Yvonne Osei (born 1990) is a St. Louis-based multidisciplinary artist who works across performance, video, photography, textile design, garment construction and site-specific installation. Born in Germany and raised in Ghana, she moved to St. Louis in 2009. Her work addresses beauty and colorism, the politics of clothing, structural racism, the authorship of history and the lasting effects of colonialism in West Africa and the West.
In the ongoing series Africa Clothe Me Bare she dresses and then undresses nude public sculptures in West African-style garments and films each intervention, and her video Extensions (2018) shows stylists braiding a woman’s hair in vivid blue. For The Mess Is Us (2025) she turned her own photographs and historic images of St. Louis, including the 1972 demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe housing complex and the 2014 Ferguson uprising, into textile patterns applied to metal, ceramic tile, wood and plexiglass.
Osei earned an MFA in Visual Art from Washington University in St. Louis (2016), an MS in Fashion Design and Business from Lindenwood University, and a BFA and BA from Webster University.
Osei was the 2016–17 Romare Bearden Graduate Minority Fellow at the Saint Louis Art Museum and the inaugural curator-in-residence at COCA’s Millstone Gallery. She has taught at Webster University, been a visiting artist scholar at Pentecost University in Accra, Sterling College and Indiana University Bloomington, and serves as vice president of the Surface Design Association.
She was one of three artists in the 2022 Great Rivers Biennial at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, where she presented the video installation Brainchild. Her work has also appeared in The Culture: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art in the 21st Century at the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Saint Louis Art Museum and the Art Gallery of Ontario, and in 2026 in Denniston Hill’s installation CHIMERA at the 61st Venice Biennale. She received a 2022 Stone & DeGuire Contemporary Art Award and has held residencies at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, Fountainhead in Miami and Denniston Hill. Bruno David Gallery represents Osei and has presented four solo exhibitions of her work, including Who Discovers the Discoverer? (2018) and The Mess Is Us (2025).
SELECTED WORKS
Yvonne Osei Pruitt I Go Into Clouds, 2025 Photo-based textiles printed over clear plexiglass and on vinyl wallpaper, 2 elements 132 x 168 in. (335.3 x 426.7 cm), size variable
Yvonne Osei Still Playing: Isle 1, 2025 Digital print on aluminum 30 x 54 in. (76.2 x 137.2 cm), edition of 6 + 1 AP
Yvonne Osei Still Playing: Isle 2, 2025 Digital print on aluminum 25 x 45 in. (63.5 x 114.3 cm), edition of 6 + 1 AP
Yvonne Osei Still Playing: Isle 3, 2025 Digital print on aluminum 36 x 54 in. (91.4 x 137.2 cm), edition of 6 + 1 AP
Yvonne Osei Still Playing: Isle 4, 2025 Digital print on aluminum 32 1/2 x 45 in. (82.6 x 114.3 cm), edition of 6 + 1 AP
Yvonne Osei Who Gunner Back Down, 2025 Photograph printed on OSB sheathing, triptych 96 x 144 in. (243.8 x 365.8 cm), edition of 3 + 1 AP
Yvonne Osei The Weight of What We Built, 2025 Ceramic tiles on wood board 36 x 48 1/2 in. (91.4 x 123.2 cm), unique
Yvonne Osei In the Time It Takes to Breathe, 2025 One-channel video with sound 7:27 min., edition of 6 + 1 AP
Yvonne Osei Liberty’s Liberty, 2018 Photographic print over plexiglass on aluminum board, triptych 22 1/2 x 47 in. (57.2 x 119.4 cm), edition of 6 + 1 AP
Yvonne Osei Beauty in blue, 2018 Metal print on aluminum 30 x 50 in. (76.2 x 127 cm), edition of 6 + 1 AP
Yvonne Osei Extensions, 2018 Single-channel video, color, sound 6:04 min., edition of 6 + 1 AP
Yvonne Osei Untitled, 2021 Digital print over plexiglass 30 x 45 in. (76.2 x 114.3 cm), edition of 5 + 1 AP
Yvonne Osei Braided in blue, 2018 Photographic print over clear plexiglass, mounted on aluminum 40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76.2 cm), edition of 5 + 1 AP
Yvonne Osei Ready. Set. Transform, 2018 Digital print over clear plexiglass 36 x 45 in. (91.4 x 114.3 cm), edition of 6 + 1 AP
Yvonne Osei Africa Clothe Me Bare, Dallas II, 2015 One-channel video with sound
Yvonne Osei Africa Clothe Me Bare, Jacksonville, 2017 Photograph, metal print 40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76.2 cm), edition of 6 + 1 AP
Yvonne Osei Africa Clothe Me Bare, Overland Park, 2016 Photograph, metal print 40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76.2 cm), edition of 6 + 1 AP
Yvonne Osei Breaking Seals; Briser La Limite #130, 2018 Digital print on aluminum panel 45 x 30 in. (114.3 x 76.2 cm), edition of 6 + 1 AP
Yvonne Osei Breaking Seals; Briser La Limite #132, 2018 Digital print on aluminum panel 45 x 30 in. (114.3 x 76.2 cm), edition of 6 + 1 AP
Yvonne Osei Breaking Seals; Briser La Limite #134, 2018 Digital print on aluminum panel 45 x 30 in. (114.3 x 76.2 cm), edition of 6 + 1 AP
Yvonne Osei Breaking Seals; Briser La Limite #53, 2018 Digital print on aluminum panel 45 x 30 in. (114.3 x 76.2 cm), edition of 6 + 1 AP
Yvonne Osei Africa Clothe Me Bare, St. Louis I, 2016 C-print 15 x 26 1/2 in. (38.1 x 67.3 cm), edition of 6 + 1 AP
Yvonne Osei Africa Clothe Me Bare, St. Louis IV, 2016 Photograph, metal print 40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76.2 cm), edition of 6 + 1 AP
Yvonne Osei Africa Clothe Me Bare, St. Louis V (I Am The Public Goddess), 2017 Photograph, metal print 40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76.2 cm), edition of 6 + 1 AP
Yvonne Osei Breaking Seals; Briser La Limite #52, 2018 Digital print 45 x 30 in. (114.3 x 76.2 cm), edition of 6 + 1 AP
EXHIBITIONS
CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM ST. LOUIS, ST. LOUIS
Great Rivers Biennial 2022: Yowshien Kuo, Yvonne Osei, Jon Young
Group exhibition
9 September 2022 – 12 February 2023
NEWS
GROUP EXHIBITION
Star Bearer in Denniston Hill’s CHIMERA at the 61st Venice Biennale
La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, October 2026
GROUP EXHIBITION
Dress Up, Speak Up: Regalia and Resistance
21c Museum Hotel St. Louis, St. Louis, July 2026
SOLO EXHIBITION
The Nude and the Naked: A Decade of Africa Clothe Me Bare
George Caleb Bingham Gallery, University of Missouri, Columbia, September 2025
PUBLICATIONS
SELECTED PRESS
TV
The New Season: Art from hip hop to Picasso
CBS Sunday Morning, Serena Altschul, September 2023
REVIEW
Crowning the Queens of Hip-Hop Culture
Hyperallergic, Eileen G’Sell, October 2023
PROFILE
Artist Yvonne Osei uses clothing to explore nudity and appearance
St. Louis Public Radio, Nancy Fowler, November 2018