ARTIST INFO

AMINATA CONTEH
Brooklyn, NY

METALS | Jewelry and sculptural works

Penland Affiliation | Penland Instructor 2023, Penland Studio Assistant 2023

Artist Information | Studio artist; education: BFA Maine College of Art; teaching: Penland (NC) Haystack Mountain School of Craft (ME), Arrowmont School of Arts and Craft (TN), Maine College of Art (ME); exhibitions: Portland Public Library (ME), Cove Street Arts (ME), Salon Design (NY), NYC Jewelry Week (NY), Maine College of Art; awards: 2021 Windgate Lamar Fellowship from the Center for Craft

Artist Bio | Born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, Aminata Conteh is a metalsmith whose practice hybridizes the histories and traditions of Metalsmithing & Jewelry with basketry weaving. Her work draws inspiration from the collapsing histories that exist between her lived experience as a first generation American and her Sierra Leonan lineage.

Artist Statement | Currently, I am investigating the act of holding space for that which we cannot physically touch.
My work is informed by a hybridization of the histories and traditions of Metalsmithing & Jewelry with basketry weaving–wherein I am weaving metal into basket forms. This is how I give my objects a solid skeleton, adding structural integrity while reinforcing the preservation of what is only now being able to take form, giving my concepts a tactility that shifts traditional basketry materials. The technique of coiling references Sierra Leonean fanner baskets and the many facets that are involved in memory.