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

This fall, however, Tayo was featured in Human Stories: The Satirists, a group exhibition at  London’s NOW Gallery. The show, which also featured Thandiwe Muriu, Bubi Canal, Leonard Suryajaya, Nyugen Smith, and Thy Tran, explored satire in photography and how it can be used to develop and nurture interconnected identities of gender, race, and class. 

In recent years, Tayo has become increasingly recognized by the art world for his portraits. Renowned art critic, curator and Gagosian director Antwuan Sargent featured Tayo’s work in his 2019 book The New Black Vanguard, and the accompanying exhibition at Aperture Gallery in New York in 2020.  

At NOW, Tayo showed “Which Lagos You Dey?” a photo series that, as part of his Na Lagos We Dey anthology, employs depersonalization. In these new works, Tayo removes the human subjects central to his earlier work and replaces them with anonymous figures draped in objects that represent certain Lagos-specific rituals.

“I wanted to create a relationship between the city and people in a dynamic way,” Tayo told ARTnews. “The idea really is to look at how I can build around the elements of Lagos using the street sound, fashion, signs, and the things we find about Lagos that are so common that sometimes we don’t think it needs exploring.”

Tayo added that he wanted the new series to reflect the specificity of his identity as a Lagos-based Nigerian artist, not just as an African creative.

Tayo learned how to be a photographer primarily from watching YouTube tutorials while he was a philosophy student at the University of Lagos. However, he doesn’t consider himself an autodidact. 

“I didn’t have to go through training in the physical sense. Many of the things I learned in photography have come from mostly digital space, he said. “If you learn online, I don’t think it is self-taught anymore.”

Tayo’s passion for photography, he said, came from his realization that he did not have enough photos of himself as he was growing up. As a child, he and his family moved around often and whatever photos had been taken were often lost during the moves.

“I started documenting in the sense of archiving,” he said. As he moved through university, he began documenting the people in his life — cousins, nephews, siblings, and friends — with his iPhone. The response from his loved ones was encouraging and he began expanding to document his classmates and the architecture on campus.

“Many of these things change. From wanting to document kids to [my] friends to now making stories about the times that we live in, the conversations that are going on,” Tayo said.

Tayo’s education in philosophy has informed his approach to photography, he said, as he uses the camera to question diverse experiences and encourage dialogue. 

“Philosophy is very much keyed into human practice, and [my work] as a photographer [includes] engaging with people and places,” he said.

His work is influenced by those of the likes of Malian portrait photographer Seydou Keita, Malian pop culture photographer Malick Sidibe, and Nigerian photographer Samuel Fosso, who was known for his self-portraits that used different personas to comment on the history of Africa.

In 2018, Tayo was commissioned by Dutch streetwear brand Patta and Nike to shoot a campaign for the launch of their collaboration which was exhibited in London. Tayo was then hired to shoot a Havana Club campaign for the U.K. with Nigerian-British rapper Skepta in Cuba. Around the same time, the Times first hired the photographer to document Lagos fashion.

He also developed a project with Apple on stories of the COVID pandemic. In 2020, he scored a nomination at the British Fashion Council Awards in the ‘New Wave’ category.

In July this year, his photo series “What If?” was exhibited at the V&A as part of the Africa Fashion Exhibition, which was recently extended to April 2023.

Tayo’s rise and rise comes from his trademark style of fusing documentary and fashion to elevate everyday moments and highlight the beauty of his community.

Tayo is unabashedly committed to showcasing his community. “I think every [African] creative should just focus on the peculiarity of their space. Be proud of it and show it to the world.”

Some date the beginnings of that vibrant growth to the past 10 years, with the opening of commercial spaces like Gallery 1957 in Accra, Ghana; Cécile Fakhoury in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, and Dakar, Senegal; and LouiSimone Guirandou in Abidjan. Touria El Glaoui, founding director of the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, which has staged editions in London, New York, Paris, and Marrakech, called the inauguration of these galleries “a visibility moment” for the West African scene that spurred international recognition. By way of example, El Glaoui pointed to Amoako Boafo, the Accra-born, Vienna-based painter whose portraits of Black figures have sold in the low millions at auction—a rare feat for an artist still in his 30s. Also boosting momentum is the ART X Lagos fair, which launched in 2016. While still small in scale, with just 30 exhibitors in 2021, it is notable for “regrouping all those galleries from that region and trying to present those artists to the local collector base in Nigeria,” El Glaoui said.

