Rameen Gasery

Rameen Gasery is a visual artist whose practice operates across painting, photography, and archival material, examining how African and diasporic cultural histories circulate through performance, image-making, and institutional memory.

Gasery is widely recognised for his work as Executive Photographer for the Tony Award–winning musical FELA! On Broadway (2009–2013). His photographs from the production — onstage, backstage, and within the wider creative community — have become defining visual records of the show, documenting how the legacy of Fela Kuti was translated from Lagos to the Broadway stage. These images position theatre not only as performance, but as a site of cultural transmission across geographies.

In his painting practice, Gasery extends this documentary foundation into contemporary fine art. Works such as Alquimista (The Alchemist) (2022) incorporate archival imagery — including the FELA! Playbill cover photographed by the artist — into layered compositions that reflect transformation, memory, and authorship. Photography here functions not as record, but as material; painting becomes a space where performance history is reassembled and reinterpreted.

Gasery's work situates African cultural production within a global, diasporic frame, tracing how music, theatre, and visual culture move between continents, acquire new meanings, and enter institutional narratives. His materials related to FELA! On Broadway, alongside his contemporary paintings, have been proposed for acquisition by the Smithsonian Institution, aligning with its focus on Broadway history and African American contributions to the stage.

Across his practice, Gasery approaches art-making as a form of stewardship — extending cultural memory beyond documentation, and allowing it to remain active, contested, and visible within contemporary visual discourse.