When El Anatsui's biggest-ever indoor art piece was unveiled in October at London’s Tate Modern, it was emblematic of how he continues to inspire African artists. As the renowned Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama wrote on Instagram, the 79-year-old fellow Ghanaian sculptor and 2023 Time 100 honouree “paved the way for a generation of artists like myself and many others”.

Titled Behind the Red Moon (until April 14, 2024), the site-specific installation is a Hyundai Turbine Hall commission curated by Osei Bonsu and Dina Akhmadeeva, Tate Modern’s curator of international art and assistant curator of international art, respectively. The founder of the Accra and London-based Gallery 1957, Marwan Zakhem, told STIR that he was “incredibly moved” to see the Tate opening, adding that he “couldn’t be prouder” of its significance and how it adds to “all real moments of contemporary African art on the international stage”.

Regarded as a trailblazer and one of the world’s leading contemporary artists, Anatsui is best known for recycling materials like metal bottle caps and copper wires to create large-scale tapestries that explore waste, the transatlantic slave trade and African history. In 2015, he received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 56^th Venice Biennale. Two years later, he became the first Ghanaian to win the prestigious Praemium Imperiale International Arts Award, an art prize launched in 1988.

Although Anatsui has mainly worked in Nigeria, he also has a studio in Ghana located at Tema in the Greater Accra Region. “It’s not good to just come and live in the world and go, and not leave any contribution,” he told the New York Times in a recent interview.

While Anatsui and his contemporaries like Professor Ablade Glover benefitted from policies introduced by the country’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah—who led the government in the 1950s and 60s when the state funded the creative arts industry—successive governments have not been overly invested. The lack of reliable support has led to individuals and organisations working to grow the Ghanaian arts ecosystem with assistance from locally based international organisations like Alliance Française, Goethe Institut and the British Council providing grants and infrastructure. Initiatives like the Artists Alliance Gallery, founded in 1993, and the Kumasi-based Crazinist Artist Studio, founded in 2011, have helped the arts in Ghana grow despite the challenges. In 1969, The Loom, one of Ghana's oldest and first privately owned galleries, was founded in Accra by artist, gallerist and former broadcaster Frances Ademola.

Artists have long spearheaded the expansion of Ghana’s art infrastructure. Recent developments like Ibrahim Mahama’s Tamale-based Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art, Nkrumah Volini and Red Clay Studio are project spaces for exhibitions, cultural repositories and artist residencies. On the sprawling Red Clay grounds are also planes and colonial-era trains that have been transformed into art and learning spaces, continuing a legacy of artist-led institutions.

In 1998, the photographer Nii Obodai co-founded Nuku Café in Accra as a space for artists to meet and show their work. It subsequently evolved into the Nuku Studio Centre for Photographic Research and Practice in 2015, providing opportunities for photographers to exchange ideas, experiment and grow. Collaborations strengthen its activities, be it international partnerships with the World Press Photo Foundation or Noorderlicht in The Netherlands or staging its ongoing satellite exhibition Routes of Rebellion by Jesse Weaver Shipley in Tamale in collaboration with Red Clay (until February 29, 2024).

The exhibition "follows the paths artists, musicians, athletes and soldiers take in reinventing their worlds, charting routes of rebellion that push the limits of life’s possibilities," reads a statement from the organisers. It links “the subjects of the films in the exhibition to these artist-led spaces as they raise questions about the social possibilities of archiving and art." Robin Riskin, the exhibition's co-curator, says, “It’s been amazing to witness how engaging Routes of Rebellion has been for different generations and communities of audience. Shipley’s work tells stories of events and icons in popular culture and politics that may be familiar to many Ghanaian audiences. Yet it brings out these stories in deep and fresh ways that draw together perspectives that may rarely occupy the same space or conversation."

Riskin adds: “In the spirit of Nuku’s commitment to creative experimentation, Shipley’s playful and abstract approach to narrative form leaves space for audience participation. His handheld, hip-hopped, improvisational filming and editing reflect the dynamic qualities of the subjects he covers. Stories provoke audiences to continue telling the stories themselves—an aspect Nuku and Red Clay expand through projects in oral and intertextual archiving.”

