Yvonne Osei’s Insidious is a series of semi-staged, semi-candid, photographs taken in Ghana addressing the presence of colonialism in post-colonial Sub-Saharan cultures. The “real and authentic” and the “unreal and unauthentic” intersect. By presenting fake “traditional” textiles, designer knock-offs and plastic-bags, these photographs present a global wealth, localized poverty and half-made liberation. Osei’s work is a critique of the way a culture moves from handmade materials to mass produced knock-offs that pollute and cripple the wealth of a vulnerable society.
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Yvonne Osei is a German-born Ghanaian artist, graphic designer and human rights activist currently based in St. Louis, Missouri. Osei has practiced in the field of design and art education for five years and is now pursing a Masters of Fine Arts at the Sam Fox School of Art and Design at Washington University in St. Louis.