Beatrice Opokua Atencah (She/Her) is a fiber sculptor and installation artist whose work celebrates post-colonial materials, cultural merge, and transformation of identities through fashion and textiles. Her artistic sensitivities and interrogations are profoundly informed by her historical background as Akuapem and Guan living in the US, submerged in multilingual environs. She has been a grant recipient of the Gerald & Esther Dendel Handweaver’s Guild of America award, Research and Creativity grant in Racial Justice, Anti-Discrimination & Democratic practice at Penn State, and a two -time recipient of the Genia +Max Turner award from Eskenazi school of Arts, Architecture + Design in Bloomington, IN.
Early in her career, Atencah worked as a fashion designer and substitute visual art teacher for her mother. She followed up as a Teaching Assistant after college in KNUST and currently serves as the John Muller Anderson Assistant Teaching Professor of Art at Penn State. Her curatorial projects were among the many spotlighted African exhibitions in Indiana such as Interlacing in African Textiles at the Eskenazi Museum and Mary Warren Collection at the IU Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology coupled with four publications to her credit.
Atencah has been awarded residencies at Vashon, EMAR, Alfred University, Hambidge, among others. Her installation work is permanently included in the Eskenazi Health East 38th St. Hospital in Indianapolis, IN, with others in the Bloomington Arts Commission, IN, Akuaba Gallery, IN, and Martinez-Ruiz Barbaro in UK. Her recent exhibitions include site-specific installation Squeeze Me In at the Woskob Family Gallery, PA., Alfred University galleries, and Cragin Art gallery in MO.
Her upcoming projects include a national biennial Assembly at the Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington, forthcoming solo exhibitions, and a book publication “African Corsetry: The Rage and Craze”.
BEATRICE OPOKUA ATENCAH 