In his university days, he played trumpet, performing music by Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington in a school band led by an American music director. The band’s leader, Anatsui once said, introduced him to the music of Fela Kuti, founder of the Afrobeat genre. The band would later meet the Nigerian musician when he toured Ghana, Anatsui’s homeland—and even ended up opening for him when he was on tour.

“Just like Fela, with his bravery, courage, and audacity to break rules and set new benchmarks, I believe that my career has proven to me that the audiences are present and will always look to the artist to lead, to expand their experience with new presentations, or renewals of old fare,” Anatsui told ARTnews.

Anatsui’s music career recently came to the fore with a show at Dubai’s Efie Gallery. The focus here was not Anatsui’s bottle-cap tapestries but his record collection, which includes music by Kuti, Gladys Knight, Manu Dibango, King Sunny Ade, Tony Allen, Aretha Franklin, and many others. The collection, unveiled here to the public for the first time, offered a rare glimpse into the largely unseen musical side of Anatsui’s career. Alongside these vinyl records are some of Anatsui’s early sketches, which include song lyrics, music titles, and poetry, providing an understanding of his musical and cultural influences.

Anatsui spoke to ARTnews about his musical influences and how they inform his work.

ARTnews: How would you describe your relationship with music?

El Anatsui: Music and art have been the two areas in the creative disciplines close to my heart. I have tried to practice one, full-time now, the other sporadically but yearning more to be given attention. After decades of art practice in which the abstract has predominated, looking back I see the similarity between the areas.

To me, music is the most abstract of the arts, using pure elements of sound to create just like as a sculptor I attempt to draw on the innate potentials or properties of my media to create. In hindsight still, one other feature strikes me. I’ve mostly worked with ordinary commonplace media so far, and I have a feeling this was triggered unconsciously by my exposure to South African music in my formative years. Recalling what the likes of Little Lemmy Mabaso, Big Joe, Spokes Mashiyane, and other musicians did using the common, cheap pennywhistle in their infectious kwela music that I heard in Radio Ghana’s Saturday “Way Down South” programs of the 1960s probably paved the way for me to, after art school, turn to cheap, available local media to start my career and remain with.

The records in this exhibition are described as “offering a unique glimpse into the cultural aspirations” that have shaped your career. Can you share an example when a song or album played a major role in creating a body of work?

Well, not necessarily creating a body of work, but rather the trigger for an idea. This can be seen in a few of my drawings where I make reference to lyrics of Fela Kuti’s songs. This is the starting point, as one cannot illustrate music, but rather draw elements from it as a guide. An example is my sketch, currently also on display with the vinyl records, that references Fela’s “Question Jam Answer.” On this occasion, listening to the lyrics, I found the two questions to be very valid. They refer to situations that lead to stalemates. It’s a scenario where one is expected to answer a query, but he had the audacity and freedom to respond with a query.

There are also triggers from music or the instruments themselves, such as my work Keyboard of Life [a 2021 tapestry that looks like piano keys]. A keyboard is like a field on which fingers move linearly (in melodies), or in groups, as in harmonies. This can be likened to a solo studio voice in art or massed voices which support the artist—they kind of lift you up. There’s the sensation one gets listening to “Amazing Grace,” which Aretha Franklin returned to record with the choir she started with after many years in the limelight. One could almost feel a kind of audacity that the many voices gave her as she floated above their powerful sound wave. Scenarios like this abound in my work, with my many assistants.

What draws you to Fela Kuti’s music and how does that show up in your work?

Fela’s career began with highlife, a genre that has been around since before my childhood days. He took this music as a starting point and introduced several elements, creating the peculiar genre dubbed Afrobeat. At the beginning of Fela’s musical journey when he was playing highlife, one could feel his unease with the status quo and his struggles to move it to a new level. He was searching for something else with a jazzy orientation, so when he eventually came up with Afrobeat, those of us who followed his trajectory were not at all surprised.

Commonly, highlife music is based on a 4/4 or a 2/4 beat. Fela’s Afrobeat remained with the 4/4 beat, but with the bass drum beats irregularly clustered instead of in equal time intervals, with occasional builds to a crescendo followed by a drop, then picking up again. So, spatially, he enlivened the bass drum lines of highlife. This is something that has continued and is now commonplace in the music scene. It has given musicians the courage to also experiment with the bass drum and other percussion instruments, which, hitherto, were given very conservative roles.

I share in the same spirit of exploration that led to Fela introducing a new genre. In my practice, I have always been inspired to question the way things have been done. In school, we started with carving wood, using gouges and mallets, which were the traditional tools for shaping wood. I always asked the question, “Why can’t wood be shaped by other means as well?” In the process, I began working with tools such as the chainsaw and eventually other power tools which revealed more about the wood medium to me and possibly my audience.

The process of carving is very slow and evolutionary. Thus, in using the chainsaw to carve, a machine that in contrast does things really fast, I was forced to find new meanings, which I think are in sync with the rat race of our times, whereby we want to achieve things at a revolutionary pace. While it may not be particular works by Fela that have influenced my practice, the attitude of questioning or trying to experiment and finding new meanings in old ideas has been of great influence.

Some early sketches of your works are also on view in this exhibition. When it comes to your career, what are you sure of now that you wish you knew at that time?

I am now certain that there are always new or undiscovered ways of doing things. For example, in the case of chainsaws, their main use had been felling or sawing wood into logs. I thought that it could be used in a more expressive and meaningful way, and it didn’t fail, as it resonated with audiences who were previously used to seeing carved wooden artworks. They were now experiencing wooden artworks that have been crafted at a pace commensurate with our times.  Just like Fela, I believe that my career has proven that the audiences will always look to the artist to lead, to expand their experience with new presentations or renewals of old fare. When encountering objects, I think of what they can do and what has not been explored yet, and try to explore it. Freedom has a lot to do with it. As a young person, you live in a regulated society where you are instructed to do things a certain way, but when I became freer as an adult, I realized that so many things were possible and that the right thing for me to do, if I was to remain relevant, was to take advantage of freedom to renew the world.

Ivor Agyeman-Duah, the lead negotiator for Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, the monarch of the Asante Kingdom, described the historic occasion as “very touching.”

“The emotions that came out of the Asantehene when he first saw these objects weeks ago underlined the whole history of the 19th century,” Agyeman-Duah told ARTnews, speaking after the opening of an exhibition of the returned objects at the revamped Manhyia Palace Museum in Kumasi, the capital of the Ashanti Region. “It was very emotional negotiating for them, but it was even more so when we first listed the objects and identified the ones that will come here.”

Some of these objects come from two London museums, the British Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum, and one in Los Angeles, UCLA’s Fowler Museum. Agyeman-Duah, who is also the director of the Manhyia Palace Museum, said there are ongoing discussions with individuals, corporate organizations, and galleries in South Africa and the United Kingdom to return more regalia. He teased a meeting in England in about two months to start new negotiations.

Among the objects in the show are a 300-year-old sword of state (Mponponso), a gold peace pipe, sika mena (elephant tail whisk), royal stool ornaments, an Asante royal gold necklace, and ceremonial gold bangles. The objects have not been seen in Ghana in about 150 years.

Some of the returns will last forever while others are temporary. The Fowler Museum, for example, permanently gave back seven items in early February. The British Museum and the V&A, meanwhile, have only lent their objects for three years, with the possibility to extend the loan. (England’s National Heritage Act of 1963 prohibits British museums from permanently removing items from their collections.) Whether the objects are here to stay or not, the show is an important one because of the spiritual and ceremonial significance of the objects to the Asante Kingdom.

While repatriation has only recently received wider attention in the West, requests for the return of looted objects have been common in Ghana and other countries for the past century. The request for the return of the Asante regalia, for example, started in the 1920s during the reign of Prempeh I.

