Art Basel Hong Kong: Giddeon Appah Amoako Boafo Kwesi Botchway Serge Attukwei Clottey Tiffanie Delune Godfried Donkor Nabeeha Mohamed and Kaloki Nyamai.

Gallery 1957 proudly presents a group exhibition showcasing leading voices from the African continent including Gideon Appah, Amoako Boafo, Kwesi Botchway, Serge Attukwei Clottey, Tiffanie Delune, Godfried Donkor, Nabeeha Mohamed and Kaloki Nyamai.

These artists' reclaiming of the Black body in art is refiguring the conventions of portrait tradition with an approach that fiercely explores personal and timely questions. Appah, Boafo, Clottey and Donkor are four acclaimed Ghanaian artists who offer distinctive stylistic responses to portraiture. While Boafo’s alluring characters bear witness to the reawakening of the portrait tradition, Donkor looks back to history to untangle what makes an icon and a legend.

Appah’s surrealist and figurative approach to portraiture references his upbringing in Accra. His otherworldly and ethereal scenes manifest how memory operates through remembering, forgetting, and the trance-like state of dreams. Clottey's figurative painting made of duct tape and oil on cork board exposes themes of materiality, fashion, and media. Kenyan multidisciplinary artist Nyamai pieces together fragmented forms using a multi-media approach to figurative arts, producing textured and layered interpretations of the self.

In conversation with the paintings on display, Delune's mixed-media abstract works on cotton canvas invite the viewer to step into a realm of intuition and spirituality. Dreamlike apparitions and travel memories are brought together in Delune’s multi-layered works which draw on symbols of the artist’s diverse family background while touching on femininity and spirituality. Mohamed turns towards an aesthetics of tender creation with abstracted sculptures of elongated surreal high-heels, landscape and still life paintings.

All eight artists offer distinctive stylistic responses to identity and materiality, exploring African identity in rich textures that reveal figures and abstract forms. Through their creations, the artists in this showcase seek to raise awareness and reinstate ideas surrounding the African historical and contemporary narrative.