Ato Ribeiro – Yokow’s Maple, 2023, repurposed wood, wood glue, 60″ x 60″
Ato Ribeiro works in a variety of media: sculpture, installation, drawing and printmaking. Born in Philadelphia in 1989, he spent his childhood and adolescence in Accra, Ghana. The articulation of his West African heritage and his African American identity is central to his art. This is evident in his wooden assemblages that reference both Ghanian strip-woven kente cloth and Black quilting traditions of the American South that were used as a symbolic language in the Underground Railroad, guiding slaves to freedom in the North.
Ribeiro works with discarded pieces of wood—a material that he defines as conceptually paralleling the way individuals of African heritage have been treated throughout history. He then pieces these precious scraps together into geometric patterns that are recognizable as a language and even hint at narrative but confound the viewer because their specific code and meanings are not necessarily decipherable. As the artist has explained, “My wooden kente and quilt works, mixed media installations and prints provide educational opportunities to seek out new points of reference, while preserving layers of African cultural heritage and varying ethnic perspectives.”