The regalia was looted by British soldiers from the Manhyia Palace of Asantehene Kofi Karikari in 1874 during the Sagrenti War, also referred to as the Third Anglo-Ashanti War. The war was fought between the Ashanti Empire and the British Empire, and during the conflict, Kumasi and the palace were burnt and plundered.

The opening of the show at the Manhyia Palace Museum on May 1 also marked the 150th anniversary of the British invasion of Kumasi; the 100th anniversary of the return of Nana Agyeman Prempeh I, an Asantehene who was sent into exile by the British to Seychelles; and the silver jubilee of His Royal Majesty, the Asantehene as the leader of the Asante Kingdom.

The Manhyia Palace Museum was initially the home of Asantehene Nana Agyeman Prempeh I following his return from decades of British-imposed exile in the Seychelles. The British built it as a replacement for the destruction of the earlier palace, but the king only moved in after the Ashanti Kingdom had fully paid for it. Prempeh lived in the palace from 1925 to 1931; the building later became a museum, opening to the public in 1995.

“We all accept that there are universal values of culture which attract people from all ethnic groups, nationalities, and beliefs,” Otumfuo Osei Tutu II said during a speech at the opening. “The reactions to these objects coming home are ample evidence of this.”

He called the returned regalia “the soul of the people of Asante,” adding that these objects “embody the soul of Asante. And I believe that during the period that they are being displayed everybody will make the effort to come and see it for themselves, to believe that these were created by our own artisans.”

The Asantehene said he has asked the Manhyia Palace Museum to design an initiative to support traditional art in Ghana in collaboration with the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology art school. Partners in this project include the British Museum, the V&A, and British Airways.

Starting in 2025, he continued, the initiative will award three prizes yearly; finalists’ works will be purchased locally for upcoming contemporary art museums, the goal being to keep these works within Ghana. When he travels to London in July to deliver a public lecture at the British Museum, he also plans to meet artists and goldsmiths in the Ghanaian diaspora in the country. 

Among those on hand to witness the opening of the exhibition were V&A director Tristram Hunt, British Museum trustee Chris Gosden, and Edmond Moukala, UNESCO’s Ghana head. The international cast of onlookers is a sign that something has shifted in the UK, a country whose museums have been largely resistant to returning art to nations abroad.

“I think it’s a thickening of the relationship between Ghana and the UK, which is longstanding and deep,” remarked Hunt to ARTnews. “I think what is important here is the strength of the partnership between museums in London, the British Museum, the Victoria & Albert Museum, and Manhyia Palace. And so, it’s more than the objects landing here. It’s about how we share knowledge, it’s about how we share conservation skills, how we share education, so it’s a richer partnership over time, hopefully.”

“I said, ‘Well, wait a minute. She’s coming with all these pressmen. Why me?’” he recounted, speaking to ARTnews from Accra, the capital of the West African country, in a recent interview. “They said, ‘Well, we have been watching you. We’ve selected you from within Ghana.’”

That they selected him at all speaks to the “important role” he played in capturing Ghana, particularly Accra, as the center of various global artistic and political changes, said Jesse Weaver Shipley, a professor of African and African American studies at Dartmouth College.

Shipley and Annan-Forson first met in 2017 through an introduction by the late former president of Ghana, Flight Lieutenant Jerry John Rawlings, who had spoken glowingly about the artist’s images taken in Ghana in the 1970s and 80s. After seeing Annan-Forson’s “incredible collection of images,” Shipley wondered why the artist and his work hadn’t received the deserved acclaim.

Now, Annan-Forson’s first retrospective has arrived Stateside following a run at the Sharjah Art Foundation in collaboration with the Africa Institute in 2022. Curated by Shipley, the show features images that testify to the social and political transformations that shaped Ghana during the late 20th century. Opened earlier this month, the show is now on view at the Howard University Museum in Washington, D.C., where it is being presented by the school’s Moorland-Spingarn Research Center.

“His brilliance as a photographer is to find the subtle, intimate moments in the midst of daily life,” said Shipley. “His work crosses genres. It tells a story about how images don’t just speak in a singular way, but images are always multiple. They’re always telling various stories at once.”

One of the show’s highlights is a 1980 image of a group of people celebrating Ramadan with two people riding horses in Central Accra, near a place called Glamour, which no longer exists as it did when the photo was taken. It informs Annan-Forson’s idea to capture life as it happens, knowing that “if you don’t document them, they are gone. And once they are gone, you probably can’t get it again,” he said.

Another exhibition highlight is an image from September 24, 1979, showing Flt. Lt. Jerry John Rawlings, having relinquished his post, looking on while Hilla Limann, the recently elected Democratic president, inaugurates Ghana’s Third Republic. On December 31, 1981, Rawlings overthrew Limann, coming into power for the second time as a military leader.

“[Annan-Forson captured] these offbeat, unusual moments that were prescient,” Shipley said. “[That were] sort of privy to the way that history was going to go, and he didn’t even know it. That’s what a great artist can do.”

Annan-Forson spoke about those images more humbly, saying, “I tried to capture moments, but not the regular thing that everybody does, like a handshake.”

As a former schoolmate at Achimota College, a friend, and a freelance professional photographer, Annan-Forson had access to Rawlings and his family during his tenure as a military leader and later as a democratically elected president. Annan-Forson was invited to family events, including dinner, and photographed the family at their house. But no matter where he was, Annan-Forson recalled, the soldiers around Rawlings insisted he is addressed as “Mr. Chairman.”

“When he was a military man, there was a fear of not getting it right because there is no way you are going to go back and tell the Chairman of the AFRC [Armed Forces Revolutionary Council], ‘Hey, this was a rehearsal, can we do it again?’ You have to make sure that you get it right,” recalled Annan-Forson. “But it was a lot more relaxed with him being a civilian.”

Some people called Annan-Forson “Jerry,” an abbreviated version of his first name, Gerald, and a name that Rawlings himself went by. As a result, Annan-Forson recalled that during assignments he was sometimes presented as a “decoy, so to speak,” of Rawlings at public events. Sometimes, this was funny to Annan-Forson. Other times, he found it scary. He was just there as a photographer, after all.

Those weren’t the only scary moments: during the  rule of military leader General Ignatius Kutu Acheampong, Annan-Forson was picked up and interrogated by the military police, who thought he was using a Bazooka because of the length of his lens. Annan-Forson learned that the government had been surveilling him in the late 1970s because he was assumed to be a CIA agent who had learned to speak Ghanaian languages. He told himself there was no guarantee of returning home whenever he went out to photograph during the tenure of military governments.

Annan-Forson was born in London in 1947 to a Ghanaian father and a British mother from Ireland. In 1976, he became a freelance professional photographer in London, relocating to Accra later that year. In Ghana, he noticed a lot of negative coverage about the country and its capital, and was determined to offer more positive images of them.

Unlike other photographers of his time, who were using camera boxes, Annan-Forson utilized 35mm film, carrying more than one camera at a time. This meant he could take a lot more shots compared to his colleagues.

He wanted to capture Ghana, especially its culture, its people, how market women dressed, and festivals held there. Having shot the local scene, he moved on to working on commission for international magazines, and then scored a Ministry of Information press card in 1977 that granted him access to areas that required press accreditation. The pictures he shot were seen abroad and in Ghana—some were even exhibited at the Ghana Arts Council in Accra in 1980.

In 1987, he became a founding member of the Ghana Union of Professional Photographers, which supports rising young photographers and builds networks and resources to raise the level of professional photography in the country. He has since retired from freelance photography and teaching, and now works from a studio at home in Accra.

