Patrick Quarm

Patrick Quarm (b. 1988, Ghana) lives and works between Takoradi and the United States. His paintings explore cultural authenticity and hybridity through portraits rendered directly onto layered, cut, and spliced African print fabrics. By setting the realism of the figure against the geometric logic of the textiles, Quarm underscores identity as fluid, shifting with place, history, and community. Subjects ranging from self-portraits to family groups appear to surface from or dissolve into patterned grounds, creating an active dialogue between person and pattern. 

The fabrics function as both material and memory, carrying stories of family, trade, and exchange. Wax prints themselves embody a layered history shaped by colonial-era global commerce: industrial imitations of Indonesian batik produced in Europe circulated through West African markets and became entwined with local meanings and style. Quarm’s collage-like process of revealing, covering, and reconfiguring mirrors the way people assemble a sense of self across cultures. Rather than fixing a single reading, the works hold difference and connection at once, proposing hybridity as an everyday experience. 

Quarm holds a BFA in Painting from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana and an MFA from Texas Tech University. He participated in the Red Bull Artist Residency in Detroit in 2019 and was an NXTHVN Fellow in 2021–2022. 

Recent institutional exhibitions include Neo-Custodians: Woven Narratives of Heritage, Cultural Memory, and Belonging, Bemis Center, Omaha, NE (2024); Narrative Threads: Fiber Art Today, Moody Center for the Arts, Houston, TX (2023), Present 23, Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH (2023); and Skilled Labor: Black Realism in Detroit, Cranbrook Art Museum, Detroit, MI (2023). His work is held in public collections including the Syracuse University Museum, the Kalamazoo Institute of Art, and the Kemper Museum.