Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh, Co-curator Rencontres de Bamako 12. Courtesy Rencontres de Bamako
IBA Stage: Rencontres de Bamako – African Biennial of Photography
April 28th, 2023 (Friday)
11am (Bamako/GMT)
Joining our presentation of the 13th edition of Rencontres de Bamako – African Biennial of Photography, together with its director Igo Diarra, will be Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh. He has been a member of the curatorial committee of the 12th edition of the biennial taking place in Bamako since 1994, artistic advisor to Cecilia Alemani for the 59th Venice Biennale, and has co-organized a pedagogical project during Documenta Fifteen in 2022. We look forward to hearing Kwasi’s insight into the role Rencontres has played for Mali’s contemporary art scene and wider cultural life.
Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh is a curator and critic based in Kumasi, Ghana. He is a key member of the blaxTARLINES coalition and Exit Frame Collective who are, besides artistic and curatorial projects, intervening in the intellectual infrastructure of professional art practice in Ghana by initiating the annual peer-to-peer intensive professional development program, CritLab. Ohene-Ayeh headed the curatorial team for Akutia: Blindfolding the Sun and the Poetics of Peace (A Retrospective of Agyeman Ossei ‘Dota’) in Tamale, Ghana (2020-2021). He co-curated the 12th edition of Bamako Encounters: Biennale of African Photography in Mali (2019-2020) and is recipient of the ACASA Award for Curatorial Excellence in 2021. He is one of the Artistic Advisors for the 59th Venice Biennale (International Art Exhibition in 2022), under the artistic direction of Cecilia Alemani. Ohene-Ayeh is co-organizer of Kelas Bareng/Joint Class (since 2020)— an ongoing online experimental educational initiative between Gudskul (Indonesia), Städelschule (Germany), blaxTARLINES KUMASI (KNUST, Ghana) and Nordland Kunst og filmhøgskole (Norway). On the occasion of documenta fifteen in 2022 Kelas Bareng took place at Fridskul (Fridericianum as school) on the invitation of lumbung member Gudskul. Ohene-Ayeh is a teacher at the Department of Painting & Sculpture, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi.