Shipley, who is an artist and curator in addition to being an academic, has made a short documentary about Annan-Forson that is featured in “Routes of Rebellion” exhibition currently on view at the Nuku Studio Center for Photographic Research and Practice and Red Clay Studio, both in Tamale. Titled Burnt Images, the documentary explores the life and work of Annan-Forson and taking up photography as a way to grapple with racial prejudice. It also looks at some of the work in the US presentation.

Shipley’s practice as an artist, he says, including bringing Annan-Forson’s work to Sharjah, the United States, and his Tamale show, is in “some ways about creating dialogues [and] new forms of communication.”

Annan-Forson’s show at Howard is a far cry from when he started, at a time when it was hard to get his works printed. He said he never “thought about getting credit or, for that matter, getting cash” for his work, but he is happy where things have landed.

He continued that he hoped that his photographs will be “used for educational purposes or research.” With the Howard show, this is no longer a dream.

“I think there will be a deep interest in the images in this exhibit,” said Benjamin Talton, a history professor at Howard and director of the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center. “The students will learn a great deal from it.”

The 26-acre grounds include a sprawling building that recalls the European palaces that once hosted kings and queens. When construction was completed in 1905, the building symbolized colonial power and exclusion under the German empire. Today, however, the building is open to the public.

 “Transforming this narrative into something else and opening a new chapter was very important and symbolic for us,” Lawson told ARTnews. “People are proud to have such a place that is now ours.”

Its presentations would have been unthinkable to the Germans, the British, and the French who colonized Togo before it gained independence in 1960.

Right now, on the ground floor of the Palais de Lomé is a solo show for Kossi Aguessy, a designer born in Lomé, Togo, who was of Togolese, Beninese, and Brazilian descent. His works are found in the collections of museums across the globe, from the Museum of Modern Art to the Centre Pompidou, but not typically in the galleries of Togolese art spaces. Aguessy had expressed interest in showing his work in Africa before his death at 40 in 2017, and the show functions as a posthumous tribute. The response to the show has been positive.

Four other shows devoted to Togo’s history and Pan-Africanism went on view in 2019, when the Palais de Lomé opened, and have gained the general public’s attention.

For Lawson, the Palais de Lomé is more than an art center. She thought hard about how the palace, once a private residence for German, English, and French governors, could be embraced by Togo. In thinking about this, she ensured that Togolese firms were involved in its renovation as a “means to reclaim our inheritance, so to say this place is now ours.”

The mansion has gone through many transformations. Once Togo gained independence, it was the seat of the presidency of the Togolese Republic until 1970, then was later used as a residence by the country’s Prime Minister, Joseph Kokou Koffigoh. But amid a period of social and political unrest, including attacks by the country’s military and citizens in the early 1990s, the building fell into disrepair. It was uninhabited for about 20 years until the president of the Republic of Togo intervened in the early 2010s.

In 2014, President Faure Gnassingbe’s government appointed Lawson to restore the space, which is now home to exhibition spaces, a library, a bookstore, an auditorium, a botanical garden, and restaurants hosting workshops, talks, cultural and live events.

In addition, the center also commissions creatives on projects like “Togo Yeye” (“A New Togo”), a collective cofounded by Togolese photographer Delali Ayivi and artist and curator Malaika Nabillah that highlights Togolese creatives.

Even though the space has become a hotbed for events and tourism, the Palais de Lomé’s newest transformation was initially met with skepticism, Lawson said—but added that it is a “very satisfying moment to see that they were wrong in their projection.”

As well as partnering with external organizations on shows, the Palais de Lomé prioritizes working with Togolese ironworkers, potters, weavers, and carpenters who are brought on board to assist with events held in the space. The aim is to highlight their importance in a society where they are not always respected and to build on that sense of community.

One of the shows currently on view at the Palais de Lomé is the second edition of the traveling exhibition “Dig Where You Stand,” titled ‘From Coast to Coast: Seke.” Organized by the African Artists Foundation (AAF), it officially opened on September 15 and is on view until March 2024. The first edition was held at Ibrahim Mahama’s Savannah Centre for Contemporary Arts (SCCA) in Tamale in the Northern Region of Ghana. The current show is curated by Rosemary Esinam Damalie, with curatorial advice from Azu Nwagbogu, the founder and director of AAF, who also curated the previous edition.

The exhibition connects Togo to other Ewe-speaking countries, building on the call for African solidarity espoused by Ghana’s first president and Prime Minister, Kwame Nkrumah.

“One of the reasons communities in Africa were deeply colonized was because of the language barrier between colonialists and the indigenous people,” Damalie told ARTnews.

“I thought that it was very interesting that one of the ways we could mediate issues of colonialism and the effects it has had in our communities would be that we communicate with one another through local languages.” (Ghana is an English-speaking nation bordered by Togo and Benin, two countries that both use French as their national language. All three countries are united by their Ewe-speaking communities.)

On display are over 160 works spanning mediums including painting, photography, video, sculptures, and installation from the likes of Zanele Muholi, Victor Ehikhamenor, Sika Akpalo, Joana Choumali, Dodju Efoui, Kongo Astronauts, Tessi Kodjovi, Kwami DaCosta, and Renzo Martens and the Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise (CATPC).

The works on view focus on the effects of colonialism on the African continent and explore issues including decolonization, migration, repatriation, restitution, and the power of the arts to positively impact communities on the continent and its diaspora.

While the Palais de Lomé is the main exhibition space, the organizers have also brought the offerings beyond its walls, hosting mobile photo exhibitions, film screenings, and workshops in local communities. The captions and wall texts are in French, English, and Ewe, a local language widely spoken in Togo.

Including the local language makes “people feel at home when they are in the space. It’s kind of restoration within the arts community where all you see is that people are speaking English or just French,” explained Damalie.  

Moreover, the “Dig Where You Stand” concept works for the continent instead of adopting the Western model of exhibitions.

“In the long term, it’d become something like an African community project [that is intentional about] using indigenous materials and including communities in the process while it is moving around the continent,” said Damalie of the show.  

Like Palais de Lomé, the LagosPhoto festival tells Africa’s story on its terms.

For the first time, the festival, also organized by the AAF and now in its 14th edition, is taking place not just in the Nigerian city but also in Cotonou, Ouidah, and Porto-Novo in Benin. Co-curated by Nwagbogu and Peggy Sue Amison, the theme of the event is “Ground State – Fellowship Within The Uncanny.” It explores issues including restitution and restoration.

Nwagbogu shared that, as part of his research as a curator for Benin’s inaugural participation in the Venice Biennale in 2024, he traveled around the country, inspiring the idea of having Benin host the festival.

“What we had done in Lagos,” he said in a recent interview with ARTnews, referring to creating a platform that nurtures and provides career opportunities, including with international publications for local photographers. “We want to do in Benin, so it’s not a gimmick. It’s not a one-off.”

The line-up for the festival, which opened in October and runs through December 31, includes exhibitions, workshops, screenings, and large-scale outdoor installations. It features works by photographers from Africa and the rest of the world, such as Zanele Muholi, Laeila Adjovi, Louis Oke-Agbo, and Carlon Idun.

Nwagbogu added that photography is “the definite medium of our time” for enabling the visibility of contemporary art and artists in Africa and its diaspora to participate actively in global conversations.

Sixteen years after the founding of the African Artists Foundation, he is confident that he and his team “want to do more,” expanding on the significant role the organization has played in building and supporting art communities in Nigeria, Africa, and globally through various initiatives like Dig Where You Stand exhibition and LagosPhoto Festival.

In October, the Ethiopian-born, US-based painter set a new record for an artist born in Africa when an untitled work from 2021 sold for $9.32 million at Sotheby’s Hong Kong. It beat the previous record, set by South African artist Marlene Dumas’s The Visitor (1995) in 2008, when it sold for $6.33 million at Sotheby’s London. Then, in November, Mehretu broke her record with a new one: her 2008 work Walkers With the Dawn and the Morning (2008) sold for $10.7 million at Sotheby’s New York.  