Kola Aina, an early-stage VC investor based in Lagos, Nigeria, is one of those collectors. He told ARTnews, “Appreciating and preserving artworks [serves] as a means to nurture heritage, tell stories, and record history. More recently, I have become very fascinated [with] the power of the arts to regulate and improve the ability of a people to ascribe value and understand meaning.” Aina has been buying works by Victor Ehikhamenor, Alimi Adewale, Ken Nwadiogbu, Modupeola Fadugba, Abdoulaye Konaté, and Ben Enwonwu—and that’s not his only undertaking in the arts. According to Dolly Kola-Balogun, founder of Retro Africa gallery in Abuja, Nigeria, Aina has also been a “strong advocate for the repatriation of stolen artifacts.”

Some prominent collectors in the local art environs hail from the uppermost echelons of society. Prince Yemisi Adedoyin Shyllon, of Nigeria’s Ogun State, reportedly has one of the country’s largest private collections, comprising 7,000 artworks and 55,000 photographs of Nigerian cultural festivals.

Others come from the business and arts industries, and their collecting is often instrumental in helping expand their communities. The British-born, Ghana-based artist Joseph Awuah-Darko, who has shown with Gallery 1957, has begun his own collection, buying works by Dela Anyah and Zandile Tshabalala. At the same time, he runs the Noldor Artist Residency, one of the most prominent independent programs of its kind in Ghana.

Adora Mba, the founder of Accra’s ADA\ Contemporary Art Gallery, praised Awuah-Darko as a “rare collector due to his extensive knowledge of the continent’s art, [the] eclectic taste of his own collection from modernists to the most adventurous contemporary artists, and his amazing support of Ghana’s local art industry.” Mba credited him with introducing her to the young Nigerian painter Samuel Olayombo, whom her gallery now represents.

The Alabama-born, Accra-based collector Nish McCree works in a vein similar to Awuah-Darko. She began collecting in 2013, and was joined by her husband, lawyer Ofotsu Tetteh-Kujorjie, in 2018; to date, she has acquired a painting by Boafo and a piece by Anya Paintsil. Last year, she branched out, founding the Cowrie Culture, a digital advisory that aims to grow Africa’s art scene. “It’s fascinating to witness the extraordinary pace of the changes happening in Ghana’s art scene,” McCree said. “I believe the momentum is sustainable, and will translate into a stronger art ecosystem.”

Names to Know

Benin

Marie-Cécile Zinsou, art historian

Côte d’Ivoire

Idelphonse Affogbolo, CEO, Africa Capital Investors

Ghana

Joseph Awuah-Darko, founder, Noldor Artist Residency; president, Institute Museum of Ghana

Nish McCree, founder, Cowrie Culture 

Nigeria

Kola Aina, VC investor

Femi Akinsanya, investment banker 

Frank Momoh,President, FROT Group

Bimpe Nkontchou, founder and CEO, Wealth8

Senegal

C C H Pounder,actress

Oumar Sow, CEO, CSE Group

A version of this article appears in the 2022 edition of ARTnews’s Top 200 Collectors issue, under the title “West Africa in the Spotlight.”

The incident has loomed large for South African multi-disciplinary artist Gabrielle Goliath, who last year debuted Chorus, a two-channel video and sound installation that acts as an elegy to Mrwetyana. The moving 23-minute installation depicts the University of Cape Town choir sounding a lament for their late friend and colleague in one monitor, while the other remains empty, signifying the victims of gender-based violence in South Africa.

Goliath’s work resides in numerous collections, including London’s Tate Modern, Kunsthalle Zürich, the South African National Gallery, and others. Goliath has also won numerous awards, including Institut Français, Afrique en Créations Prize at the Bamako Biennale in 2017 and the Standard Bank Young Artist Award in 2019.

Later this month, Chorus will be shown at Dallas Contemporary in what will be Goliath’s first institutional show in the United States. Goliath told ARTnews in a recent interview that, despite Chorus’s South African context, she expects American audiences will “find local and personal resonances” in the work.

