London, Unit 1 Gallery | Workshop, The Ingram Prize 2024, 14 – 17 November 2024
Takyi uses the colour blue as a base, leaning on blue’s rarity in nature to create environments with ephemeral humanoids that symbolise the narratives from their daydreams, memories. Their practice fuses elements of Ghanaian folklore and worldbuilding with anthropological photography. Their journey as an artist began with a fascination with portraiture, and desire to paint hidden aspects of a person – capturing the unseen.
“I am interested in the metaphysical world and am drawn to symbolism from my Ghanaian heritage, using imagery from colonial anthropological archives of African people and transmuting them into narratives. I present concepts and stories using humanoids spirits and offer the viewer different ways of looking, through the eyes of a visitor, as an anthropologist, and native to the worlds I create. Through the use of painting, drawing and a blue palette, my work presents dualistic meanings and perspectives.
This painting was born out of my desire to connect with my unknown ancestors, and has emerged from my search through the archives of anthropologist R.S. Rattray who documented Ghanaian folk through photography and fieldwork in the 19th century.”
