Muzae Sesay is a self-taught painter born in 1989 in Long Beach, California, who lives and works in Oakland, where he has become one of the city’s most celebrated artists. A graduate of San Francisco State University with a degree in sociology — a discipline that continues to deeply inform his practice — he moved to the Bay Area in 2011, drawn by its creative culture and sense of community. Working with vinyl paint, acrylic, oil pastel, and oil bars, Sesay creates vivid geometric compositions of interiors, exteriors, and landscapes built from skewed perspectives and collapsing planes of color, constructing immersive fragmented universes that explore the collective relationship between space, memory, community, and cultural identity — including his own Sierra Leonean heritage. His work is held in the public collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the de Young Museum, and Stanford Healthcare, and his public commissions include a 150′ x 100′ mural at 19th and Telegraph in Oakland and two painted basketball courts at Rainbow Recreation Center. He has exhibited internationally at institutions including SFMOMA, Tiwani Contemporary in London, V1 Gallery in Copenhagen, Berggruen Gallery in San Francisco, and Hannah Traore Gallery in New York.
Muzae Sesay is a self-taught painter born in 1989 in Long Beach, California, who lives and works in Oakland, where he has become one of the city’s most celebrated artists. A graduate of San Francisco State University with a degree in sociology — a discipline that continues to deeply inform his practice — he moved to the Bay Area in 2011, drawn by its creative culture and sense of community. Working with vinyl paint, acrylic, oil pastel, and oil bars, Sesay creates vivid geometric compositions of interiors, exteriors, and landscapes built from skewed perspectives and collapsing planes of color, constructing immersive fragmented universes that explore the collective relationship between space, memory, community, and cultural identity — including his own Sierra Leonean heritage. His work is held in the public collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the de Young Museum, and Stanford Healthcare, and his public commissions include a 150′ x 100′ mural at 19th and Telegraph in Oakland and two painted basketball courts at Rainbow Recreation Center. He has exhibited internationally at institutions including SFMOMA, Tiwani Contemporary in London, V1 Gallery in Copenhagen, Berggruen Gallery in San Francisco, and Hannah Traore Gallery in New York.