Regina Agu

Regina Agu (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 presented at venues including Museum of Contemporary Photography (MoCP) at Columbia College Chicago, New Orleans Museum of Art, New Museum, The Drawing Center, the High Line, Project Row Houses, FotoFest, the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, among many others. 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 is a 2023 Joyce Award winner with MoCP. Her work has been supported by an Artadia Houston award, 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.

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 The Idea Fund grant in 2014. 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.