Contemporary painting in Ghana: The role of Kente cloth on color and design

A couple months after going to Kenya I flew to Ghana to meet up with Diane and Chuck Frankel. We were there for an exploratory tour of the contemporary art scene in Acrra and Kumasi. Diane and Frank have been interested in African art for several decades now, and are keen to promote it in the US. They have made several videos of interviews with South African artists and are on the look out for new artists in other parts of Africa. We spend three days in Accra going from one art space to another, identifying the works we liked the most and meeting up with the artists a day later. All of it happened rather spontaneously as little can be planned ahead. We gathered most of the information from our visit to the Artist Alliance Gallery, the Nobuke Foundation, and our meeting with artist Atta Kwami.

Painting seems to be the medium of choice for many artists. At least that is what we noticed as we wandered through the Artist Alliance Gallery. We remarked on the undeniable influence of Ablade Glover, one of Ghana’s most praised painters. We later learned that Glover has been an inspiration, a role model, and a teacher to many contemporary artists. While his paintings, a melee of vibrant colors, are mostly about color and can look almost totally abstract, in fact they capture the colorful gatherings that are so central to Ghanaians’ life: markets, festivals, crowded townscapes.  More recently Glover’s fascination with color has led him to turn to nature, in particular forests that under his palette knife become fields of yellow, green, and golden shimmering specks of light.

The Gallery functions on a different model than our white cube gallery space. Art covers all the walls and includes the traditional arts and textiles on the lower floors.

View of the ocean from the Artist Alliance Gallery Very kindly, Theophilus Adetu, manager of the Gallery arranged for us a meeting with Ablade Glover and three other artists that had caught our attention: Nana Nyanacquah, Gabriel Eklu and Nyornuwofia Agorsor. We had also liked the work of Rikki Wemesa-Kwawu but he was out of town that day. Their work had stood out for us amidst the selection at the Gallery because it was more personal, less figurative, and less overtly grounded in tradition. Obviously our point of view was quite subjective and very much shaped by our exposure to contemporary art coming from the Western North.

Perhaps wary of our Western perspective Nana and Nyornuwofia were reluctant to acknowledge artistic influences and the description of their work process was mostly romantic: Internal and spiritual impulses fed their work and they preferred to work in isolation. Gabriel, however, acknowledged his debt to Glover and was quite keen about his experience at an artist residency in Europe.  After some prodding from my part they described an active exchange, which mostly takes place on the Internet where they critique each other’s work. Nana’s work has an Africa pop, cartoony feeling to it.

Nyornuwofia’s paintings find their genesis in her role as an educator to her children and are quite political. I liked their spontaneous quality and the extensive inclusion of language. She is also a wonderful singer and performer.

Rikki’s abstract compositions  reminiscent of the flat patterns of African textiles that incorporate designs based on Adinkra symbols seem to pulse and resist simple resolution.

That evening we had dinner with Atta Kwami, an internationally known painter. He confirmed what we had heard earlier from the artists. One of the biggest problems in the arts in Ghana is the lack of local collectors. Ghanaians are not in the habit of hanging paintings in their walls. The Western fascination for the collectible object is a foreign concept and has no basis in the local traditions. Wealthy Ghanaians are more apt to buy an expensive piece of furniture or piece of clothing than buy a painting. As a result there are very few galleries ; we found three only. Large hotels, on the other hand, hang local artists on their walls giving them some exposure . This weak local culture infrastructure is the reason for the marginal posting of Ghana in the art world. While we were eating a typical Ghanaian fare (Fufu, fish and lots of rice) Atta Kwami recounted his early beginnings as a weaver. The son of an accomplished woman (sculptor, weaver and painter) he first studied weaving in school with an Ewe master later moving on to painting and art history at university.  Embracing the local traditions and environment, Kwami is a man that has made color the mainstay of his art. Though his work is abstract, mostly a juxtaposition of bands of vibrant colors, it is rooted in the urban landscape of Kumasi, local woven textiles and Ghanaian music.

Kwami has spend many years working and teaching at Nkrumah University in Kumasi which seems to have the only art school of note. Knowing that we were on our way to Kumasi he recommended that we get in touch with a couple of young artists who are more conceptual. The next day we decided to stop at the Nubuke Foundation for Contemporary Art and Culture where by chance we met up with Kofi Setordi, the associate director and founding member. Quite an accomplished artist who is known for his large installation of terracotta masks on the Rwanda genocide Kofi is very invested these days in encouraging textile workers to explore different designs and make work that can be seen as more contemporary.  He showed us the beautiful pared down results, which we liked a lot.

Color is also central to Kofi’s painting and to his work with the weavers.  This affinity for color is something we found over and over again and appears to be linked to the century old textile tradition of the Kente cloth. Kente cloth is a strip-woven cloth made by the Asante and Ewe people. It is remarkable for its multicolored patterns, geometric shapes and bold designs. We found some beautiful examples on our way back from Kumasi where we had met up with the artist Patrick Tagoe Turkson (see following blog post).While we saw lots of Kente cloth at the fabulous Kumasi market, most of them are now made in Asia!

By the way we had a blast in the market. It is known to be the biggest in Africa and let me tell you it was way cleaner and structured then any market I have seen in Africa. The young women were amazing, carrying these huge weighty loads on their head and storming through the alleys. The most striking Kente cloth we found was in a “stall” on the side of the road in the small town of Bonwire on our way back to Accra. Called “Wrapped in Pride” it carried some of the most beautiful Kente designs. I started chatting with the man keeping the shop, Ben Owosu Cophie, who turned out to be the grandson of the famous Kente cloth weaver, Samuel Cophie.

As we were talking Ben pulled out a worn out copy of a catalogue of an exhibition on African textiles held at the Smithsonian, and named after his store and the work of his grandfather. Chuck and Diane were quite familiar with the exhibition and with one of the writers of the catalogue. We were a bit dumbfounded and at the same time highly pleased.

We loved the many coincidences we encountered on our journey and most of all were tickled by the fact that the beautiful work of these humble weavers made it to the USA. Suddenly we felt less like total strangers now that there was a connection between us. The seemingly unbridgeable gap between our two worlds had momentarily narrowed bringing with it hope for better understanding and appreciation. Kente cloth has not only strongly inspired the emphasis on vibrant color.

After noticing that several artists seemed to favor the grid in the formal compositions of their paintings I became aware of a connection with many of the Kente patterns that have a grid-like structure. Being a true New Yorker, when I had noticed that grid in the first paintings we saw my mind had gravitated to early Gotttlieb! I realized quickly that I was looking in the wrong direction and that the influence had to be local when I saw the grid like structure recur.  When I finally connected all the dots by trusting my visual awareness and asking more questions I could make sense of all that I had seen.

While I am Euro-centric and cannot escape my trained eye and taste I enjoy the opportunity to see the world from a different perspective and the challenge to my preconceptions.

Ghanaian artists are aware of the art from the Western world, however it is their own culture and traditions that very much informs their art and they feel very strongly about conveying that point. Even when artists such as Patrick Tagoe Turkson and Bernard Akoi-Jackson reject the late colonial restriction to painting and sculpture and embrace conceptual art they turn to the local traditions of performance. See upcoming blog post .