Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe in Brussels, Derrick Adams in Paris

On the New York Times list of 9 European Exhibitions Worth Traveling for in 2025 is When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting at the Bozar Center for Fine Arts in Brussels.

 

The exhibit explores the way in which Black artists portray themselves and their worlds in their art.  The works of more than 100 artists from a variety of generations and geographic locations are represented, from the 1920s to the present.

 

Included in the exhibit are works by Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe (b. 1988). Quaicoe was born and raised in Accra, Ghana and attended the Ghanatta College of Art and Design for Fine Art in Accra. He met and married an American woman from Portland, Oregon, where he now lives and works.

 

 

Quaicoe uses models from Ghana as a way of blending his two cultures - he uses images of people from Ghana to talk about issues that are going on in America.

 

“When I first see my subjects, whether in real life or in photos, I see in them their resilience, their power, their inner strength.” he said in an interview with The Observer. “These are the character traits that arrest me, that jump out at me and grab my attention… My subject’s attitude is very important to me. I try to put myself in their place. See what they see, experience what they experience, be who they are.”

 

When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting will be on exhibit at the Bozar from February 7 through August 10, 2025.

 

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Derrick Adams (b. 1970) work focuses on joy and leisure in the Black community. Community is important to the Brooklyn-based artist, who moved to New York from Baltimore inn 1993, earned a B.F.A. from Pratt Institute and an M.F.A. from Columbia and worked at the nonprofit space Rush Arts, which highlighted Black and African diaspora artists. Adams set up the nonprofit Charm City Cultural Cultivation, in Baltimore, that includes an artist’s residency.

 

 

“The idea of being Black and joyful is political — to assert it, to demand it,” he said in a New York Times interview. “It’s something that you have to take and not something that is given.”

 

Adams recently had a solo exhibit in Seoul and his work is currently on display as part of an exhibit at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris focused on Pop art. Pop Forever, Tom Wesselmann &… runs through February 24, 2025.

 

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January 9, 2025