Dodji Gbedemah’s father wanted his eldest son to follow in his footsteps and become an accountant. “I was born a creative but I got a business degree because of my father,” the artist said from his gallery in early December. “My father forced me to be a business person, now I’m grateful to him because I can do both.”
In 2019 Gbedemah and his wife Phyllis opened Kente Royal Gallery in Harlem, “the Black mecca of the world,” he says. Named for the vibrant royal Kente cloth, “the most recognized and celebrated African garment,” the 940-square-foot gallery occupies the street-level of 2373 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard. “We opened up this gallery to give opportunity to artists of the African diaspora because they are so underrepresented,” he explained. “We are talking about Harlem, and the lack of galleries in Harlem….” Gbedemah and his wife discovered a surprising statistic when opening their art space. “Out of all the art galleries in New York City—and there’s over 1,500 of them—one percent are Black-owned,” he said. A list of Black-owned galleries in the United States compiled by Artsy.net in June includes only 19 such businesses in New York.
Originally from Togo, West Africa, the charismatic Gbedemah immigrated to the U.S. in the ‘90s. “I always imagined that there would be so many more cultural institutions, galleries, and all that,” he recalled of his initial impression of Harlem. “Today we have the Schomberg [Center for Research in Black Culture], the Apollo, The National Black Theatre, very few.” He hopes that Kente Royal Gallery will help pave the way for more Black-owned art venues in the neighborhood. “We want to be the spark for the next generation to establish spaces like this for art of underrepresented artists,” he says.
Gbedemah instantly fell in love with New York City when he moved here at 24. His aunt and uncle, who had been living in Virginia since the ‘60s, sponsored his visa. “When I came to New York I was like, 'I’m not leaving. I’m not going to Virginia.' So I stayed here,” he recalls. “In 1994 it was just at the heels of the crack epidemic and I remember coming and things were beginning to change,” he reflected. “Even Times Square was not like Disney Land, the way it looks now. When I got here, you couldn’t walk one block from 8th Avenue to 9th Avenue without getting hit by some kind of crime. All of that for a 24-year-old was very exciting, believe it or not. I was just like, ‘Yes! New York.’ The tall buildings, the flashing lights, it was a dream.”
When he first arrived to NYC, Gbedemah worked a variety of jobs including bike messenger, security guard, and a shirt presser for a dry cleaner. “Back then you had to press four shirts to make a dollar,” he recalls laughing.
He put himself through college driving a taxi while taking evening classes at New York University where he received a business degree. “I made my dad proud,” he said. The experience he gained driving a NYC taxi came in handy post-college. “I’ve been in transportation my entire time in corporate America,” Gbedemah noted. “I started with Zipcar after finishing school.” He joined the company when it was still “a little tiny startup with one small room as an office in Chelsea.” He worked his way up through various management positions during his twelve years at Zipcar, then moved on to Uber where he was a people manager until May when the company laid off more than 3,500 employees due to the pandemic.
Gbedemah was suddenly free to devote more time to Kente Royal Gallery. His wife Phyllis, a hair stylist, had been running the gallery on her own during the week. “She was full-time and I was coming on the weekends,” Gbedemah notes. “I’m very grateful to her.”
Though the couple resides in Queens, where Gbedemah has lived since moving to the U.S., they chose Harlem for their gallery because “This place has so much creativity, resilience, swagger...,” he says. “There’s a vibe over here that just attracts you, it reaches my soul deeply.”
Kente Royal Gallery is around the corner from where the couple worship, the historic Abyssinian Baptist Church. The gallery's inaugural exhibition in July 2019 featured a member of the church’s congregation, Harlem-based abstract artist Gabrielle Baker. “We did that intentionally because she is a Black female artist,” Gbedemah says. “We wanted to make a statement: when you think about Black art, what do you think about? How do you define Black art?”
(Photo courtesy of the artist)
Growing up Gbedemah attended College Protestant high school, “one of the best schools in Lomé, the capital of Togo,” he recalls. “We had music classes. We had art classes. We took ceramics, macramé, painting. We did all of that on top of our required academic courses.” The school fostered his multifaceted creativity. At 16, he taught himself how to play guitar and he eventually took up bass and djembe as well. Decades later, Gbedemah still reaches for his paintbrushes whenever he can to create his bright and dynamic abstract canvases.
“I love abstract work. Everybody sees things differently in an abstract piece,” he says. “It makes me so happy when somebody looks at one of my pieces and they see something that I haven’t seen myself."
(Photo: Nathan Haselby)
During the lockdown this year, when Kente Royal was forced to close for four months, Gbedemah used the time to paint 40 new works. He hopes to exhibit them soon. In the coming year, he’s looking forward to showcasing work by NYC artists Daryl Daniels, Ricky Day, and Demarcus McGaughey at the gallery. “There are so many artists in the Black community but they don’t have a place to show their pieces,” Gbedemah notes. “I want this to be a community gallery to help foster all these artists in the community, not just in Harlem, but in New York City and beyond.”
Check out Fire & Soul: 100 Years of Harlem on view at Kente Royal Gallery through January 3, 2021 and see my post on the group exhibit here.
Kente Royal Gallery
2373 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard (between W138th & W139th Streets), Harlem, New York
I'm so proud of you bro
It's really good to see how succeeded to express yourself through such beautiful art expressions...
I hope l could be visiting your gallery after the current pandemic
Congrat.my Bro
Posted by: Jerome Adjevi | 12/27/2020 at 07:14 AM