Mehretu’s records were a sign that the international market for African art was hot this year. That was also evident in October at Sotheby’s London when British-Ghanaian painter Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s auction record was reset by her painting Six Birds in the Bush (2015), which sold for $3.6 million—more than $1 million above its estimate.

The spotlight builds on the momentum gained in 2022. A 2023 report by the insurance company Hiscox revealed that Ivory Coast–born Abdoulaye “Aboudia” Diarrassouba was the top-selling artist in 2022, with 75 works sold at auction, beating out Damien Hirst. And an Artprice report issued in March stated that “contemporary African art has become a staple element of the global art market,” with top auction houses working to meet the demand. Hiscox estimated that $63 million was spent on works by artists born in Africa in 2022, compared to $47 million the previous year.

“Collectors continue to have interest because they have [finally] seen that artists from Africa and the diaspora have longevity and are also worth investing in,” said Adora Mba, an adviser specializing in contemporary African art.

This year, African art and artists were more prominent at museums, galleries, fairs, exhibitions and art spaces, especially on the international stage.

In the year’s first quarter, Ghanaian artists Amoako Boafo and Gideon Appah made their New York and London solo debuts at the mega-galleries Gagosian and Pace, respectively. Accra and London-based Gallery 1957 debuted at Frieze Seoul in September, with works on hand by Boafo, Appah, Kwesi Botchway, Ivorian photographer Joana Choumali, Kenyan painter Kaloki Nyamai, and Ethiopian painter Tegene Kunbi. Nigerian-American artist Victor Ekpuk made his Middle East solo debut at Efie Gallery in Dubai that same month. Following the commissioning of his installation in the Dubai Design District, he became the first African artist to display a public sculpture in the city. And in October, El Anatsui’s monumental Hyundai Turbine Hall commission opened at Tate Modern in London, where it remains on view through mid-April.

Market figures like Mba have sought to expand gallery offerings for African art. In November, she curated the exhibition “The Sound of Our Souls” at UTA Artist Space LA, featuring 15 emerging African artists who showed their work for the first time in Los Angeles.

“I wanted to show a variety of artwork and practice as well,” Mba said in a talk with Emmy-nominated Nigerian-American actress Yvonne Orji ahead of the exhibition opening. Mba also said she wanted to “show different aspects of the continent, which is why I didn’t want to just show Ghanaian artists or just Nigerian or South African. I really wanted to… almost represent the whole continent.” 

The surge in demand for art from Africa has resulted in more physical spaces being opened on the continent and in the West. 

The Lagos- and London-based Tiwani Contemporary announced a “milestone expansion” with a new gallery space at Mayfair in London this year. That space was officially opened in October, continuing the gallery’s “primary mission to represent artists from Africa and its global diaspora.”

In late 2023, South African gallery Goodman opened a new space in New York to raise “awareness of artists who are not represented in the US and platform historical master works by pioneers of 20th Century African art,” according to founder Liza Essers. Around the same time, Cape Town–based Southern Guild announced its expansion to Los Angeles in 2024.

“The partnerships are important with spaces in the West because they provide a much-needed bridge to the African continent,” Mba, founder and director of Accra-based ADA\ Contemporary art gallery, told ARTnews. “It allows collectors to view and appreciate art from countries outside [where] they reside and opens up their curiosity to the variety of art forms being practiced that they perhaps never saw or knew.”

In the last quarter of this year, two new galleries were launched in Côte d’Ivoire and Cameroon, adding to the growing number of spaces nurturing art scenes on the continent.

An eponymous gallery from African art specialist and collector Farah Fakhri opened in the Ivorian city of Abidjan in late 2023 to support and showcase emerging and established artists from Africa and its diaspora. In early September, Bwo Art Gallery was launched in Douala, Cameroon.

The goal of Bwo is to bridge “the artistic gap between African artists in Africa and its diaspora, those in Cameroon and the broader Central Africa region with the rest of the world,” cofounder Noelle Mukete-Elhalaby told ARTnews in a recent interview. “Our distinctive approach resonates well with Cameroonians [and] has brought enthusiasm within the local art scene. Our fellow Cameroonians are not only embracing the art but are also creating and joining discussions that contribute to our cultural heritage.”

“I think that there’s a window here that we kind of seized with everything that is happening in the art market,” Brice Yonkeu, the gallery’s other cofounder said, adding that Bwo brings “more diversity or perspective” to the conversations about contemporary art from the African continent, which he estimates are largely centered around English-speaking countries.

Yonkeu believes spaces like Bwo will help cultivate a new crop of local collectors: “A place like Cameroon is complex but also an interesting country,” he said. “We have so many entrepreneurs and people who have the possibility to collect, but because historically we’ve been deprived of cultural institutions and art galleries, some of them never really had the opportunity to build up that skill of appreciating art or developing that taste of appreciating art.”

Ultimately, Mukete-Elhalaby thinks that all of the moments this year show “support and an increase in recognition for African art” while noting that it provides opportunities for stakeholders, including artists, gallerists and collectors, to continue growing the continent’s art market.

“Despite what some people might have said—that it’s a trend and it will die down at some point—I think there’s a confirmation that there’s definitely strong interest,” Yonkeu added.

Speaking by phone from Lagos, Ehikhamenor, who also spends time in the United States, said he was fascinated by the idea. “I have so much memory” in Peckham, he explained. “It was almost like I was still living in Nigeria but in a different environment because of the experience I have there.”

Other artists voice a similar sentiment with their works in the exhibition “Lagos, Peckham, Repeat: Pilgrimage to the Lakes,” now on view at the South London Gallery. The exhibition is a fitting tribute to its host neighborhood, which is sometimes called “Little Lagos” because it is home to one of the largest Nigerian communities in the United Kingdom.

The show, which runs through October 29, features 13 Nigerian and Nigerian-British artists, including Yinka Shonibare, Ndidi Dike, Seyi Adelekun, Adeyemi Michael, Karl Ohiri, Temitayo Shonibare, Emeka Ogboh, and Onyeka Igwe. Their works are influenced by their personal lives and journeys, and span mediums such as sculpture, installation, photography, and film.

Among the exhibition’s most notable works is a newly commissioned one from Ehikhamenor, Cathedral of the Mind (2023), that is made out of rosary beads, brass, thread, and rhinestones on lace fabric and wood. The work is from his 2017 series “Rosaries,” and touches on themes related to history, spirituality, and religion. It delves into practices associated with travels abroad and speaks to the duality of Western religion and Nigerian spirituality.

Peckham was “the place that I became the Christian that I am today because I was born and raised a Catholic,” the artist said.

Ehikhamenor said he had the “blues” when he first arrived in Peckham. He didn’t have legal papers or stable employment, and he wasn’t doing any creative work. With little else going on, he reluctantly attended the latter part of a one-week Christian event through the invitation of a friend. It became a turning point in his life.

“My memory of seeing a Christian pastor to pray with me is very similar to my grandmother going to a traditional healer or a native doctor,” he explained. “You look at that duality. That’s what I usually bring to my work.”

In October 2022, South London Gallery reached out to artist and curator Folakunle Oshun, stating that they’ve always considered putting together a show to reflect on their host community, Peckham, in South London.

The initial conversations centered around migration, both on a larger scale and on a scale specific to Lagos and Peckham. Oshun, who is based between Lagos and Paris, began visiting London to familiarize himself with the city, as someone not born or raised in the United Kingdom. Specifically, he was interested in the irony of citizens of a newly independent country going to the base of their former colonizers. (Britain colonized Nigeria in the early 1860s; Nigeria gained independence in 1960.)