The artist-led Foundation for Contemporary Art – Ghana (FCA Ghana) was started by the late anthropologist, conservator and curator Joe Nkrumah; the Australian-Italian artist and writer Virginia Ryan; and 23 other founding members, including artists, gallerists, academics and patrons of the arts. It is similarly invested in creating opportunities and strengthening creative networks. Operating from the W.E.B. Du Bois Centre for Pan-African Research in the Cantonments area of Accra, the foundation has, for almost 20 years, responded to the local context by providing a space for presenting, developing and promoting contemporary art in Ghana through exhibitions, seminars, screenings, artists’ workshops and collaborations with both local and international organisations. Its library is a great resource for research into the practice of artists from Africa and its diaspora.

The Nubuke Foundation, co-founded by the gallerist Odile Tevie; the managing partner at Nubuke Investments and the co-chair of the African Acquisition Committee of Tate Modern Museum in London, Kofi Tutu Agyare; and the sculptor and artist Kofi Setordji, is likewise a dynamic space. A gallery, artist residency, studio space, library, commercial art and gift shop are in its Accra- and Wa-based spaces. The foundation established the Young Ghanaian Artist programme, which supports the practice of new and emerging contemporary artists in the country between the ages of 23 and 30. Participants benefit from opportunities, including mentorship and workshops, to grow their careers. Previous winners have included Lois Arde-Acquah and Theresa Ankomah. 

In 2013, lawyer and author Elikem Nutifafa Kuenyehia established the Kuenyehia Trust for Contemporary Art, organisers of the prestigious Kuenyehia Prize for Contemporary Art, awarded to West African visual artists between the ages of 25 and 40. In addition, the non-profit is behind the Creative Accelerator Program, a training initiative that guides artists on how to build sustainable careers centred around their work. The trust's aims include supporting African artists on the continent and in the diaspora and helping develop vibrant local and international art for African art.

Commercial opportunities have been boosted by Ghana’s leading commercial art gallery, Gallery 1957, which was launched by the British-Lebanese entrepreneur, collector, curator and gallerist Marwan Zakhem in 2016, on the 59^th anniversary of Ghana’s independence (March 6, 1957). He opened the first space inside the Kempinski Hotel Gold Coast City Accra, a property that he built. The gallery has expanded with two more spaces inside the Galleria Mall on the hotel's premises and a third in London, which opened in 2020. The gallery represents or has exhibited the likes of Amoako Boafo, Kwesi Botchway, Afia Prempeh, Joshua Oheneba-Takyi, Serge Attukwei Clottey, Rita Mawuena Benissan, Priscilla Kennedy and Gideon Appah.

“It’s a testament to the quality of the artists we work with. Gallery 1957 has made it its mission to support and grow their international careers since its inception in 2016,” Zakhem says, speaking to the growth of Ghana’s art scene and Gallery 1957’s role in it. “We do this by presenting bold exhibitions, installations and performances as well as building global gallery partnerships and facilitating ongoing artist residency programmes that attract numerous international artists and arts professionals to Ghana.” This includes initiatives like the annual Accra Cultural Week held in September, which marked its eighth edition this year, with Ekow Eshun and Azu Nwagbogu curating exhibitions as part of the celebrations.

Gallery 1957 debuted at Frieze Seoul in 2023, scoring “best booth” nods from both ARTnews and Artsy. The gallery’s programming also includes the annual Yaa Asantewaa Art Prize, which debuted in 2021 and is dedicated to Ghanaian female artists as part of efforts to "further strengthen the gallery’s commitment to supporting and promoting emerging and established artists”, Zakhem says.

Artists like Boafo, Botchway and Joseph Awuah-Darko are also nurturing the next generation, recently opening dot.ateliers, Worldfaze Studio and Residency, and Noldor Artist Residency, respectively. The initiatives provide studio space, resources and opportunities to build the careers of upcoming Ghanaian artists. "These usually independent and artist-led initiatives and spaces are helping to encourage, build and grow a sustainable art ecosystem," says Essé Dabla-Attikpo, the curator, cultural producer and the founder of the art consultancy firm This No Be Art, which focuses on West African contemporary art. Although “strong cultural policies” are still needed to bolster these efforts, Dabla-Attikpo is “very hopeful” that the significant shifts and proliferation of galleries, residencies and events will continue to enrich and promote Ghana’s art world. 

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position of STIR or its Editors.)