Fall 2023 Exhibitions are Open!

Emmanuel Osahor

These days

June 2, 2023
— July 23, 2023

MOCA has invited artist Emmanuel Osahor to create an exhibition that includes a new painting, a photographic wallpaper and ceramic works for the museum’s North End Gallery.

Osahor’s artwork engages with beauty as a necessity for survival and a precursor to thriving. His paintings depict natural spaces as complicated sanctuaries in which manifestations of beauty and care are ever present. By means of energized brushstrokes, he draws the viewer into these fictional garden scenes, offering imaginary but recognizable spaces as potential sites for contemplation and wellbeing.

Specifically for MOCA, Osahor has composed an installation that brings the sky, in a multiplicity of hues, into focus as a site of wonder and possibility. In dialogue with his uninhabited painting, a series of palm-molded ceramic birds add life and whimsy, as well as an additional reference to the importance of the artist’s hand for his craft. 

These days is a rumination on the prospect of a good future and an invitation to engage in a sustained meditation on the individual and collective processes necessary for meaningful shared experience.

About the Artist

Born in Nigeria, Emmanuel Osahor lives and works in Toronto. He holds an MFA at the University of Guelph (2021) and a BFA in Art and Design from the University of Alberta (2015). His work has been presented in multiple solo and collective exhibitions, including at the Art Gallery of Alberta, SNAP gallery, the Works International Festival of Art and Design, the Art Gallery of Guelph and BAND Gallery. In 2018 Osahor received an honourable mention at the 20th RBC Painting Competition, and in 2021 he received the Joseph Plaskett postgraduate award in painting.

Installation Views

Spotlights: Emmanuel Osahor

Foundational Sponsor

Emmanuel Osahor, These days, 2023. Installation view at MOCA Toronto, 2023. Courtesy the artist and Galerie Nicolas Robert. Photo: Laura Findlay.

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