“It really is a work that has the capacity to move one deeply,” she said. “You enter an experience like Chorus and the work enters you sonically. It inhabits you as much as you inhabit it.” 

The project is far from Goliath’s first to engage with victims of gender-based violence or to create opportunities for reflection and dialogue. In 2015, Goliath began the long-term performance project, Elegy, which similarly responds to the endemic crisis of femicide in South Africa. For the project, performances were held in South Africa, Brazil, Europe, and the United States, where seven female opera singers sounded a lament over the course of an hour – collectively sustaining a single note, passing it to one another as they individually mounted an illuminated dais. Each performance commemorated a specific woman or LGBTQIA+ individual subjected to fatal acts of gender or sexual violence. Accompanying each performance was a eulogistic text, scripted by a friend or family member of the subject.

Chorus, which Goliath considers “a culmination of sorts” of the work in Elegy, similarly makes an effort to engage those closest to the victim.

After Mrwetyana’s death, a spate of organizations and individuals in South Africa used her name without permission to solicit donations for their causes and projects. It was so pervasive that the family had to threaten legal action to stop the practice. The issue informed Goliath’s approach to Chorus.

“It was thus doubly important for me to approach them very openly and to seek out their blessing without which the work would have been profoundly compromised,” Goliath said.

When Goliath conceptualized Chorus, she made sure to talk to Mrwetyana’s family first. She began by presenting the concept to Mrwetyana’s mother in “great detail.” After Mrwetyana’s mother took time to process the work, she and the Uyinene Mrwetyana Foundation collectively consented to have Goliath create the work.

Goliath’s memorializing practice comes from a deeply personal place. On Christmas Eve in 1991, Goliath’s childhood friend was shot at her home in Kimberley, Northern Cape, in what is spoken of as a “domestic incident.” The experience was traumatic, and profoundly influenced her practice. In 2010 Goliath produced a photographic series of 19 brown women as “surrogate presences” for her friend Berenice; one for each year since her death. She revisited the work this year with a new series of portraits for the intervening years.

The common thread through Goliath’s work, from Berenice 10-28, 2010 to Chorus, is a call for participants to engage in the long and transformative work of mourning and a collective refusal of “the negation of these lives” as faceless victims, in Goliath’s words. 

Chorus, for example, includes a commemorative roll in the exhibition space of women, children, and LGBTQIA people who have suffered gender-based violence in South Africa since Mrwetyana’s death. It is a living document reflecting the ongoing nature of the crisis — last year’s staging of Chorus contained over 460 names, while the Dallas Contemporary edition will have an updated list of more than 670.

“Chorus is about community, about gathering-to,” Goliath said. “It is not a work of exceptionalism but one that recognises that to undo the crisis-norm of sexualized, racialized, patriarchal violence, and to realize the world differently requires that each and every one of us recognise our implication within a world of others, and the bearing that implies – across difference, across borders, across our capacity to ‘relate’ – indeed, across all that may otherwise separate (and ‘exonerate’) us.”

The video performance in Chorus was filmed days before the first lockdown in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in late March 2020. The timing, according to Goliath, meant that she completed the work in Johannesburg, where she is based, under “strange and isolated conditions.” 

The pandemic affected Chorus in other ways. The work was originally meant to debut at Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India’s largest art exhibition, in December 2020, but the show was postponed due to the pandemic. Instead, the work debuted in Cape Town, which given Mrwetyana’s status as a UCT student and the role of the university choir in the piece, was “very meaningful,” according to Goliath. The piece will appear at the long-delayed biennale in Kochi this December.

The decision to present Chorus at Dallas Contemporary is the result of “many conversations” with Emily Edwards, the museum’s assistant curator, according to Goliath. Edwards reached out after hearing about Elegy; the pandemic interrupted initial plans for an exhibit but it also “allowed for a deeper, longer conversation,” Goliath said.

Chorus will be on view at Dallas Contemporary from September 25 to March 19, 2023.

