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Contact me at reginaagu.studio at gmail.com
Bio
Regina Agu (American, b. Houston) is a visual artist, writer, and researcher based in Chicago, IL. Agu was raised between the United States, the Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, South Africa, and Switzerland. Her interdisciplinary practice includes conceptual and material inquiries into memory, history, representation, and Black geographies. Her research-based practice spans photography, drawing, installation, sound, text, and collaboration in the public sphere.
Her work has been included in exhibitions and programs internationally, at venues including the Museum of Contemporary Photography (MoCP) at Columbia College Chicago, New Orleans Museum of Art, The Drawing Center (NYC), the High Line, Project Row Houses, FotoFest, the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, New Museum, among many others. Her most recent solo museum exhibition, Shore|Lines, was presented at MoCP in 2025. Her work was exhibited in the 2021 Atlanta Biennial: Of Care and Destruction, and the 2021 Texas Biennial: A New Landscape, A Possible Horizon.
Agu received a 2025 Creative Impact Award from Joyce Foundation and United States Artists. She is a 2023 Joyce Award winner with MoCP. Her work has been supported by awards including Artadia (2017 Houston), grants from Houston Arts Alliance, The Idea Fund, and the Kathrine G. McGovern College of the Arts + Project Row Houses fellowship at the University of Houston for her research project A Psychogeography of Emancipation Park. Agu was a 2022 Radicle artist-in-residence in the Jackman Goldwasser Residency at Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago, IL. She has attended residencies at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans through a partnership with For Freedoms, A Studio in the Woods, Open Sessions at The Drawing Center in NYC, Atlantic Center for the Arts, and Lawndale Artist Studio Program, among others.
From 2014-2017, Agu was the co-director of Alabama Song, a collaboratively-run art space in Third Ward, Houston, which received a 2016 SEED grant from The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. Agu is the founder of the Houston-based WOC Reading Group, and her other collaborative projects include Friends of Angela Davis Park, which was supported by an Idea Fund grant in 2014. Agu‘s advocacy for artists spanned serving on the board of directors of several arts organizations in Houston, including Project Row Houses, Aurora Picture Show, and DiverseWorks (including a concurrent term as Artist Board President), serving as a mentor in the 2018 Project Row Houses Summer Studios program, and jurying grant panels across Texas and in New Orleans.
Agu holds a BS from Cornell University and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work is in private and public collections including Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago.
Recently
2025 Creative Impact Award, Joyce Foundation and United States Artists
Artist-in-residence at Bemis Center for Contemporary Art - Fall 2025
Shore|Lines | solo exhibition at Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago | January 23 – May 17, 2025
7 Shows to See During EXPO CHICAGO 2025 | Frieze (Critics Guide), April 22, 2025
Artists’ Monuments to the Great Migration | Hyperallergic, April 16, 2025
Deep Waters: A Review of Regina Agu at MoCP | New City Art, January 30, 2025
2023 Joyce Award with Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago
Art 50 2023: Chicago’s Artists’ Artists | New City Art, 2023
LandFORMS | curated by Mariela Acuna | EXPO Chicago 2023, presented by Hyde Park Art Center | Chicago, IL
Visuality and the Plantationocene: The Panoramas of Regina Agu | Alison K. Young. Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art, Spring 2022, Issue 8.1. Featured article.
2022 Radicle artist-in residence, Jackman Goldwasser Residency | Hyde Park Art Center | January - December 2022
Still Life | The Franklin | organized by Edra Soto and Dan Sullivan | October 16, 2021 - March 12, 2023
Artist Talk: Regina Agu in conversation with Nora N. Khan | presented by Fotofest | October 27, 2021
In Place of an Index | Fotofest, presented with the 2021 Texas Biennial: A New Landscape, A Possible Horizon | co-curated by Max Fields, with TX Biennial curators Ryan N. Dennis and Evan Garza | September 2 – November 13, 2021
2021 Atlanta Biennial: Of Care and Destruction | curated by Dr. Jordan Amirkhani | Atlanta Contemporary | February 18 – August 1, 2021
EXPO CHICAGO and ICI (Independent Curators International) host Alternate Assembly, Curatorial Forum Presents: Weathering Regional Landscapes | January 21, 2021
Passage | solo exhibition curated by Katie Pfohl | New Orleans Museum of Art | November 22, 2019 - February 9, 2020
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