Tsehai Johnson
Tsehai Johnson is a Colorado-based artist whose interests explore the boundaries between public and private life. Her performative events and installations encourage reflection on the tension between order and function as expressed through the objects that populate our lives. Making porcelain objects, interactive installations, and mixed-media wall pieces, she utilizes dense ornamentation and everyday objects to explore quotidian realities of human existence.
Born in Ethiopia in 1966, Tsehai Johnson received a Bachelor of Arts degree in art history from Reed College in 1989, a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in ceramics from Massachusetts College of Art in 1993, and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Colorado in 1999. Exhibitions include the Milwaukee Art Museum (Wisconsin), Plus Gallery (Colorado), Denver Art Museum (Colorado), Biennale Internationale de Vallauris, Magnelli Museum (France), White Columns (New York City, NY), Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (Colorado), and the World Ceramic Biennale (Korea). Collections include the Museum of Ceramics (New York), Museum of Outdoor Arts (Colorado), and the Reyzjanesbaer Art Museum, (Iceland). She is the recipient of a Colorado Council of the Arts Fellowship and residencies in Germany, Spain, Iceland and at Platteforum in Denver, Colorado. In 2013 Johnson completed an Art in Architecture Commission for the Byron Rogers Federal Building in Denver, CO
Tsehai Johnson’s featured work in The Space(s) Between is Weeds, 2016-2017, black porcelain, 36 x 60 x 2 inches.