In sales at that auction house, Love-Allotey has been quietly rewriting the rules of the burgeoning African art market. In 2020, Love-Allotey broke away from the tradition of putting the most expensive lot on the cover of sale catalogues, placing Zanele Muholi’s Sasa, Bleecker, New York, 2016 from their “Somnyama Ngonyama” series on the front. She was also a part of the team involved in the high-profile sale of Ben Enwonwu’s 1974 painting Tutu, which was long presumed to be lost. It wound up selling for $1.6 million, more than $1 million more than it was estimated to go for.

Based in London, Love-Allotey was named head of African modern and contemporary art sales at Bonhams this past April. She previously joined the company in September 2015 as an art handler.

ARTnews spoke to Love-Allotey about how the African art market is changing and why collectors are adding works by African artists and artists of the African diaspora to their holdings.

What is important to you about the work you’ve been doing to bring more African art to the market?

Africa is a huge continent. There are a lot of countries, different ethnic groups, and many artistic styles. We always try to make sure that as many countries are represented in the sale to show the diversity of artistic practices.

In addition, there are artists who have immigrated and continue to be influenced by their heritage in their practice, which is why we’ve expanded to include artists who identify with the African diaspora. I am also trying to champion the full cycle of African art and develop relationships with collectors and art enthusiasts across Africa.

I was especially glad to present Seth Dei’s collection in Ghana a few years ago. We exhibited the works in Accra. It was a great opportunity to showcase these important works before they were offered for sale. It was really successful, with a great turnout, and everyone appreciated that we were cultivating these relationships.

What do you enjoy most about working at Bonhams?

It’s a unique environment to work in, and I don’t think anyone fully understands auction houses until they work in one. I am really lucky and privileged to be able to handle so many artworks day-to-day and be surrounded by them. I learn so much from seeing these works in person. I am able to work with such a variety of artists, and we’re encouraged to explore our own passions. I always wanted to introduce photography to our sales and it’s great that I’ve been supported in this.

What are you most looking forward to about the upcoming auction of modern and contemporary art from Africa and its diaspora in New York this Wednesday?

It’s a smaller curatorial focus, but we cover a huge range, from photography in post-colonial Mali to present-day South Africa to abstract paintings and works on paper. This is the first time we’ve expanded to include the diaspora [in an African art sale at Bonhams], and I’m thrilled to be offering works by Aubrey Williams, who was born in Guyana and then moved to Britain.

This is also the first time we’ve included photography. The catalogue cover features photographs on both the front and back, works by Malick Sidibe and Samuel Fosso. We have quite a few of the works from photographers who lived and worked in Mali. They accurately portrayed the post-colonial energy of Bamako, which is known to this day to be a hub for African photography.

We also have four paintings by Abdoulaye “Aboubia” Diarrassouba. Aboudia’s market is incredibly exciting, as we were selling his work for around £10,000 two years ago. Now his works fetch over £150,000, as proven in our last two auctions in London and Paris.

We also have an early work by Skunder Boghossian and a portrait by Godwin Oluwole Omofemi, who is rather popular with contemporary art collectors at the moment.

Carib Ritual (6), a 1973 painting by the British Guayanese artist Aubrey Williams, is among the works that will be offered in Bonhams’s first African art sale to include works by artists of the African diaspora.

What are the shifts have you noticed in the market for African art and art of the African diaspora?  

I have noticed in our field that a lot of collectors are now looking at African art. Since people’s attitudes have started to change in the past few years, particularly when it comes to diversifying their collections, and thinking about art history and how Eurocentric it has been. A lot of people are seeking to diversify their collections and look at acquiring works by African artists.

In our market, there’s a huge interest in African artists from the 1950s and the 1960s, such as Papa Ibra Tall, Gerard Sekoto, Skunder Boghossian, and Demas Nwoko. They did incredibly well in their career and lifetime, but they have slipped off the radar and have only started to come back and receive the attention they deserve.

[There] is also a huge explosion of interest in Black figurative painting. There are a lot of emerging artists from Ghana doing this, including Cornelius Annor. These artists have achieved incredible results—quite staggering, given how recent the trend is.

What is the reason behind Ghanaian artists and art being in demand on the market?

