“My subject’s attitude is very important to me. I try to put myself in their place. See what they see, experience what they experience, be who they are.”
Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe, born in Ghana and now based in Portland, is one of the Rubell Museum’s 2021 Artists-in-Residence. Quaicoe creates empowering lush portraits of his family and friends where colour and texture functions as a unique language to represent the character of the subject. His are images of empowerment and redemption, sophistication and humility, curiosity and quietude. Each figure becomes a symbol of the reclamation of cultural dignity, embracing the idea of origin and personal narrative as it relates to gender and race dynamics.
