Overview

Being a queer man of color is in and of my practice. I think it’s my relationship to humor and sadness and being able to like understand those two ideas, my relationship with my Blackness and Frenchness, my Africanness, is truly the material that I started to build my practice off of. 

 

— Monsieur Zohore

Monsieur Zohore is an Ivorian-American artist based in New York and Richmond, Virginia. His practice is invested in the consumption and digestion of culture through the conflation of domestic quotidian labor and art production. Through performance, installation, and sculpture, his practices explore queer history alongside his Ivorian-American heritage through a multi-faceted lens of humor, economics, art history, and labor. The artist’s work incorporates multifarious materials and objects as part of lively engagements with pop culture.

 

In his ten years as a practicing artist, Zohore has been invited to exhibit projects at such venues as The Phillips Collection ( D.C), Sculpture Center (New York), The Clarington Art Center (Canada), Pace Live (New York), Spurs (Beijing) Tick Tack (Belgium), The Baker Museum (Florida), Socrates Sculpture Park (New York), The Baltimore Museum of Art (Baltimore), The Washington Project for the Arts (D.C), and The Columbus Museum (Ohio) He is also the Assistant Professor of Painting at Virginia Commonwealth University.

 

Zohore’s paper towel works make use of Bounty Paper Towels and bleach to elicit the idea of the bathetic body; toxic, wasteful, and disposable as a metaphor for the treatment of marginalized domestic workers. The comedy contained within these durable yet disposable materials quickly transfigures itself into a drama of social inequities. The material has an intended sense of labor; implying a laboring body—a typically marginalized laboring body—equally durable and disposable. His relentless images force a viewer to contemplate their own ideas of shame and their relationship to labor.

Biography

Born in Potomac, MD in 1993

Lives and works in Richmond, VA and New York, NY

 

Education

 

2020 

MFA, The Maryland Institute College of Art (Mount Royal School of Art) 

2012

BA, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art (School of Art)

 

Solo Exhibitions

 

2021 

De boer, ‘Le Revenant’, Los Angeles, USA 

2021

Jack Barrett Gallery, ‘Tu Rêves’, New York, USA

 

Selected two person exhibitions

 

2021 

Springsteen Gallery, ‘Ozone Atmosphere, Sandy Williams IV and Monsieur Zohore’, Baltimore, USA

 

Selected performances

 

2022 

Glen Echo Park, ‘MZ.13 (Entres Temps)’, Washington, D.C., USA

2022  Palo Gallery, ‘MZ.20 (All By Myself)’, New York, USA
2022 

Von Ammon Co., ‘This Is My Body That I Have Given Up For You’, Washington D.C., USA

2021 De boer, ‘MZ.22 (Rush)’, NADA Miami, Miami, Fl, US
2021 Springsteen Gallery, ‘MZ.21 (Take A Picture of You and Me Smiling)’, Baltimore, USA
2021 Socrates Sculpture Park, ‘Visions of Mary by Joshua Coyne’, New York, USA
2020 ‘MZ.11 (Professional Mourning)’, Zoom Performance
2020 Palo Gallery, ‘MZ.06 (Caiman)’,  New York, USA
2020 Material ArtFair, ‘MZ.10 Beverly’s Material Vol.7’, Coyoacan, Mexico
2019 The Baltimore Museum of Art, ‘MZ.05, Curated By Wickerham & Lomax; Generations: A History of Blackand Abstract Art’, Baltimore, USA
2018 Sheilaand Richard Riggs Gallery, ‘SZ.03’, Baltimore, USA
2018 Canada Gallery, ‘MZ.02, Curated By Sadie Lanska; Slummer Nights 2’, New York, USA
2016 315 Gallery, ‘PZ.29’, Brooklyn, USA
2016

315 Gallery, ‘PZ.28, Curated by Joseph W. Kay, I’d Rather be Here Than Almighty’,Brooklyn, USA

2013 Columbus Museum of Art, ‘Totally School’, Columbus, USA
2013 BHQFU, ‘BHQFU Performance Open Mic #2’, New York, USA
2013 BHQFU, ‘BHQFU Performance Open Mic #1’, New York, USA

 

Selected Group Exhibition

 

2022 

Galerie Marguo, ‘ART021 Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair’, Shanghai, China

2021 Socrates Sculpture Park, ‘Monuments Now’, New York, USA
2021  WPA Benefit Auction, ‘Am I Altering Your Aura?’, Washington, D.C., USA
2021  BAM, ‘BAM Benefit Art Auction’, Brooklyn, USA
2021 New Release Gallery, ‘The Void Is Sensation’, New York, USA
2021  De boer, ‘Last Truth Of The New’, Los Angeles, USA
2021  One Trick Pony, ‘Never Too Young’, Los Angeles, USA
2020 Inadequate Lighting, ‘Invite Only’, Baltimore, USA
2020  Jack Barrett, ‘NADA Miami’, New York, USA
2020  Elote Loco Gallery, ‘Don’t Joke About That’, Cincinnati, USA
2020  Ethan Cohen KuBe, ‘Darkest Before Dawn: Art in the Age of Uncertainty’, Beacon, USA
2020 New Release Gallery, ‘Alfresco’, New York, USA
2020 Palo Gallery, ‘The Observation of Life’, New York, USA
2020  Sublimation, ‘Flame of Fire’, New York, USA
2020  Jack Barrett Gallery (Offsite), ‘Home Alone’, New York, USA
2020  Baltimore Museum of Art, ‘The Why of the Why Not’, Baltimore, USA
2020  Baltimore Museum of Art, ‘Screening Room, Necessary Tomorrow(s)’, Baltimore, USA
2020  Terrault Gallery, ‘Another Country’, Baltimore, USA
2019 Leidy Gallery, ‘badidea69@yahoo.com’, Baltimore, USA
2019 Leidy Gallery, ‘Red Lines’, Baltimore, USA
2019  The Gallery at Baltimore City Hall, ‘B19’, Baltimore, USA
2019  New Release, ‘Mess Hall’, New York, USA
2019  Washington Project for the Arts, ‘Hedonist Buddhist’, Washington, D.C., USA 

56 Henry St, ‘Notebook’, New York, NY

2019  Material ArtFair Vol.6, ‘Clear Objects’, Coyoacan, Mexico
2017  Cloud City, ‘High Stakes 2: When Paper Towels Just Don’t Cut It, A benefit for Puerto Rico’, Brooklyn, NY

  

Residencies and Awards

 

2021  

Edward and Sally Van Lier Fellowship

2021  Socrates Sculpture Park Fellowship
2020  WPA Wherewithal Research Grant
2020  WPA Wherewithal Grant
2020 Transformer Artist Sustaining Artist Grant
2020 Black Artist Fund Recipient
2019 Best New Artist Baltimore, Baltimore City Hall
2018 Mount Royal Scholarship, Mount Royal School of Art
2011

Scholastic Art and Writing Award (National & Regional) in Photography

2011

Maryland Distinguished Art Scholar

2011

NCA Cappies Nomination for Best Costumes, Best Make-Up, Best Hair, and Best Set Design

2010

NAACP ACT-SO Regional Gold Medallist in Photography

 

Collections

Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD

Works
Press