For a while, the focus was on Lagos and the artists and galleries rising to prominence there. But recently the focus has shifted to Ghana, which is really interesting. I think it’s a credit to the amazing art school in Kumasi [the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology] that has produced some of the most amazing artists. There are a lot of people championing art in Ghana, from Accra to Tamale. For instance, Ibrahim Mahama has a space in Tamale, the SSCA Tamale [Savannah Center for Contemporary Art], which he uses to support local artists and education.

Cornelius Annor, Day Break, 2017.

You also run an Instagram account called African Art History. What’s the most interesting thing you’ve learned while running it?

There still isn’t a huge focus on African art in art history education. The account focuses on the representation of women and artists exploring queer themes. I was lucky to go to a university that had a special focus on African art, so I use my account to make it more accessible and often collaborate with my professors for insight. Sometimes they use my research and writings for their lessons.

I always encourage people to visit our sale previews because it’s an amazing chance to see so many African artworks in one space, from such a variety of different countries and time periods. I think people often think of auction houses as commercial only, but there’s so much research and connoisseurship that goes into every sale. We spend the majority of our time developing in-depth catalogues so it’s very educational.

I like to take my learnings from the auction house and make them more accessible through social media. I often feel like I’m wearing two hats—the commercial one and the educational one—and I’m passionate about both.

For Africans specifically, this gaze has distorted perceptions of the continent’s diverse historical experiences and failed to properly reflect Africans’ true stories. A new generation of Africans, however, are taking ownership of their countries’ histories and, in effect, helping reclaim their narratives.

Rita Mawuena Benissan, a Ghanaian-American interdisciplinary artist, has been at the forefront of this drive. In 2020, Benissan founded Si Hene, an award-winning non-profit foundation collecting and preserving archives telling stories about Ghana’s chieftaincy and traditional culture, creating awareness around its royal history, and making it accessible globally via digital media.

The nonprofit’s name means “Enstoolment” in Ghana’s Akan language, referring to the process of raising a chief to power in many African ethnic groups.

Benissan’s work has been exhibited at the 2022 La Biennale De Dakar, 2021 Afrochella Festival, and EFIE: Museum as Home, a group museum exhibition at Dortmund U in Germany in 2021.

ARTnews spoke to Benissan about Si Hene and fundraising to build a museum to celebrate Ghanaian identity.

How important is it to you that Ghana’s chieftaincy and traditional culture are recorded and preserved?

It is very important. Chieftaincy is truly the backbone and root of our Ghanaian culture. It is more common now to see different aspects of our history being acknowledged by the Western world at university and museum exhibitions, collections, and databases, but it seems like only 5% is located and owned in our country. The majority of Si Hene [​collections] are photos and videos I found outside which Ghana doesn’t own.

Many of our traditional stories are presented orally but if the stories are not recorded because the person that is more knowledgeable passes on, the story also passes or changes narrations.

How does your identity as a Ghanaian documenting Ghana’s royal history help you to present authentic and not distorted information compared to when Westerners do it?

It definitely helps [with] presenting the information more authentically because the true perspective is revealed. We are able to state the true positions that royals held, and the true translations of how cities, dances, instruments, and other objects were named and pronounced.

Many of the stories that [come] from the Western perspective are sometimes misleading or they might not be as detailed as someone who’s from that region or someone who has studied this from Ghana. I’ve seen a lot of our cities being renamed because [their history is told from] a Western perspective.

You are currently fundraising to build a physical museum and research institute to house visual archives telling Ghana’s chieftaincy and traditional culture? What informed the decision after two years of digital documentation?

My ultimate goal is to have a Si Hene museum in each region to show the traditions and specific chiefs that ruled in that region. Growing up in the United States, my family and school used to take me to museums to learn about different cultures and historical moments which made me truly appreciate the importance [of that] in my life.

Having a digital archive is great but it is not accessible to anyone who is not using social platforms. Having a physical building and space will provide the opportunity for the community to engage with the photos, books, artifacts, and other sources of visuals in person. It also expands the means of engagement and discussions that circulate the importance of our history.

Two of Rita Mawuena Benissan’s Royal Umbrellas on display at the 2022 Dakar Biennale.

What was your experience exhibiting Royal Umbrellas at the 2022 Dakar Biennale?

The main theme for the series of umbrellas deals with the phrase “Mmae a Ɛda Nsow!” which translates to a Remarkable Presence. Each of the umbrellas conveys a presence that deals with its physical presence and a historical presence.

