Strips, Stripes And Grids

Ghana Sun 25-10-2009

Strips, Stripes And Grids
By John Owoo

Atta Kwami’s work depicts interconnecting lines, squares and blocks that echo the colours of the elegant kente cloth from the Ashanti and Volta Regions of Ghana

Ghanaian artist and curator Atta Kwami is inspired by diverse stimuli but his adopted city of Kumasi appears to be the driving force of his intimate portrayal of pulsating rhythms and entrepreneurial landscapes.

As he leads me into his Ayeduase house, which is located close to the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) Kumasi, where he was a senior lecturer for over two decades – I am confronted with a couple of evocative installations and paintings that bring memories of the pioneers of Ghanaian contemporary art.

My eyes move in all directions admiring the simplicity of the house as against numerous artworks – perhaps a couple of them priceless. In the process, I spot a 1950s kitchen sink carefully tucked in the garden. I had planned a quick visit but overwhelmed with art and a night of art talk, I readily agreed to stay for the night.

^{Untitled by Atta Kwami}

“More than anything else I feel my working aesthetic has been shaped by the rich visual culture of Kumasi, where I have lived since 1986. The multitudes of sign painters, whose creative activities have transformed the visual character of the city have engaged my attention”, he tells me as we settle for a vegetarian dish with his wife Pamela, who is also an artist.

Kwami has a sharp record of consistent exhibitions in several parts of the world – these include Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, South Africa, Kenya, United States and the United Kingdom, where he impressed art lovers and critics alike in places such as the National Museums in Ghana/Kenya, Kunsthalle Basel (Switzerland), Museum of African Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Smithsonian Institution and Grey/Howard Scott Gallery - all in the United States.

Three Ghanaian artists, Nigeria based painter/academic El Anatsui, Kwesi Owusu Ankoma, who lives and works in Germany and Takoradi based painter Rikki Wemega Kwawu together with Atta Kwami showcased their works during the 2008 exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which also involved diverse artists from several counties.

A soft spoken man, Kwami’s compositions of crisscrossing lines and adjoining squares recall rich and colourful Ghanaian textiles from Ashanti and the Volta regions. They swing and rock with faint rigors that appear to resonate and reflect the heat of the African sun.

His works are intelligent and articulate; indeed he is an artist with a constantly questioning vision - a vision that is transmitted through fantastic visual objects with intense colours that abound with simplified geometric shapes, blocks and grids in varying sizes.

“Small scale is not a limitation, it does not reduce the amount of energy that I put into a pictorial surface - although I often work on large surfaces, I feel equally intimate with small paintings. Self forgetfulness can be reached on a small scale just as effectively on a larger one and small images can indeed create a surprising visual impact”, continues Kwami, who recently organized an international workshop dubbed Sansa, which attracted artists from all continents.

“Workshops have been quite phenomenal in my career - artists learn from other artists. Indeed, workshops are informal universities where artists can learn amazing things in a short period. I still rely on the influence of my parents (mum was an artist and dad a musician) and the support of my wife in the quest to enhance my career”, he adds.

Trained at the College of Art, KNUST, Royal College of Art and The Open University (United Kingdom), Kwami has combined his work as an artist with a desire to chronicle Ghanaian art history. His mother, Grace Kwami a gifted artist/educator, was a critical formative influence making a lot of impact in his work.

He has effectively employed various aspects of his daily life - kiosks, commercial sign painting, woven textiles and music - all of which allow for serial compositions in strips, stripes and grids. Undeniably, he has focused on color as his subject matter, perhaps taking him back to where he started - with the sensitivity of his mother’s paintings and textiles”.

“Lack of critics in Ghana is a problem, we really do need them otherwise we are going to be mediocre. We also need highly informative art journals, even if they are sporadic, erratic and irregular, concludes Kwami, whose lino-cut printing techniques are a composite of relief processes including inks, linoleum, woodcutting tools, rollers, brushes and acetate.

As we finish our meal, prepared by Pamela, our discussion on art continues, drifting towards our perceptions of the future of Ghanaian art, availability of galleries, the need for a critical and intellectual discourse on art in Ghana, education and the continuous struggle to answer the question “What is Art”.

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