Gideon Appah X Tiffany Alfonseca-‘South Facing South (Ghanaman X Quisqueya)’: London

Gideon Appah

Gallery 1957 is pleased to present a presentation of Ghanaian artist, Gideon Appah (b. 1987) on view January 2021 in our London Gallery. In this new body of work, Appah expands on his mystical landscapes and dreamlike narratives in large-scale oil paintings.

A mixed-media artist, Gideon Appah draws from personal experiences to create works seeped in memory, informed greatly by early life experiences in Ghana's capital, Accra. Growing up in a large family, his works are often reflective of a life characterized by strong emotional bonds, religious activities and folklore.

In new other-worldly works, Appah depicts surreal scenes of unknown figures populating natural landscapes. Introducing jewel-like greens alongside washes of peach and pops of colour, his works reveal barely clothed figures against scenes miraged with tropes from legend and myth.

Through nostalgic blues and verdigris, his worlds are abstracted and fragmented, with glimpses of nature and ghostly reflections barely visible. Through these ethereal works, Appah focuses on presence or feelings evoked, in turn alluding to the organic transformations of memories over time. Using thick, rough application of acrylic to build up his compositions, his works respond directly to his own familial stories, whilst also reflecting on a country's national history.

Tiffany Alfonseca

Tiffany Alfonseca debuts a suite of paintings inspired by Peter Sollett's 2002 film Raising VictorVargas, entitled Esclavo de la Sociedad. Collectively, the works presented in the exhibitionchallenge the trope of the hyper masculine Dominican-American man that too often informsbroad representations of Dominican culture, through the lens of queerness. Alfonseca takes thisfilm as a point of departure and conceives a scene in each painting that provides a rebuttal tothe shots that compose Sollett's film. These intimate portraits of Black and Brown subjectsinhabiting private moments and spaces-rendered in Alfonseca's singular palette of varyingpink hues embellished with glittery accent colors-soften pictures we've been trained to seethrough a heteronormative lens. Each work in this show is about the things that are left unseenand unsaid and as such function as liminal snapshots-as the edited scenes of stories bothpersonal and communal.Notes to editorsAbout Tiffany AlfonsecaTiffany Alfonseca (b. 1994) is a Bronx- based Dominican American mixed media artist Alfonsecacontinuously taps into her Afro-Dominican roots and leverages it as a conceptual cantilever that providesa dynamic framework for her artistic practice. Moreover, her work aims to visually articulate that the Blackand Afro-Latinx diaspora does not exist within a monolith, but that these communities are a culturalcornucopia that is vast, varied, and complex. Alfonseca's artwork is an intricate combination of beauty,diversity, and multilingualism that exemplifies the strength of the Black and Afro-Latinx diaspora.

About Tiffany AlfonsecaTiffany Alfonseca (b. 1994) is a Bronx- based Dominican American mixed media artist Alfonsecacontinuously taps into her Afro-Dominican roots and leverages it as a conceptual cantilever that providesa dynamic framework for her artistic practice. Moreover, her work aims to visually articulate that the Blackand Afro-Latinx diaspora does not exist within a monolith, but that these communities are a culturalcornucopia that is vast, varied, and complex. Alfonseca's artwork is an intricate combination of beauty,diversity, and multilingualism that exemplifies the strength of the Black and Afro-Latinx diaspora.