Glass beads are arguably the most popular artistic medium in Africa. With the exhibition “Beauty and the Beads: Divine Fire and Color in Transatlantic Bead Art,” Austin-based Nigerian artist and art scholar Moyo Okediji presents a body of work that takes bead art in new directions. With the use of expressive objects, videos and photographs, the show details the process through which the indigenous traditions of beaded glassmaking transform from three-dimensional tubular shapes to flat geometric figural forms.

Okediji is an artist, curator, and professor of art history at the University of Texas at Austin. He studied fine arts at the University of Ife, before proceeding to the University of Benin, where he did an MFA in African Art Criticism, Poetry, and Painting. At the University of Wisconsin, Madison, he received a PhD in African Arts and Diaspora Visual Cultures. He has apprenticed with several indigenous African artists working in both sacred and secular mediums including mat weaving, textile designs, terra cotta, shrine painting, and sculpture.

The exhibition will remain on display through April 27.