BIO

Joseph Kojo Hoggar (b. 1999, Accra, Ghana) is a Ghanaian multidisciplinary artist based in Amherst, Massachusetts, whose practice engages painting, installation, and material-based inquiry. He is currently pursuing an MFA in Studio Art at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, following a BFA in Painting from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi in 2022. His practice considers the relationship between materiality, cultural representation, and identity.

Hoggar’s material inquiry began with African wax print, which he incorporated into his paintings as both a physical and cultural element. His practice is now developing through the inclusion of denim and tartan alongside African wax print, creating relationships between materials with distinct cultural associations and embedded histories of production, circulation, and cultural meaning. Through painting, fragmentation, collage, stitching, and sewing, he examines how cultural identities are constructed, negotiated, and continually reconfigured through contact and exchange, while questioning ideas of authenticity.

Hoggar’s movement from Ghana to the United States has further informed his engagement with cultural hybridity and the shifting conditions of identity. His practice approaches materials and bodies as terrains where histories, cultural associations, and meanings intersect, overlap, and transform. His ideas are informed by postcolonial theory, particularly its attention to the formation of identity, cultural hybridity, and the ongoing effects of colonial histories on cultural representation.

Hoggar has exhibited internationally in Paris, London, New York, Accra, and Amherst. He is a recipient of the Kuenyehia Prize for Contemporary Art.

Photo credit, Farihah Aliyah Shah