Artist Talk with Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh

blaxTARLINES: Giving Commons Refuge and Refuge Commons

Lecture and talk with Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh, moderated by Gabriel Schimmeroth(in English)

DATE: 26th May, 2022

VENUE: MARKK Museum am Rothenbaum Kulturen und Künste der Welt, Hamburg, Germany

TIME: 19:00 (5pm GMT)

blaxTARLINES KUMASI is a trans-generational and trans-cultural community affiliated to the Department of Painting & Sculpture at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Ghana. It is an experimental incubator of contemporary art and a sharing community. With lineage of radical art and community projects dating back to the 1990s, the coalition operates on the universalist principle of preemptive equality towards economic and intellectual emancipation. Finding kinship in the spirit put forward in Fred Moten’s and Stefano Harney’s theory of the “Undercommons” (Moten & Harney 2013), Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh will speak about the fugitive model of art education and art practice implemented by blaxTARLINES KUMASI in Ghana to tactically respond to crisis points such as the general lack of public funding for contemporary art practice in the region.

The events are broadly programmed as part of the 8th Photo Triennale in Hamburg, curated by Koyo Kouoh and a team of associate curators namely Rasha Salti, Gabriella Bechhurst Feijoo, Oluremi C. Onabanjo and Cale Garrido.

Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh is a curator and critic based in Kumasi, Ghana. His work is compelled by the revolutionary hope proposed by artist-pedagogue karî’kạchä seid’ou to “transform art from the status of commodity to gift”. He is one of the artistic advisors for the 59th Venice Biennale (International Art Exhibition in 2022), under the artistic direction of Cecilia Alemani. Ohene-Ayeh co-organizes Kelas Bareng/Joint Class (since 2020)— an ongoing online experimental educational initiative between Gudskul (Indonesia), Städelschule (Germany), blaxTARLINES KUMASI (KNUST, Ghana) and Nordland Kunst og filmhøgskole (Norway). He is recipient of the ACASA Award for Curatorial Excellence (2021), and headed the curatorial team for Akutia: Blindfolding the Sun and the Poetics of Peace (A Retrospective of Agyeman Ossei ‘Dota’) organised by Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art (SCCA) Tamale and Red Clay, in Ghana (2020-2021). He also co-curated the 12th edition of Bamako Encounters: Biennale of African Photography themed Streams of Consciousness: A Concatenation of Dividuals in Mali (2019-2020). Ohene-Ayeh is presently a lecturer at the Department of Painting & Sculpture, KNUST in Kumasi.

markk-hamburg.de