Afia Prempeh Ghanaian, b. 1986
Afia Prempeh (b. 1986 Kumasi, Ghana) is a genre-bending painter whose practice uses aesthetic traditions as a means of hacking them. Her background in still-life and landscape painting informs her interdisciplinary approach to portraiture.
A slow-process and detail-oriented perfectionist, Prempeh spent years avoiding the human figure. When she graduated from art school and began supporting herself from commissions, she found that she could not escape requests for portraits. The artist chose to face her fears—while giving her clients more than what they asked for. She would bring in multiple compositional strategies, and she would use her subjects’ stories to explore narrative.
The residency with Gallery 1957 marks the first time Prempeh has had the luxury to develop a solo body of work. Her ongoing struggle to balance her independent interests with market demands thus takes a different shape.
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UNLIMITED III: The African Family
Curated by Marwan Zakhem 23 May - 13 Jul 2024The first and second iteration of this monumental group exhibition took place respectively in 2022 and 2023. Both editions, curated by Gallery 1957’s founder director Marwan Zakhem, invited artists from...Read more -
Unlimited II
Galleria Mall, Third Floor, Kempinski Hotel Gold Coast, Accra 15 Jun - 12 Aug 2023Gallery 1957 is pleased to present UNLIMITED II . The first edition of UNLIMITED in 2022 showcased works which grappled with a creative humanisation of locality and this sentiment continues...Read more -
Group Show - The Storytellers
London 26 May - 16 Jul 2022The art of storytelling runs deep in any society. Even before the written word, the oral tradition of telling tales and experiences to one’s community was a way to build...Read more -
Afia Prempeh- We Could be...
Accra, Gallery III 19 Nov - 31 Dec 2021Gallery 1957 is delighted to present the debut solo exhibition by Ghanaian artist Afia Prempeh. The project is the fruit of a 7-month-long residency with the Gallery at our studios...Read more -
[West] African Renaissance
Gallery 1957 in collaboration with Christie's Dubai 14 Nov - 14 Dec 2021These artists have been trailblazers in what is considered to be a Renaissance for modern and contemporary art from Africa and the African diaspora, with artists from the continent gaining...Read more
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Prempeh’s urge for independent practice was nursed during her time in the Kumasi College of Art. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Painting from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (K.N.U.S.T.) in 2009, just as the Department’s cross-genre curricular adjustments were intensifying. Having caught the early drifts of these conceptual currents, Prempeh could be considered among a crop of seedlings from the Kumasi Contemporary’s ‘disorderly garden’. Her practice continues to sprawl across Kumasi, Accra, and their imaginative extensions.
Prempeh’s works have been exhibited in all three end-of-year exhibitions held by blaxTARLINES KUMASI, K.N.U.S.T., with the Ghana Museum and Monuments Board in Accra (‘the Gown must go to Town’, 2015; ‘Cornfields in Accra’, 2016; and ‘Orderly Disorderly’, 2017). Her paintings thus far are held in collections of Reverends, Presidents, Friends, and Fathers. Her most precious creations, she has kept for herself.
