Throughout my life, I’ve been exploring the question, ‘What does it mean to be an African?’ Affirming the core of African power within myself and others permeates everything I do and represent. My objects and installations at once draw upon my history and simultaneously comment on the present. I have embraced mixed media processes to express and explore ideas regarding the richness of African history and pressing contemporary concerns addressing where we come from, where we are, and where we are going.

I use mixed media installation to create a space that allows for open dialogue between the audience and the space utilizing some elements of Ghanaian culture and the human hand as a tool to explore the idea of what it means to be an African. As a concerned artist, I see, feel, analyze, and make work to examine these realities. I am influenced as an artist by what I have been through since childhood, recollecting the memories and experiences throughout my life. At the same time, I elaborate on why they are significant to me specifically. Therefore, I make installations that link the past, present, and future for Ghanaians.

I want my work to draw audiences to experience the richness of some aspects of African culture and their relevance to our contemporary world. I desire to make sculptural installations that communicate ideas to make viewers recognize that what people think they know is not always the whole truth.

Bio

Vincent Frimpong is a contemporary ceramic artist born in Accra, Ghana, West Africa. He holds an M.F.A from the University of Arkansas and a B.A. in Industrial Arts (Ceramics option) from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Ghana. His works are shown in multiple group exhibitions, and recently had two solo exhibitions; Reserved: I woke up to a Dream at Curfman gallery in Colorado State University, CO and The Frimpong Case in Fayetteville, AR. He was awarded The Windgate Accelerator Grant from the University of Arkansas, The Consortium for Intercollegiate Research in the Ceramic Arts (C.I.R.C.A), the Midsouth Dianne Komminsk sculpture winner, and the 2023 The Medium (CACHE)- Creative Exchange Fund (CXF) MARs Award Recipient. He received the 2022 Zenobia award from Watershed in Maine, the 2022 Windgate University Fellowship Awardee for Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, Maxwell-Hanrahan Haystack Recipient for the 2023 Fellowship, John Glick Penland School of Craft Scholarship 2023, and the Creative Exchange fund Grant from Art Ventures Gallery.