Clifford Owens
"Pocket Paper (yellow and purple)", 2023
Gesso and oil pastel on paper
4 ½ x 4 inches (11.4 x 10.2 cm)
Courtesy of the Artist
Photo credit: Daniel Terna

Selected by Christopher Y. Lew
 

Clifford Owens (b. 1971, Baltimore, MD) received a BFA from the School of Art Institute of Chicago (1998), an MFA from Rutgers University (2000), and completed the Whitney Independent Study Program (2001).

Solo museum exhibitions include: “Anthology” at the Museum of Modern Art PS1, “Better the Rebel You Know” at Home in Manchester, England, and “Perspectives 173: Clifford Owens” at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. “Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art,” “Greater New York at MoMA PS1, ” “Freestyle,” at the Studio Museum in Harlem  and “Performance Now: The First Decade of the New Century.”

His on-going, performance-based projects have been widely presented in museums and galleries, including the Museum of Modern Art, Baltimore Museum of Art, and Brooklyn Academy of Music. Owens was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2020. Public collections include the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Modern Art, NY, and the Studio Museum in Harlem, NY.