Woody De Othello: coming forth by day

A whimsical monograph dedicated to the first museum exhibition of Othello’s vibrant, playful and spiritually charged ceramics

Published with Pérez Art Museum Miami.

Miami-born artist Woody De Othello (born 1991) presents coming forth by day, a new body of work exploring the primordial earth through ceramic and wood sculptures, tiled wall works and a large-scale bronze. The installation integrates grounding elements such as clay-painted walls, potted flora and concealed herbal scents to evoke a sensorial experience of place. Rooted in precolonial and diasporic African traditions, Othello draws on spiritual practices, nkisi power figures, Dogon ritual objects and Egyptian pyramids. His anthropomorphic forms and richly glazed finishes suggest a charged presence—objects that lean, rest or embrace as if shaped by memory and emotion. Known for stretching everyday objects into expressive, bodily forms, Othello blurs the line between figure and vessel. This exhibition, his first major solo museum show in Miami, reflects an ongoing unearthing of ancestral heritage and underscores how material and form become vessels for history, emotion and spiritual continuity.