Masud Olufani, is an Atlanta based actor, mixed media artist, curator and writer whose studio practice is rooted in the discipline of sculpture. He is a graduate of Morehouse College, and The Savannah College of Art and Design where he earned an M.F.A. in sculpture in 2013. Masud has exhibited his work in group and solo shows nationally and internationally. He is a featured artist in the 2024 Dakar Biennale in Senegal. The artist has completed residencies at Yaddo, 701 Contemporary,The Galloway School, the Vermont Studio Center, The Hambidge Center for Arts and Sciences, and Creative Currents in Portobello, Panama. He is a 2020 South Arts Cross Sector Grant recipient for Elder, a site specific installation created to coincide with the redevelopment of the historic David T. Howard School in Atlanta. Masud is a 2018 Southern Arts Prize State Fellow; a recipient of a 2015 and 2018 Idea Capital Grant; a Southwest Airlines Art and Social Engagement grant; and a recipient of 2015-16’ MOCA GA Working Artist Project Grant.
Statement
My current body of work investigates the ways that traditional African food staples serve as a conduit for ancestral memory and cultural identity throughout the African Diaspora. Inspired in part by the popular Netflix series High on the Hog, which examined how African American cuisine transformed America, and my travels through West Africa, I use sculptural form to reposition food production and consumption as an alchemy that satiates the body and 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. Food is a vessel of history and histories embedded within the okra seed and the meaty flesh of the yam.