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THIS EXHIBTION IS UNTITLED

Past viewing_room
3 July - 2 October 2020

The artists featured in THIS EXHBITION IS UNTITLED come from the generation that the 89plus project focused on. Far from offering a definition of what this generation is grappling with, the exhibition suggests a snapshot of the artist’s trajectory beginnings. Using the material conditions of neoliberalism, globalisation and consumerism including plastics, wax prints, call credit cards, hair, bitumen and disused everyday objects, the artists featured in this exhibition confront the failures of modernism. 

 

Confronting the present, Yussif Musah’s larger-than-life self-portraits wrestle with death or the idea of it. In a politically charged world where black boys and girls are lynched every day, Yussif manages to capture the anxiety of living as a black person with no evidence of violence. In a sense, he escapes the stern criticism of Teju Cole’s opening lines of his 2015 essay, Death in the Browser1:

 

‘There you are watching another death on video. In the course of ordinary life — at lunch or in bed, in a car or in the park — you are suddenly plunged into someone else’s crisis, someone else’s horror’.


Musah’s self-portrait scenes merge the documented (from the public archive/ memory such as books and dreams) and the speculated (through play). The performance of the death anxiety is one that is euphemismised with picking of flowers, vulture attack and human skeletons.


Bernice Ameyaw’s installations thrive on gathering and fabricating disused objects. In the time of COVID-19 when we are physically distancing, the idea of gathering remains ever pertinent. By not gathering, we lose the shape and rhythm of our communities. Even at the risk of being mundane, the hope is that gatherings will become possible (again). 

 

Both Amoah and Zakari’s practice of collecting ‘waste’ materials and collaging them into figurations remind us of the lives that we have lived previously and those that we hope to live later. Zakari’s woman figurations exist with such carelessness, and sassiness, and  transgression. Amoah, on the other hand, focuses on the face area that in real life is now inhabited by facemasks.


Regardless of the artist’s practice, the gallery offers the space for each of the works to be viewed in the presence of the others – in relation to the others- the present and absent. To put it in the words of Martinique writer and philosopher Edouard Glissant, the Whole-world is ‘the realised totality of the known and unknown data of our worlds’ including “all sudden presences, as well as all times and spaces of the world’s peoples”2. We should think of art contemporaneity as such.

 

 

1. Teju Cole, Death in the Browser, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/24/magazine/death-in-the-browser-tab.html (Accessed on 17th, June, 2020)

2. Catherine Delpech, EDOUARD GLISSANT: Poetics and Politics of the Whole-world,

http://worldhumanitiesforum.com/eng/previous/fFileDown.php?chk=1&idx=329 (Accessed on
17th, June, 2020)

 

  • Musah Yussif (b.1997, Ghanaian/Malian) is an artist based in Kumasi, Ghana. He graduated with a BFA in Painting and Sculpture from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi (2019). He uses charcoal, pastel, and metallic paint for his works.

     

    In this series of figurative portraits, Yussif creates fictional narratives related to the idea of death, anxiety, and fear. These narratives are influenced by movies, books, and real-life events.

     

    The idea of picture making plays a vital role in his composition of drawings, which involves taking reference photographs and manipulating them using photo editing software. The drawings are accompanied by patterns which are influenced by Islamic patterns and Sirigu paintings.

     

    Yussif has previously exhibited in Algorithm of Death and Fear (2019), KNUST-Kumasi.

    Enquire
  • WORKS

    • The Age of depression (I) 244 x 122 cm

      The Age of depression (I)

      244 x 122 cm

    • The Age of depression (II) 244 x 122 cm

      The Age of depression (II)

      244 x 122 cm

    • The Age of depression (III) 244 x 122 cm

      The Age of depression (III)

      244 x 122 cm

    • The Saint I 53 x 58 cm

      The Saint I 

      53 x 58 cm 

    • The Saint I 53 x 58 cm

      The Saint I 

      53 x 58 cm 

    • The Saint I 53 x 58 cm

      The Saint I 

      53 x 58 cm 

    • The Saint II 53 x 58 cm

      The Saint II 

      53 x 58 cm 

    • The Saint II 53 x 58 cm

      The Saint II 

      53 x 58 cm 

    • The Saint II 53 x 58 cm

      The Saint II 

      53 x 58 cm 

    • The Saint II 53 x 58 cm

      The Saint II 

      53 x 58 cm 

    • The Saint II 53 x 58 cm

      The Saint II 

      53 x 58 cm 

    Close
  • Rufai Zakari (b. 1990, Ghanaian), an artist based in Accra and Bawku, examines  consumerism,  environmental pollution, labour and trade, and the perils of industrialisation in the contemporary
    Ghanaian society.

