This week in Accra – our top 10 events

Loom’s Frances Ademola has a popular gallery that exhibits paintings and sculptures by a good selection of Ghana’s foremost artists, with a smattering of expressive Nigerian pieces. The modest space has been here since 1969, and is bursting at the seams with the work of nearly 100 artists. If Ademola is around, she’s delightful company, chatting exuberantly about artists such as Seth and Serge Clottey and Gabriel Eklou, and happily offering her great knowledge of the Ghanaian art scene, past and present. Loom is regarded as one of Ghana’s premier galleries.

The hugely respected Ghanaian artist Ablade Glover established this renowned arts venue, which has become one of the most important of its kind in Ghana. There are three expansive floors of art displayed in cool marble galleries. Some are by established artists, such as Owusu Ankomah and George Hughes, whose paintings are reminiscent of Jean Michel Basquiat and Willem De Kooning, while others are by new and upcoming artists like Ebenezer Borlabie. Market, rural and urban scenes are interspersed with political satires – and naturally, there are also the shrouded figures and staccatoed crowd scenes by Glover himself. There are collectors’ pieces too: Asafo flags with appliquéd and embroidered symbols; ancient strip-woven Kente cloths by the Akan and Ewe; African masks of the type that inspired Picasso; and intricately carved furniture. Also on show are full-sized coffins in the shapes of crabs, running shoes and eagles. Everything is for sale. There’s a lovely pool out the back. 

The Foundation for Contemporary Art at the WEB du Bois Centre (a research centre for Pan-African history and culture, named after African-American civil rights activist William Edward Burghardt Du Bois) was set up by Joe Nkrumah, formerly of the National Museum, and Australian artist Virginia Ryan. It exhibits work by up-and-coming artists in interesting ways, such as its Art in the Garden projects. Its growing library, now with more than 800 books about visual arts, is one of the organisation’s most important projects. It’s also developing a debating forum and a public database of artists, organisations, galleries and patrons. There’s a wide range of information on its website.

Artists take to James Town’s streets for this vibrant alfresco art festival that spans acrylic street painting, stencil work, side walk painting, chalk art and vast graffiti murals. Past events have also featured large art installations and photography displays, as well as live music, DJ sets and theatre and spoken word performances. The festival takes place along High Street James Town between the Light House down to Ussher Fort. One of the best events of the year - the artwork on display is amazing, the music is energising and the artistic buzz is unforgettable.

Since achieving independence in 1957, Ghana's artists have been steadily embracing a freedom of self-expression that is transporting them out of the controlled and literal, and into a playful and exciting meld of semi-abstract and impressionism. Traditional Ghanaian scenes remain popular subject matter, but today's artist can be found confidently experimenting with colour and form, and the market is awash with bold and emotive pieces.No one has had a better view of this post-independence transformation than Loom gallery's Frances Ademola - an ardent champion of Ghanaian artists for over 40 years. When Time Out Accra popped in to browse the stacks of paintings filling Loom's walls and giant folders, we took the opportunity to get Ademola's pick of 21st century Ghana's brightest artistic talents.An artist she first encountered when he was just 12 is Samuel Agbenyegah (also known as Samkobee), whose semi-abstract figures demonstrate a bewitching understanding of colour blending and form. 'He came to me when he was 12 with two wonderful paintings,' explains Ademola. 'I said "who did these?" He said "me". I didn't believe him and told him to go and do another one. He came back with four more.'Bowled over by this young talent, Ademola had one big piece of advice for him. 'I told him "do not go to art school, whatever you do! It will take away your natural flair." He is now 30-something, and such a natural artist.'One of the most established Ghanaian artists found exhibiting both...

Carving its way out of the ‘West African literature’ hold all category and emerging as a genre in its own right, Ghanaian fiction has received due credit in recent years with young authors taking the reigns from the likes of Kofi Awoonor (This Earth, My Brother, 1971), Ama Ata Aidoo (Our Sister Killjoy, 1977) and Ayi Kwei Armah (The Healers, 1979). Ghana’s new generation of writers includes poets, successful bloggers, authors of young adult fiction, crime fiction and strong contenders on ‘recommended new novelist’ tables in bookstores across the globe. Probably last year’s most talked about novel of this realm is Ghana Must Go, by Taiye Selasi. It leaves readers with plenty to chew on, with its unusual narrative style and complex characters. The intelligent Ms Selasi has certainly stepped into the literary world with a grand entrance (her fan base includes Toni Morrison and Salman Rushdie). The story revolves around a Boston family of six  - the mother Nigerian, the father Ghanaian - whose mixed up lives repel and retract like a rubber band. Accra is referred to more as a backdrop to the storyline, however it is obvious the city and Ghana are familiar territory for Selasi with descriptions such as “lush Ghana, soft Ghana, verdant Ghana, where fragile things die” and “the smell of Ghana, a contradiction, a cracked clay pot: the smell of dryness, wetness, both, the damp of earth and dry of dust.” Selasi enjoys flitting between hot, slower paced Accra and crisp, snow covered...

