Ghanaian artist Larry Amponsah reflects on black identity in first UAE show
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Loading... - Adzo Asamoah
- 30 Jan 2023
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The marketplaces of Accra, with their clashes of colours and symphonic bustle, serve as potent inspiration to Larry Amponsah’s paintings — less in terms of subject matter, perhaps, than his overall collage-like approach to the art form, which has him splicing figures from old fashion magazines as well as from the barbershops of London.
The Ghanaian artist is marking his first UAE solo show at Lawrie Shabibi gallery at Alserkal Avenue. The exhibition, The Soil From Which We Came, is running until February 17, and features large-scale paintings brimming with mixed imagery that are collated like collages. The works focus on contemporary black culture and identity with an awareness of global interconnectivity.
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Collages of brambles, flowers in bloom and vegetables form backdrops to people modelled with features seemingly ripped from advertisements and other media. From a distance, the works seem to be just that — scraps of overlaid images from fashion magazines.
As viewers draw closer, however, Amponsah’s technical prowess as a painter shines. His process revolves around meticulously arranging the compositions from smaller collages, before digitally manipulating them, enlarging them and painting them on canvas.
Amponsah earned degrees in painting from the Royal College of Art in London, Jiangsu University in China and the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana. He has since been shortlisted for the 2019 Dentons Art Prize, and won the Be Smart About Art Award that same year. He is also currently a Trustee of The the Kuenyehia Art Trust for Contemporary Art in Ghana. Read More…
