Ebitenyefa Baralaye | Host: Detroit

David Klein Gallery is pleased to present Ebitenyefa Baralaye, Host, an exhibition of new ceramic vessels and sculptures by the Detroit based artist. 

 

People are hosts to one another. Our beings and lives are held within walls of flesh, emotion, and thought born of time and force (active and passive). We pass, converge, gather, and hold the myriads of things that make us vessels of humanity while meeting, navigating or avoiding, through the gaze and presence of all we momentarily become host to or hosted by.  -Ebitenyefa Baralaye 2024

 

Known for his ongoing series of ceramic vessels and sculptures, Baralaye references Nsibidi script, traditions and the early practices of African craft in his work. Nsibidi is an ancient system of graphic symbols indigenous to southeastern Nigeria and Cameroon.  Throughout his practice Baralaye has often referred to his family’s Nigerian heritage.  A recent series focused on ceramic portraits that portrayed the living legacy of the matrilineal line of his family. For those portraits he used vessel-like shapes, adding sculpted eyes, hair and skin bearing witness to his ancestral and existential encoding.

 

For his Host exhibition Baralaye has produced a series of large-scale ceramic sculptures and a collection of vessels with an emphasis on the spiritual and historical content embodied in these forms. He states: “The vessel is a container, a marker of life and civilization. It holds elements that sustain and support a society or household. It is a silent witness to the lives and worlds around it, a ready presence that receives and perceives without judgment while holding and reflecting its own story, walls, cracks, weight, and material nature.”

Ebitenyefa Baralaye is a ceramicist, sculptor, designer, and educator. His work explores cultural, spiritual, and material translations of objects, text, and symbols interpreted through a diaspora lens and abstracted around the aesthetics of craft and design. He holds a BFA in Ceramics from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA in Ceramics from the Cranbrook Academy of Art. Baralaye’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at David Klein Gallery (Detroit), Friedman Benda Gallery (New York and Los Angeles), Shoshana Wayne Gallery (Los Angeles), the Museum of the African Diaspora (San Francisco), and the Korea Ceramic Foundation (Icheon). His work is in multiple private and public collections including Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI, and the International African American Museum, Charleston, NC. Baralaye has participated in residencies at the Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts, the Hambidge Center, and the Elizabeth Foundation Studio Program. Baralaye was an AICAD Fellow and professor in sculpture and ceramics at the San Francisco Art Institute from 2016 to 2018. Baralaye lives and works in Detroit, MI. He is currently the Section Lead of Ceramics at the College for Creative Studies, Detroit.