It was a great experience. It was my first biennale and also my first time traveling to another African country. Participating in a biennale is truly a dream come true at an early start in my art career.

I was one of three artists representing Ghana alongside Kuukua Eshun and Kwasi Darko. The show was curated by Nana Oforiatta Ayim and focused on the Museum as Home so being able to reimagine how we present our cultural experiences in institutional spaces.

For the album rollout, Eazi will work with contemporary artists to create unique art pieces to accompany each song. The pieces will be tokenized and shared with the public through specially-curated metaverse and physical events.

Eazi has achieved global recognition as the creator of Banku Music, a blend of Ghanaian highlife and Nigerian chord percussions. Eazi was nominated for Best International Act by the BET Awards in 2019 and won a Latin Grammy in 2020, and has collaborated with megastars like Beyonce, J. Balvin, Bad Bunny, Nicki Minaj, and Major Lazer, along with other Nigerian stars like Burna Boy.

Eazi first had the idea for the collaboration in 2020 while visiting the Noldor Artist Residency, Ghana’s first independent artist residency and fellowship program. The year prior, Eazi had launched emPawa Africa, a talent incubator to support rising African artists.

“I started to see the similarities between the music space and the art space in terms of the business model my company emPawa does … [which] finds artists, musicians and works with them, nurtures them and their careers, and gives them the opportunities to break into the world,” said Eazi. 

While visiting Noldor, Eazi met artists and purchased pieces and talked with the residency’s founder, director, and his “good friend,” Joseph Awuah-Darko.

“The more I thought about this and started to record my album, the more I started to think of a way that I could capture the essence of my music,” said Eazi. “I just was thinking how do I tell this story in every way? I wanted to tell the story in the music. I wanted to tell the story in the video. I want to tell the story in every way possible.”

Inspired by that sentiment, Eazi decided to collaborate with artists in each country where he records the album. The artist-entrepreneur is always traveling — when we spoke he had just completed a Business of Entertainment, Media, and Sports program at Harvard Business School – and he is currently building emPawa Africa, emPawa Distribution, a digital music aggregator, and other ventures.

Beninese painter Patricorel creating the artwork for “Legalize” by Mr. Eazi.

“What this album means to me is a journey into new territory,” said Eazi. “It’s supposed to be an immersive experience where when you look at this album, you say ‘oh wow, Eazi’s album was a beautiful exhibition.’”

The first single on the album, “Legalize,” features artwork by Beninese painter Patricorel, who painted the piece live during the debut performance of the song at an intimate, invite-only concert in Lagos. 

The pair met when Eazi visited Cotonou, the capital of Benin, while recording the album.

The song, a heartfelt ode to his partner,  Nigerian actress Temi Otedola, is one of Eazi’s most personal tracks yet. Eazi and Otedola got engaged in April while shooting the music video for “Legalize” in Venice.

Check out the new single, and the collaboration with Patricorel, here:

Eazi said that he hopes the fine art collaboration, like his music videos, helps tell the story of the music.

“I started to think … ‘Why don’t I work with artists to be able to co-create pieces that represent the music so that captures the essence of the music on a canvas?’” said Eazi

The collaboration builds on Eazi’s ongoing initiative to support African creatives through his platform as an entrepreneur and a global music star and to “build cultural capital for creatives across the continent.” 

“Legalize” painting by Beninese painter Patricorel.

“I feel like with this collaboration with the artists, we are [making] this accessible to my fans who would have normally not looked towards art in this form and introducing them to this world,” he said. 

“And taking the veil away from [the thinking] that this one is for ‘dadabees [a West African term for children of wealthy family] or the elite.”

Essé Dabla-Attikpo, a Togolese-Beninese art consultant, cultural producer, and curator, has been at the center of Ghana’s burgeoning scene, working to meet the new international demand for contemporary African art, while also seeking to democratize art for Ghanaians, and Africans at large.

In addition to launching her art consultancy This No Be Art, Dabla-Attikpo has curated exhibitions for the European Union delegation to Ghana, Kuenyehia Trust for Contemporary Art, and Alliance Française, started initiatives like affordable art fair Asime Art Sale, and served as an agent, advisor, and champion for African artists breaking into the international market. 

