🎧 Lift As We Climb: Kaabo Clay Supporting Black Ceramic Artists Chenoa Baker

Appears in the April 2024 issue of Ceramics Monthly.

The audio file for this article was produced by the Ceramic Arts Network staff and not read by the author.

KAABO—a welcome invitation in Yoruba, shortened from the formal E kaabo, is akin to “come on in” and “make yourself at home.” It’s our bat signal. By “we,” I mean Black ceramic artists across the diaspora. Kaabo Clay Collective, the name-bearer of that word, is the seed of Nigerian-American ceramic artist Osa Atoe. The American Studio Potter Movement, marginalized by the arbitrary division of fine art and craft, simultaneously fetishized Asian, Indigenous, and African aesthetics. It started in 1940, because of the America House opening and the advent of the American Craft Council (ACC), which was at the height of segregation.¹ Even though Black ceramic artists have been working for centuries in and outside of Africa, being in the Americas brought a new context with the fraught internal politics of the Studio Craft Movement that paralleled with de facto and de jure white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. Kaabo is a network of “us” where we can empower ourselves and connect from California to Lagos, Nigeria. 

According to the testimony of Makeda Getachew of Petit Loup Ceramics in Kensington, Maryland, “Today, Kaabo removes barriers, creates opportunities, and provides mutual aid for its members. From subsidizing member trips to NCECA to fundraising for members in need to donating equipment and supplies to studios in Nigeria and Senegal, Kaabo’s mission to bring us together through mutual support and creativity is having a very real impact.” We irrigate each other through complex systems of knowledge sharing, gatherings, and collective financial support outside of the dominant American ceramic culture. 

Beacon of Hope 

Originally started as a chat group on Discord in 2021, Kaabo has become a beacon of hope in the field of ceramics. In 2022, the group transitioned to a website with a private discussion forum and an online directory featuring over 120 Black ceramic artists worldwide. It’s our ceramics Green Book, so to speak. Now, the organization is a 501(c)(3) with the ability to receive and distribute resources. By taking advantage of our nonprofit status, Kaabo can apply for and receive grant funding to allocate to Black ceramic artists to strengthen and invigorate the Black ceramics community. 

Osa Atoe, the founder, shares that her biggest dreams for the organization are that it remains consensus-based, grassroots with a way to accept funds as a newly minted nonprofit, and respond in real time to the initiatives proposed by its member base. Everything from sponsoring an all-Black wood-fire gathering to an initiative to pay for members to attend NCECA all fall under the umbrella of supporting members. She describes the collective as malleable as clay. 

As a writer, curator, and practitioner, Kaabo made me feel a sense of belonging by embracing my emergent position in the field, my authentic voice, and my aesthetics. When it was time to travel to Red Lodge, Montana, for an invitational writing retreat hosted by Studio Potter magazine and led by Jack Troy, I was able to say “yes” rather than be kept out of the in-crowd due to financial restraints. As a promise of reciprocity, I shared my knowledge about wordsmithing artist statements and bios by trusting the same creativity within ourselves that sees a mug in a lump of unwedged clay. That type of faith can be incorporated into community-building and self-advocacy. 

Nourishing Ideas 

How Kaabo works is that a member reaches out to the collective with an idea or need, and the board convenes to decide how to nourish it. Ebitenyefa Baralaye, assistant professor of ceramics at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, describes their participation on the jury for Kaabo’s Annual Award for Black Ceramicist, “Besides enjoying getting to know my fellow jury members, I was deeply impressed by the intentionality, generosity, awareness, and sensitivity that went into the selection process. The collective is unique in this nature, being a place where these artists are seen, celebrated, and supported in how they add to diversity and value in the work and conversations around clay.” 

Member Sally Binard, whom I met through my workshop, shared how Kaabo “stands in the gap.” She says, “None of my art education mentioned one Black artist in art history or creating today. Within a short time with Kaabo Clay, the history and contemporary world of ceramicists of color opened up to me. Where education has failed, the knowledge and exposure through Kaabo fills in the voids.” She goes on to say how not only education has impacted her practice, but there has also been a tangible financial reinvestment into her practice. She says, “Through Kaabo, I received a scholarship to attend Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, which is changing the trajectory and scale of my work. I’ve enjoyed the professional development offerings as well. As a vessel is a container to hold something, the collective is a space where my creative transformation can comfortably take place.” 

Even Nigeria-based co-founders of Visions In Clay (VIC), Ato Arinze and Djakou Kassi Nathalie, talk about the global impact of the collective. Their organization increases the visibility and exhibitions of members and shares knowledge through sPOTlight Thursdays, a bi-monthly WhatsApp chat where guest speakers facilitate workshops. Arinze says, “Last year, Kaabo donated oxides and ceramic colorants to us which was shared among the very active members of VIC. We are planning to exhibit works created with those oxides next year. We are grateful for the donation and the opportunity the Kaabo platform is offering not just to our members but to all potters of African origin. We look forward to more collaborations such as exchange programs, exhibitions, workshops, and seminars.” In real tangible ways, Arinze recounts the many ways that Kaabo has helped, when they say, “Some members of VIC have exhibited in America through the connection of members of Kaabo, currently, one of their members is helping a member of VIC to crowdfund [for a] professional electric wheel.” 

Empowerment 

Part of what makes me excited to be a part of this collective is how it will change the field by empowering the next generation. Member and professor Sana Musasama of Queens, New York, mentions that the collective provides much needed and overdue exposure for Black ceramic artists and invests in students so that they don’t encounter the same barriers to entry in the field. She writes, “The collective has been a resource to my students. It has been a delight to scan the members’ work and peep into their world. It keeps us connected in an interconnectedness that I thrive best in. We share our lives and weave together a universal support system for each other. We acknowledge we exist. The collective offers scholarships, mentorship, and opportunities.” Lastly, it embodies the word kaabo by what Musasama says, “It makes us feel at home in a world that does not always do a good job of this.” 

the author Chenoa Baker (she/her) is a curator, wordsmith, and descendant of self-emancipators. She was the associate curator of “ShowUp” and worked on “Gio Swaby: Fresh Up” at the Peabody Essex Museum, “Simone Leigh” at ICA/Boston, and “Touching Roots: Black Ancestral Legacies in the Americas” at MFA/Boston. She teaches curatorial practice at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. In 2023, she won the Association Internationale des Critiques d’Art (AICA) Young Art Critics Prize. Her writing appears in Hyperallergic, Public Parking, Material Intelligence, Studio Potter, Boston Art Review, and Sixty Inches From Center. 

1 Zwilling, Jennifer A. “Review of American Studio Ceramics, Innovation and Identity, 1940 to 1979, by Martha Drexler Lynn.” Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art 2 no. 1 (Summer, 2016). https://doi.org/10.24926/24716839.1554.