Masud Olufani

Oct 24, 2024 - Feb 2, 2025
A Sorcery of Sustenance

A Sorcery of Sustenance is a collection of recently completed sculptures that trace the cultural retentions of the African Diaspora through food. Inspired in part by the popular Netflix series High on the Hog, this diverse gathering of mixed media works examines food production within the Black community as an alchemy that satiates the body as well as the spirit. In this context, nourishment or sustenance, has a double meaning that refers both to the corporeal and the incorporeal–to this world and to “other” worlds.

In this exhibition, traditional African American food sources such as grain, yams, black-eyed peas, okra, rice, and others, are reinterpreted in sculptural forms inspired by Olufani’s travels through west Africa. The connection between the physical and the metaphysical is a belief deeply imbedded within many indigenous cultures around the world. Food carries the promise of life as well as the seeds of multi-generational memory and cultural identity. It is a mediator of meaning, connecting the past to the present–the world of the living to the world of the ancestors.

Bios

Masud Olufani

Masud Olufani is an Atlanta based multidisciplinary artist born in Los Angeles, California and raised in multiple cities including New York, Miami, New Orleans, Dallas, and Atlanta. He is an assistant professor of art and visiting arts fellow at Morehouse College and he also teaches at the United States Federal Prison in Atlanta, Georgia. The artist has exhibited his work nationally and internationally. He is a featured artist in the 2024 Dakar Biennale in Senegal. The artist has completed residencies at The Vermont Studio Center; The Hambidge Center for Arts and Sciences; and Tallier Portobello Norte in Panama. He is a 2018 Southern Arts Prize State Fellow; and a recipient of a 2015-16’ MOCA GA Working Artist Project Grant. The artist enjoys traveling, exercise, reading and long meandering conversations.

As an actor, he had a recurring role on the BET series The Quad, and has appeared in numerous television shows including Greenleaf; Being Mary Jane, Devious Maids, Satisfaction, and Nashville. He is a featured actor in the film biopic All Eyez on Me. He was the co-host of the PBS news based investigative journalism show Retroreport, which premiered nationally in the fall of 2019. He is the co-host of the podcast series Undaunted, which centers the work of social justice changemakers. He is the lead actor in No Cowards in Our Band about the life of Frederick Douglass, set to premiere at Hudson Valley Opera in Hudson Valley, New York in the fall of 2024.

As a writer, Masud has published articles for Burnaway; Baha’i Teachings; and is a featured contributor for the Jacob Lawrence Struggle Series catalog, produced to coincide with a major exhibition of the Struggle Series paintings. His forthcoming memoir is presently in production.

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