Most recently, Dabla-Attikpo partook in a curatorial research residency at TURN2 in Berlin and a Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden (MACAAL) boot camp for African curators in 2020 and 2021. 

ARTnews spoke to the rising curator about West Africa’s exciting scene.

This interview has been edited for clarity and concision.

[This No Be Art] has helped a number of artists with their first exhibitions. What’s the thinking behind providing an avenue for people who probably won’t have such opportunities?

I am surrounded by artists. My dad is a writer.  My auntie is a fashion designer. My brother is a visual artist, DJ, rapper and radio host so I have been living with creatives and I see how complicated it can be to have to handle everything around creating in addition to being creative.  

… Also, I realized that a lot of artists make a living by selling their art mainly to tourists, say at The Arts Center [a popular tourist attraction in Accra]. Which obviously has become difficult with the pandemic. There wasn’t really much thought into making the art accessible to people living in Accra. 

The idea [for me] is to be a facilitator and make the work available for people who live in Accra so it’s not always people from outside benefitting from the talent of Ghanaian artists or African artists in general, but also to offer avenues for art practitioners to generate income.

 What are your thoughts on the development of the art scene in Ghana, and more generally West Africa?

I think we have always had talent in West Africa and in the continent in general. People are intrinsically creative on the continent. You just have to be creative to survive because of hardship or situations in these countries. I think more people have been encouraged to pursue an art career because of the whole market. There is a real African contemporary art market that is developing at the moment so it makes it easier for artists to be full-time artists and not simply do it on the side. The talent has always been here, it’s just that some people have great talents but they turn to another career because they need to make a living. 

That said, I am extremely excited about what is happening. I also love that portraiture is flooding the world. We are seeing black portraits all over the place and I love that. It is bringing balance to the global art scene. I love seeing black painters such as Richmond Agamelah, James Mishio, and Niiodai do black portraits – being very creative about it and just telling our stories basically. I am very excited and hopeful. And also seeing people like me who are not artists themselves but understand that there is a need for facilitators, art consultants, curators and art sellers, and art brokers. … 

Besides, to see that there are a lot of black artists who actually survived the pandemic thanks to NFTs, like Nana Danso or Ahmed Partey. It’s amazing to see that there are new avenues and there are more ways to make a living as an artist compared to how it used to be. And I also feel like it’s creating ties between the continent and the diaspora. I really believe in the power of art to foster the link between the continent and the diaspora. 

What’s your take on the intermixing of the different genres of artistic expression? For example, music and painting?

It’s beautiful to see. I don’t think it’s something new. It’s been happening for years. When you see somebody like Lemi Ghariokwu In Nigeria, who was doing the artwork for Fela Kuti – it has been in existence forever. Here in Ghana, we have [visual artist] Afroscope collaborating with [musician and filmmaker] M3nsa. Bright Ackwerh with [musician] Wanlov, for example. 

It’s something that has been happening and what is maybe interesting is when it’s not only music and visual arts but visual arts and dance for example. 

Just recently, Anne Laure Gueret, a French photographer, had an exhibition at Gallery Elle Lokko in collaboration with Addis Ababa Ackwerh, a Ghanaian dancer. I feel like we are in a world where we are getting out of the box, we are breaking boundaries. There are fewer limits and everybody is more daring. It’s inspiring. It shows that we are limitless … 

What does the future look like for the art scene in Ghana and West Africa in general?

I feel like there are fewer people than before who censor themselves. Also, there are more people than before who are now full-time creatives. It’s still not the majority because it takes courage and not everybody has it. And not everybody has the necessary support system. I am very hopeful. I also see that there are new schools, institutions, and galleries … the landscape is changing and it will help shape the future generation. 

Kids of today have so many galleries they can go to and get inspired. There are many places where they can see art and get inspired. They know that there are schools where they can go and get good training, such as [Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology]. There are also some art residencies [Nubuke Foundation, Gallery 1957, Noldor Artist Residency, etc.] in Accra that they can take part in that will help them build a career in the arts.

There is a positive change, not only in the arts ecosystem, but on the side of the artists who are getting more and more empowered to be full-time artists and on the side of institutions that support these artists.