     

    His art practice involves using found objects including plastic bags, food packages and plastic bottles. He is the founder of the Bawku-based Rujab Eco-art Foundation.

     

    Mimicking the traditional medium of painting, Zakari’s figurative collages (made from plastic
    bags, water sachet, food, and beverage packages) reimagines the women collectors of the  art  materials and other women that he knows as living a life of luxury. The artist fuses the plastic scraps, trims them into shapes and forms, and stitches them using a rope and needle.

     

    By transforming the found objects into arts, Zakari seems to transform the lives of the women too.
    Zakari has previously exhibited in CirculArt: A Sustainable Art Exhibition (2019), Casa Trasacco,
    Accra; Violence Against Woman Group Art (2018), Accra-Ghana; Yoomo Be Ga Recycle Art
    Exhibition (2017), Museum of Science and Technology, Accra; Nima Muhinmanchi Art (NMA)
    (2012) Group Exhibition, Alliance Francaise, Accra among others.

  • WORKS

    • Mercy 142 x 107 cm

      Mercy

      142 x 107 cm

    • Melanin II 107 x 84 cm

      Melanin II

      107 x 84 cm

    • Janet 183 x 112 cm

      Janet

      183 x 112 cm

    • Melanin I 107 x 84 cm

      Melanin I

      107 x 84 cm

    • Yellow is the colour 115 x 120 cm

      Yellow is the colour

      115 x 120 cm

    • Hawa 124 x 99 cm

      Hawa

      124 x 99 cm

    • Zakaiya II 134.8 x 102 cm

      Zakaiya II

      134.8 x 102 cm

    Close
  • Winfred Nana Amoah (b. 1996, Ghanaian) is a Hohoe-based artist whose media of practice include acrylic paintings, textiles, used credit cards, newspapers, and plastic bags. Amoah uses these materials to explore personal identities and community belonging, particularly in the contemporary Ghanaian context. Amoah’s series of mixed-media depicts the faces of some Hohoe-dwelling people. The face, as a universal concept, is a communicative event.

     

    Seeing these faces, we are left to be   ‘accomplices’ in making meaning of these pro-communicative gestures. We see they smile, and we assume that they are happy. When they are stern, we wonder what they might be thinking.

     

    Amoah has previously exhibited in the Evolution of Science (2019) exhibition, Museum of Science and Technology, Accra.

     
    Enquire
  • WORKS

    • Emo Eve (Two faces) 153cm x 153cm

      Emo Eve (Two faces)

      153cm x 153cm

    • Yatsi Me (storm within) 153 x 153cm

      Yatsi Me (storm within)

      153 x 153cm

    • Enyonam (It's good for me) 114 x 102 cm

      Enyonam (It's good for me)

      114 x 102 cm

    • Dumevi (A native of the town) 114 x 102 cm

      Dumevi (A native of the town)

      114 x 102 cm

    • Lefelate (time tells) 114 x 102 cm

      Lefelate (time tells)

      114 x 102 cm

    • Gbledi (Neglected) 102 x 114 cm

      Gbledi (Neglected)

      102 x 114 cm

    Close
  • Bernice Ameyaw (b. 1993, Ghanaian) lives and works in Kasoa and Kumasi. She graduated with a BFA in Painting and Sculpture from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana (2017).

     

    Ameyaw’s practice extends the limitations placed on disused everyday objects. As a collection strategy, the artist negotiates with scrap object dealers and collects her art making objects from them. The collected objects are then refashioned through various processes including assemblage, riveting, and welding.

     

    Ameyaw has participated in the exhibitions Art X Feminism (2020), Nubuke Foundation, Accra;  Relations shapes (2019), Alliance Francaise, Kumasi; Chosen among the lot (2019), KNUST- Kumasi; Orderly Disorderly (2017) and Cornfields in Accra (2016), Museum of Science and Technology, Accra.

    Enquire
  • WORKS

    • The Compressor

      The Compressor

      Installation (Scrap metal and bitumen)

      61 x 61 cm

    • Chosen among the lots

      Chosen among the lots

      Installation (Refrigerator door, scrap metal and bitumen)

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