Approaching his performance work through a use of popular media; including moving image, photography and social practice, Harold Offeh often uses humour to confront contemporary assumptions that surround race and art production. His central interest in performance-to-camera modes of presentation sees him subverting the manifest perspectives in television and popular-culture, using video and photography as his primary tools. The pastiche effect of this is that his work ultimately undermines its own context.
Over the past five years Offeh has produced work for several major international exhibitions in the USA, Italy, Denmark and France. The Shadows Took Shape (The Studio Museum, New York, 2013-14) examined the legacy of Sun Ra and the impact of his work on the Afro-futurist cultural movement, exhibiting three photographs from Covers (2015) in which Offeh embodies images from popular culture in an attempt to create music album covers from the 1970s and 80s by black divas.
Offeh is drawn to the breadth of performance as a medium. He likes to offer his body as a research material, exploring the ideas of convention and art, the artist as being useful, and the artist as being used.