Type-casting yourself with artist Harold Offeh

Multiple Os

Oriana speaks with the artist Harold Offeh whose practice engages with identity politics via an ambivalent and humorous self-casting within the pop-cultural material he admires (and in some cases, finds problematic). He pre-empts his own type-casting by pointedly living within certain racialised stereotypes including the Mammy, an Afro-Brazilian manual labourer and a toilet attendant. The discussion touches upon a range of topics such as cultural appropriation; national identity and belonging; decolonising the curriculum; and the undervaluing of the formal qualities of feminist and anti-racist art.
Dr Oriana Fox is a London-based, New York-born artist with a PhD in self-disclosure. She puts her expertise to work as the host of the talk show performance piece The O Show .
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 widely in the UK and internationally including Tate Britain and Tate Modern, South London Gallery, Turf Projects, London, Kettle's Yard, Cambridge, Wysing Art Centre, Studio Museum Harlem, New York, MAC VAL, France. He lives in Cambridge and works in London and Leeds, UK where he is currently a Reader in Fine Art at Leeds Beckett University.
Additional Artists Mentioned:
Hattie McDaniel, Adrian Piper, Marlon Riggs, Sondra Perry, David Hammons, VALIE EXPORT, Mierle Laderman Ukeles
Credits:

• Hosted, edited and produced by Oriana Fox
• Post-production mixing by Stacey Harvey
• Themesong written and performed by Paulette Humanbeing
• Special thanks to Katie Beeson, Janak Patel, Sven Olivier Van Damme and the Foxes and Hayeses.

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