The Ford Foundation Gallery in New York will host 'Body Vessel Clay: Black Women, Ceramics & Contemporary Art,' curated by Dr. Jareh Das, from September 10 to December 6, 2025. The exhibition brings together over fifty works by three generations of Black women artists, including Simone Leigh, Magdalene Odundo, and Ladi Kwali, spanning ceramics, film, photography, and archives, and traces the influence of Nigerian potter Ladi Dosei Kwali on contemporary practice.
The exhibition matters because it highlights how Black women artists have transformed ceramics over the past seventy years, disrupting conventions and challenging hierarchies within the medium. By connecting historical figures like Kwali with contemporary practitioners and including archival materials from the Pottery Training Centre in Abuja, the show offers a critical reexamination of craft, race, and gender in art history, expanding the narrative of ceramics beyond traditional Eurocentric frameworks.