“The vision started on that point, and then [I was] looking for artists that could give different perspectives, different personal stories, on these scenarios and the reasons that necessitate that migration,” said Oshun, the founder and director of the Lagos Biennial.

Oshun said he was “also thinking about the concept of double consciousness postulated by W.E.B. Du Bois and how you could be in one place but your mind is in another, and that embodiment of place, space and home. Like a migrant travelling from one place to another, pitching their tent and staging certain totems or props that are characteristic of home.”

When it came to deciding who should be in the show, Oshun knew he didn’t only want UK artists with Nigerian heritage—he was searching for artists still based in Nigeria, as well as ones who had left the country on journeys of various kinds. He also wanted to account for multiple generations: people whose parents migrated to the UK in the 1960s and ’70s in search of educational opportunities and a more stable economy, people who left because of military coups, younger artists born in diaspora. And then there were also artists he had always wanted to work with.

Lagos and Peckham’s similarities don’t end with their people. Both have at various points been bounded by bodies of water. Lagos was formerly known as Èkó; its name was changed by the Portuguese to its current one, meaning Lakes, after a coastal city in Portugal. Peckham, meanwhile, once had its own lakes. Oshun made the connection during his research process, which involved reading Robert Hewison’s 2022 book Passport to Peckham: Culture and Creativity in a London Village at the behest of Margot Heller, director of South London Gallery.

Some of the artists in the show likewise animate history with their work. Onyeka Igwe, whose work was shown at the Lagos Biennial by Oshun, is exhibiting her 2020 film No Archive Can Restore You, which lays bare colonial residue that can still be found today around Lagos. She shot the film in an empty building that once belonged to the Nigerian Film Unit, a production company which was an arm of Britain’s then-colonial government.

According to the London-based filmmaker, working on films like the one on view is “all about a relationship with Nigeria, a relationship with family and cultural heritage. What has been great about thinking through those things as an artist is it’s allowed me to have my own relationship with Nigeria.”

In 2018, she started traveling to Nigeria by herself, establishing a relationship with the country through her interests and curiosity, to research and work on her films. Her hands-on investment in Nigerian culture marked a departure from the mediated experience of the country she had as a child and growing up.

Other artists reach back even further, underscoring how the history of colonialism in Lagos is also a part of British history. Ehikhamenor, for example, focuses his attention on the repatriation of artifacts that were looted or stolen by colonizers.

In the West, Ehikhamenor said, people “don’t tend to create the link between our yesterday and our today. You have all these museums that have a lot of African works that were either stolen or looted during colonialism, but then you move to another section of the museum; there is nothing that speaks about African modernism.

“You can’t find an Ablade Glover. You can’t find a Ben Enwonwu,” he added, referring to two painters—the former from Ghana, the latter from Nigeria—who revolutionized their medium during the 20th century.

By reaching into the past to show its connection to the present, shows like “Lagos, Peckham, Repeat” can help write new histories—and retrieve forgotten ones.

“More exhibitions like this should happen,” Oshun said. “Not just to show that there are political or ethnographic dimension for Africans or Lagosians or Nigerians, but also to [assert] one’s self or place in society.”

“Lagos, Peckham, Repeat: Pilgrimage to the Lakes” is on view at the South London Gallery until October 29.

This past March, the Ghanaian artist had his New York solo debut with the mega-gallery Gagosian. Boafo, who is known for finger-dipped paintings depicting himself and Black people from Africa and its diaspora, said he’d received praise for the show, but he came out of the experience feeling as though something was missing.

“I was happy with the [reception] and how it turned out, but not having the family or people that I work with to enjoy the paintings as well—for me, it wasn’t enough,” Boafo said in an interview with ARTnews, speaking from Vienna. He wanted to find a way for “family to be able to be part of the conversation.”

His solution was to bring some of the pieces from the show this May back home to Accra. The show, which closed earlier this month, featured these works, as well as some new ones, at dot.ateliers, the art space he founded in 2022 that also hosts residencies and maintains an art library and studios.

“It’s important that the people that I make the painting for or with should have access to the painting,” Boafo said. “And also, for them to be part of the experience.”

Held in collaboration with Gagosian, Boafo’s dot.ateliers show is being billed as the first time that a Western commercial gallery has hosted an exhibition with an African artist on the continent.

Andrew Fabricant, chief operating officer of Gagosian, said that the Accra exhibition was borne out of Boafo informing the gallery of his decision not to sell one of the paintings in the New York show—with the intent to show it at an upcoming exhibition at his foundation in Ghana. They both thought it’d be a great idea to create some new works in addition to the particular painting, with Gagosian sponsoring the show alongside Boafo’s foundation.

“Too often, it’s been the case for almost all artists coming out of Africa recently. They get taken out of Africa and they get shown in the West, but there’s never any reciprocity, so we thought it was a great idea,” Fabricant remarked. “There was a huge audience in Accra, of course, so it was an idea that came about very easily, and it’s been very, very successful.” (At the moment, Boafo isn’t formally represented by Gagosian, but Fabricant shared that they are planning another show.)

Boafo’s quest to show his work in Ghana attests to his dedication to his home country, which tends to get lost in discussions of his art, the prices for it, and his celebrity. Rather than coasting by on fame, Boafo is using his star power to support Ghana’s art scene.

dot.ateliers is providing resources and access to opportunities for up-and-coming and emerging artists like Crystal Yayra Anthony, Zandile Tshabalala, and Dzidefo Amegatsey through its residency program. Yet even beyond that space, Boafo is leveraging his status to help other Ghanaian artists, like his friend Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe, whose representation with Roberts Projects was made possible in part because Boafo encouraged him to spend some time in Los Angeles, away from his Portland, Oregon, base, so he could connect with more art world stakeholders.

“My feeling is, from the first time I met Amoako, he’s the kind of person that shares his success. Meaning if he’s successful, more people around him become more successful,” said Bennett Roberts, cofounder of Roberts Projects, which has represented Boafo since 2018. “This is a very unique character trait. I learned from the very beginning that he is a very particular person who does not want everything for himself.”

A Rise Abroad

Before he became a superstar artist, Boafo was a ball boy at the Accra Lawn Tennis Club, then a tennis player. Born in 1984 in the Ghanaian capital, he fostered his interest in art mainly on his own.

Boafo, who lost his father at a young age, taught himself how to paint at home while his mother worked as a cook. He loved drawing and painting, partaking in competitions to sharpen his skills, even though the possibility of career success in the field was low—something that some of Boafo’s peers have spoken of, referring to the lack of a commercial art infrastructure in Ghana.

He was ultimately offered a scholarship by a man his mother worked for, leading to his studies at the Ghanatta College of Art and Design. In a sign of what was to come, he won Best Abstract Painter of the Year in 2007 and Best Portrait Painter of the Year in 2008, his final year at the school.

In 2014, he relocated to Vienna with the Austrian artist Susanda Mesquita, whom he met in Accra and whom he later married. (They are no longer together.) The year before, they cofounded WE DEY, a platform for and by artists of color and under-represented communities.

Boafo went on to pursue an MFA degree at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Attempts to further his practice in the country were met with roadblocks, partly because of his race. Those experiences led him to create “Body Politics,” a series largely credited with being his first mature grouping of works. One painting in that series shows the artist holding the book The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon’s 1961 treatise about the dehumanization effects of colonialism on individuals and nations. Because of “Body Politics,” Boafo was discovered on Instagram by American painter Kehinde Wiley, who bought some of his works and put forward Boafo’s name to some of the galleries representing him, including Roberts Projects.

Roberts and his team there reached out to Boafo, later organizing his first exhibition in the United States, “I See Me,” in 2019.

