Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh and Tracy Naa Koshie Thompson : “On Universality and Multiplicity: Curating from the Void”

Conceived by Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh, curator in residence of the program Curating Connections 2018/2019, organized by KfW Stiftung and DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program.

During their presentation, Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh and Tracy Naa Koshie Thompson will introduce their respective independent curatorial and artistic practices as examples of the “silent revolution” initiated by blaxTARLINES KUMASI—the contemporary art incubator based at the Department of Painting and Sculpture at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST)—towards universalism, in the context of contemporary art practice in Ghana.

Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh is an artist, curator and writer based in Kumasi, Ghana. He is the current grant holder of KfW Stiftung’s program “Curators in Residence: Curating Connections” in collaboration with the DAAD artists-in-Berlin program. Ohene-Ayeh has co-curated Silence Between the Lines: Anagrams of Emancipated Futures (2015) and Orderly Disorderly (2017), both organized by blaxTARLINES KUMASI. He was guest curator for the inaugural Lagos Biennial (2017) and recently curated Spectacles. Speculations… (2018), featuring 16 artists from Ghana, Holland and Colombia, in Kumasi. He is currently a PhD student at KNUST and publishes essays on www.iubeezy.wordpress.com.

Tracy Naa Koshie Thompson (Ghana) explores the latent ability of ubiquitous materials (synthetic or natural) to transform into unrecognizable, strange, new and mimicry forms. For this purpose, she employs alchemical processes of dissolution and crystallization of the varied morphology of things. Thompson’s emancipated approach to making art creates a disposition that transcends given notions of the art apparatus itself and questions what it could potentially be. She has participated in two large-scale exhibitions organized by blaxTARLINES KUMASI in Accra, namely Cornfields in Accra (2016) and Orderly Disorderly (2017). Thompson is an MFA student at KNUST and is currently participating in the intercontinental exchange program at Städelschule in Frankfurt, Germany.

The program Curators in Residence: Curating Connections is an initiative of the foundation KfW Stiftung and the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program. Previous grant holders include Zasha Colah (Mumbai), Dana Whabira (Harare), Mustafa Hussain Shabbir (Singapur) and Florencia Portocarrero (Lima).

January 25, 2019, 7pm

daadgalerie
Oranienstraße 161
10969 Berlin
Germany

www.berliner-kuenstlerprogramm.dewww.kfw-stiftung.de

Free admission