All writers have their specialities. Dr Kwei Quartey deals in mysteries, and perhaps the biggest one of all is how a medical practitioner finds the time to write best-selling crime fiction. The Ghana-born California resident, a full-time doctor, has just released the third in his series of Inspector Darko Dawson mystery novels. Titled Murder At Cape Three Points, it sees the detective delving into a controversial but topical area: something the blurb describes as the “greed and corruption of Ghana’s brand new oil industry”.  If you’ve not yet come across Inspector Darko Dawson, here’s a brief introduction. He’s a CID detective in Accra. He has a weakness for marijuana, an anger management problem and a son with a congenital heart defect. He also has a mean eye for crime-solving. In short, he’s the kind of complex central character that every successful detective novel needs. So much so, in fact, that the first Darko Dawson novel, Wife of the Gods, made the Los Angeles Times bestseller list. The second and third in the series have both drawn positive reviews too.  And despite the super-human time management involved in juggling crime-writing and medicine (he gets up very early, apparently), it appears there’s actually a natural symbiosis between the two disciplines. “Oh, sure,” Quartey says, speaking to Time Out Accra from his home in Pasadena. “The detection that you’re doing in medicine is very similar to the work a police detective would do. When you have a patient come...

I’m no art aficionado, “But who needs to be to rub shoulders with the who’s who and have a glass or three of champers, while perusing some pretty pictures?” I thought. So, off we went (my long neglected clutch bag and I) to the opening of Jeremiah Quarshie’s Yellow is the Colour of Water exhibition hosted by Gallery 1957, jewel of Accra’s latest and swankiest lodging, the Kempinski Gold Coast Hotel. Make no mistake, the well-heeled were there, but thankfully diluted by the city’s hip creatives and intellectuals, international visitors, and more ordinary folk like yours truly. This formed a delightfully cosmopolitan crowd who all appeared to relish exploring Quarshie’s hyper real and detailed portraits hung in among a construction site on the Kempinski property. What greater compliment could any artist ask for than for such a wide range of people to all be enjoying his work at once? Too late for the booze (or perhaps too early?), I grabbed a cold glass of cranberry instead, and made my way to one end of the exhibition. The stark surrounds and scale of the site’s concrete walls achieved a dramatic, but muted, backdrop for the artworks. It didn’t take long to notice a significant shift in the demeanour of the artist’s subjects over time. “Gifte” from Yellow is the Colour of Water I, completed in 2013, is slumped, demoralised and exhausted, across a wheel barrow carrying two yellow “Kufour” gallons. These recycled cooking oil containers are often used in Ghana, and across West...

Ama Asantewa Diaka is the CEO of fashion brand, Alikoto Clothing, and greeting card company, Yobbings. She also heads up Love Rock, an NGO aiming to assist youth in becoming active members of their communities. However, it’s her spoken word poetry she’s most well known for. Going by the stage name Poetra Asantewa, she has performed at numerous national and international events in Accra, and is featured in Sandra Krampelhuber’s film “Accra Power”, which was screened at this year’s Chale Wote Street Art Festival.   Tash Morgan-Etty caught up with Poetra after the screening to find out more about her thoughts on the film, and how Accra influences her work. You were featured in “Accra Power” where the filmmaker used you as one of the film’s narrators. How did you get involved, and how do you feel about the outcome of the film? When Sandra came to Ghana last year she approached me and showed me her work “100% Dakar”, which documents artists in Dakar and their work. She said that when she got here she thought it would be a good idea to have a theme like “power” or “Dumsor”, and that was a strange coincidence because the theme for our performance last year was “power”. So, it kind of fused perfectly with what she wanted to do. I asked her about the artists in the film, because I wanted to be sure there was going to be a gender balance in the film. She said that there was a female boxer, a female dancer, etc. I was quite pleased with that. And, so, we did a couple of shoots. I saw...

A new and provocative art exhibition is soon to open in Gallery1957 in Accra. Addressing issues as human nature and the duality between the feminine and masculine, the exhibition is bringing attention to the marginalisation of minority groups. Titled Rituals of Becoming, the Ghanaian-Togolese artist Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi, who works under the pseudonym crazinisT artisT, mixes live performances, video projections, and displayed items.  Through Drag performances (the clothing associated with one gender role when worn by a person of another gender), crazinisT artisT strips one identity in order to assume another – the artist seeks to redefine common perceptions of body and sexuality.    While the video installation will showcase the cross-dressing artist’s daily rituals of transformation, the material installation displays a collection of female clothes gathered and worn by the artist over the years. Collectively, the objects and videos seek to establish a new understanding of self and other, where the other isn’t another individual, but part of the same body.   About the artist: crazinisT artisT (b. 1981, Ho, Volta Region, Ghana), aka Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi, currently lives and works in Kumasi, Ghana.  He received his Bachelor Degree in Fine Arts from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi in 2014, where he is currently pursuing his MFA.    About the curator: Maria Rus Bojan is an international curator, art advisor and writer based in Amsterdam,...