The ICA San Jose Facade Project launched in 2020 with inaugural artist Amir H. Fallah, garnering wide acclaim in conjunction with the ICA’s role as a Vote Center for the 2020 November election. With the success of our inaugural Facade Project, we are looking forward to presenting the next project in 2021 with Ghanaian artist Conrad Egyir. This exhibition will be on view on the facade of the ICA San José starting October 1st, opening in conjunction with the solo exhibition Conrad Egyir: Chapters of Love, also on view at the ICA San José.

Egyir is a Ghanian artist based in Detroit, who creates bold, bright, graphic narrative paintings and portraits that stylistically pull from pop art, political propaganda, and religious art. His iconography is drawn from superstitious symbols of West Africa, cultural anachronisms, and art history. Egyir’s shaped canvases and added elements reference stamps, postcards, notepads, and books as metaphors for migration and archiving of information. At its core, Egyir’s work is about community and identity told through a language of painterly delight, making him a powerful artist for our next Facade Project.

The imagery in A Chapter of Love will center around community, family, and child-rearing inspired by Egyir’s experience growing up in West Africa. The artist references the saying “it takes a village” as touchstone for this project. Egyir’s Facade Project will encompass the entirety of the building and onto the sidewalk, celebrating the ICA as a space for diverse perspectives and community engagement.  

Conrad Egyir: A Chapter of Love and Conrad Egyir: Chapters of Light are generously supported by program partner Facebook Open Arts, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Pamela and David Hornik, Tad Freese and Brook Hartzell, and Applied Materials.