In Covers, Offeh re-enacts archival album sleeve photographs by black singers from the 1970s and 80s, creating static, durational tableaux poses. Through established performance methodologies of the 1970s Covers uses the artist’s body, durational actions and physical re-enactment to re-activate historical popular cultural images. In collapsing live and documented elements Offeh makes visible the mediation and power of the photographic image to fix and shape identity.

 

Hairography, the live series looks at the fetishization of hair and particularly European hair in popular culture. The work addresses the marketing of hair through advertising campaigns. Placing an emphasis on the language of hair marketing and the material qualities of traits such as "shine", "bounce" and "swish" in selling European hair. In the series of live works Offeh re-creates adverts and tries to embody the material qualities.

 

Bio

Harold Offeh is an artist working in the UK, with media such as performance, video, photography, learning and social arts practice. Offeh employs humour as a means to confront the viewer with historical narratives and contemporary culture, and is interested in the space created by the inhabiting or embodying of history. He has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally. In 2017 he exhibited as part of Untitled: art on the conditions of our time at New Art Exchange in Nottingham, UK and Tous, des sangs-mêlés at MAC VAL, Museum of Contemporary Art in Val de Marne, France.