Body Vessel Clay: Black Women, Ceramics & Contemporary Art - PHA Patrons Tour

PHA Patrons are invited for an intimate look at a landmark exhibition at the Ford Foundation Gallery, Body Vessel Clay: Black Women, Ceramics & Contemporary Art that brings together three generations of groundbreaking Black women artists whose work with clay explores the medium’s cultural and political significance. Featuring over fifty works across ceramics, film, photography, and archives, the exhibition draws connections between the legacy of renowned Nigerian potter Ladi Dosei Kwali (1925-1984) and contemporary artistic practice.

Wednesday, November 20
3:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Body Vessel Clay: Black Women, Ceramics & Contemporary Art
PHA Patrons Tour

This event is open to PHA Patrons at all levels.

Curated by Dr. Jareh Das, this iteration of the exhibition features new works and includes three U.S.-based artists: Adebunmi Gbadebo, Simone Leigh, and Anina Major. It challenges dominant narratives in ceramics history by celebrating matrilineal, Indigenous African pottery techniques and clay’s enduring presence as both an artistic and functional form of expression. Dr. Das’s revelatory curation will immerse visitors in a contemplative space for reflecting on the layered histories of ceramics and the radical potentials of form, gesture, and the material memory of clay. The transformative qualities of the featured works become amplified in conversation with each other across generations, redefining and pushing the boundaries of ceramics.

The artists in Body Vessel Clay share a deep fascination with testing the medium’s properties to create new, personal, political, collective, and visionary aesthetics across geographies and temporalities. By tracing lines of continuity between past and present, Body Vessel Clay repositions clay not as peripheral but as central to global art histories and as a vessel for memory, defiance, and transformation.

This event is part of the PHA Patrons program, which offers engaging experiences from studio visits, artist talks, receptions and dinners, to VIP tours. Through these quarterly events, Patrons have meaningful interaction with many of our collaborating creatives while providing crucial support for PHA’s mission.