Muzae Sesay (b. 1989, Long Beach, CA) is a visual artist whose practice focuses on understanding our collective relationship to space, memory, community, and the perceived truths within them. Utilizing skewed perspectives of space and shape collapsed into two-dimensional planes of color, Sesay creates surreal geometric interiors, exteriors, landscapes, and structures, presenting a situation in which to be experienced and explored. Inspired by ideas of cultural reflection and developed by questioning the validity of remembrance, his work often depicts worlds created in response to a social introspection and/or an attempt to perceive a shared reality. This process involves taking imagery from the physical world and reducing it to rudimental forms that then populate fragmented universes compiled by perspectival fallacies and tied together by harmonious color composition. The viewer is compelled to understand the space, question its dimensionality, dive inside and walk around.
His work aims to provoke social reasoning and induce the viewer’s agency in the navigation and narration of imagery. Recent work connects with the feelings that arise from testing the absoluteness of the strict and rigid aspects of physics and pragmatism found in architecture, design, and our built environment.
Muzae Sesay has exhibited in group exhibitions at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Museum of Sonoma County, San Jose Institute for Contemporary Arts, United Talent Agency Los Angeles, and the California Governor’s Mansion. His work is in the public collections of San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, de Young Museum, San Francisco Arts Commission, and Stanford Healthcare. He enjoyed a solo exhibition at SFMOMA titled Cut Trees in 2020. Public commissions include: “Lake Merritt, Black Structures, and Colorful Streets”, a 150’x 100’ painted mural on 19th and Telegraph, Oakland (2021). “Homecourt”, two painted basketball courts at Rainbow Recreation Center, Oakland (2019). “I Love the Moon We Share”, painted mural with Museum of African Diaspora and St. Vincent de Paul, San Francisco (2018). “Where Community Happens”, vitreous glass tile mural with San Francisco Arts Commission located in the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, San Francisco (2019). Upcoming public art projects include: SFCTA Yerba Buena Island, West Side Bridges Retaining Wall (2027). SFAC/SFMOMA Minna-Natoma Streetscape (2025). Sesay lives and works in Oakland, CA.