Miles McEnery Gallery is pleased to announce In jubilant pastures, an exhibition of new paintings by Detroit-based artist Conrad Egyir, on view 5 September through 26 October. Accompanying the exhibition is a fully illustrated publication featuring an essay by Charles Moore.

In jubilant pastures, Conrad Egyir’s first solo exhibition with Miles McEnery Gallery, presents a body of eleven paintings that interrogate themes of identity and belongingness. Born in Ghana, Egyir’s exploration of self and others shines through, questioning what it means to assimilate to a new land while maintaining one’s roots. The deeply iconographic work combines religious symbols, Ghanaian visual lexicon, migration ephemera, and nods to Black contemporary and historical artists.

Egyir’s subjects are those from the Afro-diaspora close to him—his family, friends, and colleagues—rendering them regal in brilliant hues and often applying illuminating glitter. His palette is personal—each color pulled from dreams and lived experience alike. Each portrait crafts narratives enlivened with empathy and spirituality, both through visual and written language. In some, Egyir will paint the same subject twice, furthering the concept of duplicity in identity. Idyllic landscapes sweep the background, his figures sometimes gazing out at the sprawling lands, other times turning away. Themes of displacement and migration shine through, placing the viewer in the shoes of those depicted, caught between nostalgia for the past and hope for the future.

Charles Moore writes that, “the artist explores the meaning of Blackness, digging into his personal history as an African man in the U.S., where Black Americans note their ability to identify foreigners by their accent, speech patterns, and style of dress, and honing in on what it means to be different. The desire to assimilate—to blend into Black American spaces—resonates with the artist; accordingly, in his work, he invites his subjects to occupy the places they wish to inhabit, and storytelling lays the foundation for this process”.

Conrad Egyir (b. 1989 in Accra, Ghana) received his Master of Fine Arts from the Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI and his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Judson University, Elgin, IL.

Egyir has been the subject of recent solo and two-person exhibitions at Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco; MCLA Gallery 51, North Adams, MA; UTA Artist Space, Los Angeles; Institute of Contemporary Art, San José, CA; 8 Bridges, San Francisco; Anastasia Tinari Projects, Chicago; and the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, MI.

His work has been included in recent group exhibitions at David Klein Gallery, Detroit, MI; Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI; Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco; TOA Presents, Minneapolis, MN; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO; Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH; Ross + Kramer Gallery, New York; and Library Street Collective, Detroit, MI.

Egyir’s work may be found in the collections of the Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI; Detroit Institute of Arts, MI; JP Morgan Chase Art Collection; Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, MI; Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine, Pasadena, CA; Pérez Art Museum Miami; and the Rennie Collection, Vancouver, Canada.

He lives and works in Detroit, MI.