Later that year, Boafo was named the first artist-in-residence at the Rubell family’s newly reopened private museum in Miami. That residency program is closely watched because it often jumpstarts the careers of young artists—other past participants have included Sonia Gomes and Cy Gavin—and the Rubells proved prescient once more with Boafo.

But widespread success did not come instantly. In a 2020 Artsy interview, Boafo said, “If I get museum placement and shows, I am guaranteed longevity.” He made that remark in May of that year. Seven months later, in December, one of his paintings sold at auction for more than $1 million. The year after, his art appeared on Dior’s clothes, and was even sent into space by Jeff Bezos.

Boafo’s success means that at any given time, he is travelling or engaging with people around the world, but he always has the continent in his sight and thought.

“I think everything that I will do in the West, I will try my possible best in my small way to bring it back home,” he said.

‘It’s All About Sharing’

Boafo’s first museum survey, curated by ARTNOIR cofounder Larry Ossei-Mensah, opened at the Museum of African Diaspora in San Francisco in 2021, two years after they first began discussing it. The exhibition, which features works made starting in 2016 and also formerly appeared at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, is still traveling; it is now on view at the Seattle Art Museum; after that institution, it will head to the Denver Art Museum. According to Ossei-Mensah, the point of the show—titled “Soul of Black Folks,” after a W. E. B. Du Bois book—was to offer a context for Boafo’s work that went beyond the market.

Boafo’s work “was assessing Black lives through his lens, whether it was people he met during his time in Vienna, whether it’s people in Ghana—people that he admired,” said Ossei-Mensah, who first met Boafo in the late 2010s. “So I was trying to use this exhibition as a platform to kind of understand: Why has he been able to cut through all the fads, all the noise? And he’s been able to create a sustainable practice that’s inspiring a new generation.”

Part of Ossei-Mensah’s purpose was to show how Boafo has centered the narratives, stories, and bodies of Black people. Bennett Roberts, the Roberts Projects cofounder, said that Boafo’s portraiture was likely to stand the test of time.

“I think [Boafo] is making paintings that would hold up next to the most important paintings in history. That’s just my opinion—I am sure people will think that I’m foolish for saying that, but I believe that with all my heart,” Roberts said. “The reason is because he is able to capture a portrait of someone that is the essence of that person, not necessarily that person.”

Boafo’s focus on people has extended beyond his art. He’s provided financial support to organizations such as Black Girls Glow, an Accra-based feminist nonprofit that supports women artists. The poet Poetra Asantewa, the organization’s founder, noted that Boafo’s donation “made a huge difference,” allowing it to expand a residency program beyond just Accra-based artists. “It meant that there were people from different backgrounds even within Ghana who were also present,” she said.

The artist himself seems focused on giving back. “That’s how I want people to remember me,” he said. 

His next goal is to get his traveling survey to come to Africa. “It’s always important to have my paintings be in spaces where more people can experience them,” Boafo stated, adding, “Obviously, I will want that show to end somewhere on the [African] continent, which I’m still thinking about. I haven’t found the space yet. For me, it’s all about sharing.”

Correction, 7/18/23, 10:10 a.m.: A previous version of this article misstated where Boafo is based. He is based in Accra, not Vienna, where he formerly lived.

“[The sculpture] is, in a way, a representation of how I imagine an ideal city,” Adjaye told ARTnews “a city that is in symbiosis with the Earth, acknowledging it and honoring it in a very deep way, but also absolutely transforming it and creating new features.”

The artwork is located at The Griot Museum of Black History in St. Louis, Missouri, and was commissioned by curator Allison Glenn for the 2023 Counterpublic triennial.

It marks a new career milestone for one of the world’s most sought after architects, who is known for designing some of the most famous structures globally, including the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture and the first Ghana Pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale.  

ARTnews spoke with Adjaye and Glenn about the sculpture and how Counterpublic fosters change by investing in communities. The conversation has been condensed.

Can you speak about the discussions leading to you creating your first permanent public sculpture?

David Adjaye: The “Asaase” earth sculpture series was really born out of my own meditations and reflections after returning to my motherland, Ghana, around the origins of black architecture and its relationship to the earth. It’s about lunging backward into collective memory to explore how fragments of chambers and of buildings constructed from the earth were the backdrop of everyday life and the gatherings of Black people. 

I was compelled by the idea of a permanent sculpture at The Griot as it proposes a new type of activation as a social sculpture that builds on and contributes to the cultural infrastructure established by the museum. I was deeply moved by The Griot’s institutional journey, resilience, and longevity, which the work aims to acknowledge, honor, and amplify.

The sculpture is said to be borne from your ongoing reflections on the origins of Black architecture. Can you explain that and how it influenced this work?

Adjaye: In my work I am continually searching for spaces that are either built by the Black community or inhabited by the Black community as spaces of ownership that become part of the hybridized catalog of a body of knowledge. Establishing this body of knowledge of spatial Black experience is so vital because the history of colonization was about the erasure of their spaces—erasing the sense of continuity of the community to the Earth. 

The Griot’s DNA is resisting that erasure and my hope is that Asaase III is a reminder of that by inviting you to reflect on the environment you’re in. You can engage with the community and engage with this place. 

You drew inspiration from the architecture in your father’s village and the practice of sourcing materials directly from a site for this project. How did you find applying that in a new environment?

Adjaye: As with any work, each new site proposes its own opportunities and challenges. We went through a highly technical process of excavation to determine the ideal hybrid mixture of the different earths of St. Louis and wider Missouri, from its topsoil to its limestone to the red earth brick that encapsulates some of the old buildings. 

What’s the thinking behind referencing historical works of West African architecture— such as the Tiebele royal complex in Burkina Faso and the walled city of Agadez in Niger—in this work?

The “Asaase” series is, in part, about looking back and referencing the history of materials, lost knowledge systems, and forms that we see across the African continent. I started with the idea of conical forms, which are basically the first acts in an earth terrain, in a forest terrain, or in a savannah terrain. 

The curved form is the most structural form to create stability and resistance. It’s the form humans use as their first way of creating enclosures between inside and outside. For this sculpture, I bisected conical forms to present them, as it were, to an audience that wants to engage with it spatially. 

It’s not so much about mimicry or caricature of these ancient forms but rather their essence, their elemental DNA. It’s the Earth calling you to honor who you are and your relationship to other people, to history, and to the future.

Considering your several career milestones, how significant is designing your first permanent public sculpture?

Adjaye: It’s very significant. In terms of personal meaning, I have approached it as a kind of meditation and reflection on the idea of deep time—planetary and galaxy time that is beyond the human timeline. Part of the ambition for this work is for it to have an epic duration wherein we might not be around to see its entire lifespan. It’s an incredible privilege and luxury to think about how this work can be a reminder of that, of how the Earth is evolving and revolving around the galaxy independent of our lifestyle and inhabitation. Artifice has taken over our sense of reverence for the Earth which concerns me. 

Asaase III is, in a way, a representation of how I imagine an ideal city—a city that is in symbiosis with the Earth, acknowledging it and honoring it in a very deep way, but also absolutely transforming it and creating new features. 

Glenn, can you speak on the decision to commission David Adjaye for this work?

Allison Glenn: When I was invited to think through working in the St. Louis Place neighborhood, and possible collaborations with The Griot, it was important to first understand the landscape and history of the neighborhood and museum. St. Louis Avenue used to be known as “Millionaire’s Row”, mainly due to the St. Louis red-brick mansions that were built to house the city’s wealthy merchants. The Griot is situated about 1 mile from the former site of Pruitt-Igoe, a Minoru Yamasaki designed mid-twentieth century housing development that was built from 1951-1955, and demolished just twenty years later, from 1972-1976.

