Black Stars – Contextualizing the Rise of blaxTARLINES: Contemporary art of the late 20th to the early 21st Centuries in Ghana

Abstract

Several identifiable events have propelled local and international interest in contemporary visual art practices in Ghana in the 21st century. These include international exhibitions and art fairs, workshops, symposia and the emergence of significant projects spaces and artists foundations. Much of these developments occurred in Ghana from 1999 to the present day. The Internet, mobile phones, and social media make it possible for young artists to bypass, or subvert, established institutions. The outcome has been largely positive in bringing visiting artists, museum curators, and other art-world notables to engage directly with contemporary Ghanaian artists and seek out new talent. However, despite these formal platforms that have served as crucibles or catalysts for current artistic practice in Ghana, the practitioners themselves have, to a large extent, remained self-reliant. As individual artists may be considered institutions in their own right, it is not surprising that some have established their own art centers: Ablade Glover’s Artists Alliance Gallery, Accra; Kofi Setordji’s ArtHAUS; and Kati Torda’s Sun Trade Beads, Accra, and the Studio. These new developments have exposed Ghanaian contemporary artists to new audiences. A plethora of related activities in fashion, film, and photography have also received widespread attention. My essay carries out case studies of five artists associated with blaxTARLINES KUMASI: Dorothy Amenuke, Edwin Bodjawah, Bernard Akoi-Jackson, Patrick Tagoe-Turkson, and Ibrahim Mahama, who represent the cutting edge of new Ghanaian interactions with the global contemporary.

Notes

1 As a former participant in several Triangle Workshops, Atta Kwami alongside Pamela Clarkson, kąrî’kạchä seid’ou, Caterina Niklaus, and Kwaku Boafo Kissiedu (a.k.a. Castro) helped found SaNsA. SaNsA was a workshop run by artists from the KNUST and sign painters from Kumasi, inspired and partially funded by the Ford Foundation and Triangle Arts Trust, London. The Triangle Workshops originated in upstate New York in 1982 and spread to other parts of the world with focus initially on southern Africa, in large part due to the direction of its founders: Robert Loder and Antony Caro. The model of 10 international artists and 10 national artists who are housed, fed, and given space and materials and critical support, culminates, after two weeks, in an Open Day exhibition (Kwami, 2014a, 110).

2 blaxTARLINES KUMASI was formed in 2015 as a project space for contemporary art in the department of Painting and Sculpture, KNUST.

3 As Ruth Iskin has noted, “Canons are part of a dynamic field and never immune to changes in culture, ideology, politics, the market and geopolitics.” (Iskin, 2016, p. 12).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Atta Kwami

Atta Kwami is a painter and printmaker and has taught painting and printmaking for 20 years at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi. In 2007 he received a PhD from the Open University Milton Keynes in England and has also published various articles in exhibition catalogues, scholarly volumes, and journals. Kwami has participated in many international solo/group exhibitions and was a visiting artist at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 2020, where he gave a talk at the Contemporary and Modern Art Perspectives seminar (C-MAP). His work was included in the current Brooklyn Museum exhibition: African Arts – Global Conversations (2020). Kwami is a founding member and coordinator of the SaNsA International Artists Workshop (2004–2009). He maintains studios in Loughborough, UK and Kumasi, Ghana.