholm; and Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen.
Recent projects include performances at Publics, a contemporary art space in Helsinki, Finland and The Real Thing: Towards a Live Authentic Archive as part of Material Experiments at The Tetley in Leeds, UK. In 2019, he was artist in residence at the Contemporary Art Center, Art Tower Mito, Japan and he had a solo exhibition at Turf Projects in Croydon, London. In 2020, Offeh will present a new film as part of the group exhibition Untitled … at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge. The film is based on a 12-hour live event Offeh produced called Down at the Twilight Zone, marking queer experiences of nightlife in Toronto, Canada. He’s currently working on a commission for the Wellcome Collection examining historical links between social dance, protest and happiness.