Across the street from the Griot is the future site of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency’s (NGA) main campus, on land taken by eminent domain. Many of the vast urban prairies that make up a large majority of the neighborhood immediately surrounding The Griot are now owned by private developers, in anticipation of the future capital that the NGA will bring to the neighborhood. With all this speculation at play, I wondered, who is thinking about the present moment and the present occupants of this neighborhood?

About 25 years ago, when its founder Lois Conley purchased the building that houses the Griot, she also purchased adjacent lots, with the vision of one day developing a sculpture garden. Lois’s vision for the Griot is “to be the premier resource for Black history and culture in the Midwest”, so I leaned into both of those things.

I was aware that [Adjaye] was exploring a new form of sculpture, which included using materials from the region and landscape that it was created within, that was informed by African architectural histories, including the Tiébélé Royal Complex in Burkina Faso and the Walled City of Agadez in Niger. While at The Griot, I began to pick up on a bit of symbolism that aligned with David’s references, including the Sankofa logo.

Commissioning a work of this scale at the Griot is an attempt to anchor this institution not only to the community that it serves, but also to larger histories and legacies that are at the core of its mission, and other Black history museums in the United States that David has built, including the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the new Studio Museum in Harlem.

Asaase III will be donated to the Griot Museum of Black History and pilot a two-year full-time fellowship to maintain, contextualize, and conserve the work. What makes Asaase III the right foundation to start the pilot? 

Glenn: Placing a work within a community requires care, context, and conservation, and proposing a 2-year fellowship pilot as a collaboration between Counterpublic, The Griot, and St. Louis Art Museum provides an opportunity for an emerging cultural producer to receive mentorship and hands on experience in conservation, with the hope that this pilot develops into a pipeline for conservators, programmers, and art handlers of color to enter the field. 

The deep investment in the community and this sculpture requires that it has a staff person dedicated to thinking through the way it is received in the neighborhood, and how the sculpture can be deployed with David’s vision.

The pilot seeks to create a pipeline for conservators of color to enter the field. How important is that, and in what ways would it shape the industry?

Glenn: In my years of working within biennial models and museums, it’s been rare to see this corner of the field (art handlers and conservators) be populated by people of diverse backgrounds. The opportunity to enact real change starts with affording opportunities that will train and develop the next field leaders, in every area and discipline, which is one of the most important steps towards enacting whole, systemic change within our arts organizations.

Ogunji created her new works using thread, graphite, and ink on tracing paper, the majority of them in Paris, where the Lagos-based artist is doing a residency. The program has afforded her the opportunity to learn, explore, and experiment, and to research textiles, couture, lace, and embroidery, all of which have informed her newest body of work dealing with ancestral stories and the nature of memory.

Ogunji’s work has previously been shown at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Palais de Tokyo, and the Brooklyn Museum. She has participated in the Biennale of Sydney, the Stellenbosch Triennale, the Bienal de São Paulo, and the Kochi-Muziris Biennale.

ARTnews spoke to Ogunji ahead of the ‘Cake’ opening at the Fridman Gallery on May 12 about her practice and her New York solo debut.

ARTnews: Can you talk about where you created this body of work and how that has affected the drawings?

Wura-Natasha Ogunji: I have been in residency at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris since November of last year. Almost all the work in the exhibition was created there. Being in Paris has shifted my process in many ways. Coming from Lagos, [the most populous city] in Nigeria, a tropical country, and arriving in winter was amazing. In a sense, the cold allowed me to hibernate, to go into the drawing cave. I spent a lot of time drawing, sewing, and marking with ink after several years of thinking I would leave my drawing practice behind.

Going to museums, performances, the theater was, of course, deeply inspiring, but I found myself most moved by the history of textiles and haute couture in France. I took a few classes with Rebecca Devaney, who founded Textile Tours of Paris, which allowed me to dive deeply into the history, materials, and process. And lace, so many incredible examples of lacemaking. 

I also learned how to do free machine embroidery, which allows for drawing with a sewing machine. Though my drawings are all hand-stitched, I love the feel of stitches made on the sewing machine, those single lines. Some of those experiments (and mistakes) appear in this exhibition.   

How did your background in photography and film help in putting together this body of work?

I draw on tracing paper, the kind architects use for preliminary sketches and renderings. The paper has always felt filmic to me in its translucency. It even moves a bit like film in my hands; it has a specific curve and structure. 

And the color—canary or buff—gives it a presence even before I begin drawing, so the space of the paper is important. Its language, a character, place. I often think of it as water—sea or river, perhaps. The images repeat from drawing to drawing, and there is a lot of motion through the frame. It feels quite similar to creating a photograph.

You mentioned in a previous interview that new work starts with an image, a line of text, or a title that comes to you, and then you follow that through and see how it goes. Was it the same with this latest body of work?

Yes, for sure. There are repeating images including runners, and characters from films (Djibril Diop Mambéty’s Touki Bouki, for example), as well as composite figures. I’m also fascinated with how a line of text becomes the architecture of a drawing. A phrase may come to me which then determines the shape of the drawing. It’s not necessarily a literal structure, more vibrational or sensorial, but also specific to the language of the phrase. For example, the drawing A Normal Day of Love and Brutality.

What’s the story behind the title of this exhibition, “Cake?”

The title came from a drawing. There’s figure running and another figure emerging from their body. They’re holding something that reminds me of cake.

There’s a drawing by artist Youmna Chlala that I’ve been enamored of for years. It’s titled This is a cake, not a city. I love the interplay between the literal cake and the map of a city, which I believe is Beirut. I think about the limits of knowledge, especially when it comes to a specific place, a country, or a people, for example. There is cake, and there is deep knowledge. Deep knowledge can’t be described in a few sentences or paragraphs, or even in an artist statement. I can pretend to tell you what the drawing is about, but what’s even more important is your own experience and connection.

In what ways would you say your practice has evolved over the years?

It’s definitely a spiral—exploration and expansion of new images and materials, and a constant return to earlier forms of making. Sometimes I feel that I’m making the same drawing over and over again.

What can you share about the site-specific thread installation?

I wanted to make a drawing you could enter or lines that suggest a space, something encompassing. I’m more and more interested in the thread itself, in how much I can say or evoke with these simple lines in space.

Do you find it liberating to be able to create the work you want, not necessarily what the market supposedly wants?

Always. But isn’t this the nature of being an artist? Art is infinite; the market comes and goes.

Can you talk about the early video works to be presented in the gallery and the decision to include them in this exhibition?

The videos are an elemental part of my creative practice. They speak about my ongoing interests in land and the body, what we carry, the marks we leave, presence and liminality, crossings, and arrival. I like how they speak with this body of drawings.

Situated right behind Zakhem’s desk, the work is symbolic of his role in the growing global interest in Ghana’s artists and art scene—which in recent years has become a hotspot for international collectors and has also seen the launch of new galleries and artist-led spaces.

Clottey’s show “My Mother’s Wardrobe” was the first exhibition held at the art space that Zakhem founded, Gallery 1957, when it was officially opened on March 6, 2016, the 59th anniversary of the day that Ghana gained independence. Clottey is best known for stitching together pieces of yellow cans used for carrying water to create installations he calls “Afrogallonism.”

Zakhem, the gallery’s founder, has previously said that 1957’s “founding ethos is its commitment to supporting and promoting emerging and established artists across West Africa and the diaspora.”  

Three weeks after he welcomed ARTnews to his office, Zakhem hosted an artist talk at the Pearl Room of the Kempinski Hotel Gold Coast City Accra, the five-star hotel he built that houses some of his collection. He was there to speak with members of Artemartis, a Ghana-based art collective and agency, before the opening reception of their latest exhibition. Artemartis, despite being composed of nine Ghanaian artists, had not exhibited together in the country until “When The Birds Fly Home,” their show that opened in early February at Gallery 1957.

