“Ribeiro’s desire to find a sense of self and home combines various techniques to create alluring sculptures that declare an Afrocentric personhood that crosses tradition and geography.” – Juror Rehema C. Barber

Ato Ribeiro (b. 1989) is a multidisciplinary artist working in a variety of media including sculptural installation, drawing, and printmaking. He works between Accra, Ghana and Atlanta, Georgia, where he is currently serving as a 2022/2023 MOCA GA WAP Fellow and was recently a MINT 2021 Leap Year Artist. Ribeiro was the 2017 Mercedes-Benz Financial Services Emerging Artist Award recipient, Artist in Resident at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, Germany, and received fellowships at Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT, The Studios at MASS MoCA in North Adams, MA and the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture in Madison, ME among others.

Ribeiro’s research mines through and honors a variety of shared and neglected histories in order to visually speak to his contemporary sense of cultural hybridity. By employing familiar practices— of collecting, joining, and refining natural and repurposed materials— his wooden kente quilt works, mixed media installations and prints provide educational opportunities to seek out new points of reference while preserving layers of African cultural heritage and varying ethnic perspectives.