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George Afedzi Hughes

American, born Ghana, 1962

George Afedzi Hughes is a Buffalo-based, internationally renowned painter and performance artist. Hughes’s work involves painting and performance art, highlighting parallels between the violent history of colonialism and contemporary global conflicts. His projects interpret in visual form the spectacle of information, knowledge and subjectivity. The objective of his two-dimensional work is to heighten awareness of the uncomfortable existence of human atrocities and to blur distinctions between the familiar and the novel and between conflict and resolution. His performance art evokes allegorical spectacles through interdisciplinary media, incorporating body art, music/sound, costumes and ritual, with the intent of transposing lifelike situations into memorable dramatizations. George’s work has been shown internationally. His work has been featured in museums and galleries in England, Germany, France, Holland, China, and Ghana. Recent local exhibitions include The Politics of Identity at Buffalo Arts Studio, Buffalo, New York, in 2016 and Urban Allusions at Martin Art Gallery, Muhlenberg College, Allentown, Pennsylvania in 2017. Currently, Hughes is the head of the Painting Department at the University of Buffalo where he is also an Associate Professor.