Open Air: Artist Talk with Chelsea Odufu

Open Air is a monthly series of intimate conversations with Black artists across the globe, hosted by the Gantt. October's installment of Open Air features filmmaker and multi-disciplinary artist Chelsea Odufu.

This program will be livestreamed on our YouTube channel.

Chelsea Odufu is a first-generation Nigerian and Guyanese American Filmmaker and multi-disciplinary artist working across narrative, experimental film, video art, installation, and photography. Odufu is deeply concerned with how traditional aspects of Black culture are preserved in the face of urbanization and globalization. Her work is influenced by the hybridity of her ethnic identity speaking to American, African, and Caribbean histories and aesthetics. Her work also examines how culture, religion, and geographic location influence how different ethnic identities are formed and evolve. Chelsea’s work incorporates the mystic, allowing time to collapse in her work where the future, past and present coincide in her pieces. Chelsea’s work juxtaposes afro-futuristic imagery, archival footage, and poetic approaches to demystify the stigmas typically connected to BIPOC identities. Her work is visually striking, emotional, and thought-provoking, yet, it is clear her process comes to her very intuitively.

Dexter Wimberly is an American curator based in Japan who has organized exhibitions in galleries and institutions around the world including the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City, The Green Family Art Foundation in Dallas, KOKI Arts in Tokyo, Bode Projects in Berlin, and The Third Line in Dubai. His exhibitions have been reviewed and featured in publications including The New York Times and Artforum; and have received support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and The Kinkade Family Foundation. Wimberly is a Senior Critic at New York Academy of Art, and the founder and director of the Hayama Artist Residency in Japan. He is also the co-founder and CEO of the online education platform, CreativeStudy.