“I am passionate about what I do with the gallery,” Zakhem told ARTnews. “I am passionate about the artists that I represent. I am extremely passionate about Ghana’s cultural ecosystem and the part that it is playing in this revival of contemporary African arts.” 

Touria El Glaoui, the founder of the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, credited Zakhem with being “very generous in building up his network and his community.”

Zakhem never planned to own a gallery and curate art. Born in 1972 in Beirut, he grew up in a house with paintings on its walls, but he didn’t take trips to museums or art fairs. Zakhem recalled he had no “inclination” to be an artist or to be involved in the art industry in any shape or form.

He trained as a civil engineer and later came to Ghana “to start a business of constructing—believe it or not—large oil and gas storage facilities, tanks and pipelines.”

During travels throughout the continent, he started buying art “as any tourist probably did,” for about 20 or 30 dollars a pop. He recalled purchasing works by “largely obscure painters,” and he has continued that practice in the years since. According to Zakhem, the two well-known Senegalese painters whose work he owns are Amadou M’Baye and Soly Cissé.

The works he bought ended up being hung in his house, offices, and restaurants in Senegal, and he later gave some out as gifts to people who visited him. The thought of others appreciating his love for the arts planted a seed in his mind to keep at it.

Although he had been buying art for years—“West African art only, nothing else, nothing more,” he said—it wasn’t until he moved to Ghana in 2003 that he really began his collecting journey. He proudly showed off one of the first paintings he bought by the late Krotei Tetteh, whose work he has around the Kempinski hotel and whom Zakhem later discovered was a relative of Clottey.

A visit to the studio of Tetteh changed everything for Zakhem. Tetteh “kind of took me under his wings a little bit [and] showed me what he was doing,” he recalled. Zakhem also met other artists like Kofi Agorsor, Owusu-Ankomah, and Ablade Glover, who became a mentor and whose work he later bought.

For a six-year period, he placed the 50-plus paintings he amassed in his offices, his restaurants, and wherever else he could put them. At the time, he mainly bought abstract modernism works.

And then “something magical happened,” as Zakhem put it. Around 2013, he met with artists including Clottey, Ibrahim Mahama, and the “whole KNUST [Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology] establishment.”

“What these artists were doing was something I had never envisaged,” Zakhem recalled. They were producing “work made out of plastic, work made out of jute sacks, work that was not painted.”

When Zakhem visited Clottey’s studio in Labadi, a suburb of Accra, in 2015, he recalled that it jolted him into his trajectory.

Zakhem set out on a plan to start a gallery to support Ghanaian artists, ensuring they had the necessary resources and platforms to be successful without having to lose their identity or travel outside the country to find a following. “It was important to prove that these artists can have a sustainable career again based from here,” Zakhem said.

Friends thought it would be a better idea to launch a gallery in London or, better yet, to start a foundation if he had to have an art space in Ghana. However, the latter idea wasn’t appealing to Zakhem because even though he had a decent collection, he didn’t think it was one worthy of a foundation. What he did have was an eye for local talent.

Gallery 1957 has its roots in the Kempinski Hotel Gold Coast City Accra, which Zakhem opened in 2015. The first gallery space is housed in a redesigned part of the building initially earmarked as a mechanical room where he showed and commissioned works from the likes of Clottey, Mahama, and Yaw Owusu. The reaction to selling a Clottey piece, for example, wasn’t encouraging—friends said they’d rather buy a Rolex than invest in an artwork.

But Zakhem continued onward, inviting curators, journalists, and collectors to see what was on view, even paying for their plane tickets and hotel rooms. The guests not only got to see Gallery 1957 and the artists it represented but were also immersed in the cultural scene of Ghana by attending music festivals and visiting other cultural institutions around the country, including Mahama’s Savannah Centre for Contemporary Arts in Tamale in the Northern Region of Ghana.

“We did all of this to make sure they knew that this country was great and that the artists coming out of it were even greater,” Zakhem said.

Gallery 1957 has grown in stature since its founding. It has since inaugurated two more spaces on the premises of Kempinski Hotel Gold Coast City Accra, in the Galleria Mall, and a third at Hyde Park Gate in London.

Along the way, the gallery has acted as a feeder for greater success for many of its artists. Gideon Appah, for example, had a solo show at Gallery 1957 in 2019, one year before his first New York exhibition, at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, and three years before gaining representation with Pace, one of the world’s biggest galleries. The gallery’s roster has also grown and now includes artists such as Abdoulaye Konaté, a well-known Malian artist who makes abstractions from fabric, and Collin Sekajugo, one of two artists who showed at last year’s award-winning Ugandan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

Importantly, Gallery 1957 is more than just a commercial gallery. It also facilitates many other initiatives that are intended to grow Ghana’s art scene.

One such initiative is the Yaa Asantewaa Art Prize, founded in 2021, which supports “female artists from Ghana and its diaspora.” Araba Opoku was its first recipient. (Awardees need not be represented by the gallery; Opoku is not on 1957’s roster.)

The gallery’s artist residency program is also coveted, with Amoako Boafo, Opoku, Rita Mawuena Benissan, Kwesi Botchway, Isshaq Ismail, Johannes Phokela, Cornelius Annor, Godfried Donkor, Tiffanie Delune, and Afia Prempeh among its current and past participants.

The program allows participants to focus on creating art for up to a year. The art is subsequently exhibited by the gallery. Gallery 1957 also pays for tickets, visas, and medical bills and provides accommodation for artists not from Ghana and also for those who don’t live there. The majority of these artists are invited by Zakhem personally.

Prempeh, who is based in Kumasi, first connected with Zakhem in 2015. In 2020, Prempeh had posted an in-progress painting in memory of her late mother on Instagram, and Zakhem reached out to her. Ultimately, Prempeh joined the gallery’s roster in 2021, the same year she started her residency and later had her debut solo exhibition.

During her residency, Prempeh only had to concentrate on creating a body of work for her exhibition. She was provided a fully furnished two-bedroom apartment, a monthly stipend, the service of caretakers, and any needed materials. In an interview, Prempeh said she had previously lived “hand to mouth,” making her art in her bedroom. Suddenly, she didn’t have to worry about paying for materials, getting a space for an exhibition, and sending out invites.

“It has made a whole lot of difference in my career,” Prempeh said, speaking by phone. “The moment [Marwan] recognizes your talent and then he picks you, he changes your life as an artist and your career.”

Gallery 1957 has also set its sights on reaching many beyond Ghana, and one way it’s done that is through participating in fairs. Two years after it first opened, in 2018, the gallery took part in Art X Lagos. It is now a regular there and at other international fairs, including the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair (New York, London, and Paris), Art Paris, the Investec Cape Town Art Fair, and Art Dubai.

“[The gallery] participating at many international art fairs as possible [provides] international visibility to a lot of artists from Ghana,” El Glaoui said, adding, “From a cultural perspective and international visibility, Gallery 1957 has been very instrumental.”

“I think that the job the gallery has done [at] Art Dubai by bringing a new generation of African artists, especially from Ghana and countries from West Africa, has been super important,” said Pablo del Val, the artistic director of Art Dubai, which has been billed as the leading international art fair in the Middle East. “Its presence in Dubai has been the first time that many collectors and institutions had the opportunity of getting in touch with their roster of artists.”

The international reach has helped artists such as Prempeh, who previously had only shown her art in Ghana before working with the gallery. Now, however, it has been seen in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the United Arab Emirates. Still, Prempeh said that Gallery 1957 has also spurred her to consider how an art scene has grown closer to home.

“I was probably looking to have my exhibition outside because people kept telling me, ‘If you sell these works outside, the money you’d make,’” she said. “But then Gallery 1957 came in and made me realize that I can make it right here.”