How Ghana’s Artists Built Their Own Ecosystem

“It’s like when a footballer becomes a coach, they understand the tactics on the field,” says Joshua Oheneba-Takyi, in response to a question on how artist-led spaces in Ghana are the engine behind the country’s burgeoning global reputation.

The Ghanaian artist is speaking from personal experience. In 2021, he relocated from Kumasi, capital of the West African nation's Ashanti Region, for his first residency at a now-closed space in Accra. It would be the start of his path to becoming a full-time artist. 

Artist-founders, because of their experiences and knowledge, have a “sensibility” that determines how they approach their roles, says Oheneba-Takyi. They are more attuned to the needs of the artists they work with.

Since that residency, work by Oheneba-Takyi, the founder of Creccents Studio, has been shown in solo and group shows at Gallery 1957 (Ghana and London), Saatchi Gallery in London, Muruani Mercier Gallery (Belgium), Shazar Gallery (Naples), and at art fairs including Art x Lagos, Art Rotterdam and 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair in France.  

Ghanaian artist Joshua Oheneba-Takyi. Photo by Gus Sarkodee. Courtesy the artist. 

Oheneba-Takyi’s example speaks to the prevailing situation in Ghana where artists must build for themselves and their colleagues. While there have been measures introduced by the presidents who followed after Dr Kwame Nkrumah – the country’s first leader, known for his deliberate attention to the arts – reliable government-led infrastructure and support for the country’s creative sector hasn’t been nearly sufficient. 

As a result, artists have had to forge their own destiny. In 1993, legendary Ghanaian artist Ablade Glover founded the Artists Alliance Gallery as a place to show all forms of work. Housed in a three-story building on the La Road east of central Accra, it continues to be a meaningful space for art sales and display in Ghana. 

Another artist-led space in Ghana is Compound House Gallery founded in 2022 by artist and curator Nuna Adisenu-Doe, which supports contemporary artists with curatorial direction from artist Tracy Naa Koshie Thompson. The programming is shaped by the teachings of Professor karî’kạchä seid’ou and by contemporary Ghanaian artists like Ibrahim Mahama. 

The name of the space is drawn from the Ghanaian communal system of sharing spaces in middle and lower income communities. Essentially, it thrives off collaboration, dialogue and exchange. It is billed as a platform for ‘fostering experimental exhibition-making, critical discourse and artistic innovation’, and serves as ‘an incubator for artists, thinkers, and cultural workers who seek to challenge dominant narratives, interrogate societal structures, and engage with urgent contemporary issues’, says a document shared with The Art Journal. 

Kum Ase- A Field Filled with Golden Spikes, 2023. Photo by Ernest Ofori Sackitey. Courtesy Compound House Gallery.

While he is yet to work directly with the team behind Compound House Gallery, Oheneba-Takyi shares that he’s “been privileged to have an inside view” of them working on projects and pulling off successful shows and projects regardless of challenges, “because they know how important the work is”. 

He also pointed to the Foundation for Contemporary Art–Ghana, which he calls “a very important” artist-run space. Established in 2004, it has been led for years by co-directors Ato Annan and Adwoa Amoah, who are both artists and curators. 

FCA-Ghana is a crucial element of the country’s art scene, hosting events including workshops, talks, screenings, seminars and exhibitions in its Accra space, which also has a library with hundreds of books on all things creative arts. It is currently showing Stomata: Dr Mahashe’s Open Frames (until 18 July) by Ghanaian photographer Eric Gyamfi, originally produced as a commission in response to the 59th Carnegie International. 

One of the guests at the exhibition opening was London-born and based Ghanaian-Vincentian artist Emma Prempeh, who was in the country as a member of the sixth cohort of residents at dot.ateliers, founded in 2020 by Amoako Boafo. 

Artist-led spaces have 'filled a gap' in the absence of state-funded backing.

“Thank you for allowing me the space to create again in Ghana,” she later wrote on social media. “It was such a developmental time for my practice, friends and family.” Boafo has previously said that he wanted the place to help artists in their practice, and that it was a place he wished he had when he was coming up as an artist.

The residency is one of Ghana’s many artist-led spaces, which also includes Terra Alta founded by Elisabeth Efua Sutherland, Worldfaze Art Practice founded by Kwesi Botchway, both in Accra, and perforcraZe International Artist Residency founded by crazinisT artisT in Kumasi. Others include Nkyinkyim Museum founded by Kwame Akoto-Bamfo in Ada, ArtHaus in Mampong Akuapem, founded by Kofi Setordji, who is also a co-founder of Nubuke Foundation in Accra, and Tamale-based Red Clay Studio, and Nkrumah Volini and Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art, founded by Ibrahim Mahama, who topped ArtReview’s 2026 Power 100 list. 

The artist-led spaces have “filled a gap” in the absence of state-funded backing, says Essé Dabla-Attikpo, an Accra-based Independent curator, founder of This No Be Art, an art consultancy firm and the former project manager for Benin's debut national pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2024 . For more than a dozen years she has worked with early- and mid-career artists across West Africa, supporting them in building sustainable careers. She is of the opinion that artist-led spaces “means retaining ownership and making culture for us by us”. 

Essé Dabla-Attikpo, an Accra-based curator and founder of This No Be Art, courtesy of Fullish-Art

The issue of accommodation is always a concern, with artists often having their studios outside the centre of the cities that they live and work in, sometimes in their family homes or making use of available spaces in the homes where they live. At times, Dabla-Attikpo facilitates studio visits for collectors to familiarise themselves with artists and their work. 

Artist-led studios are a major factor in offsetting these space concerns. “The most important thing [for artists],” Oheneba-Takyi says, is to have “the space to work and to be able to do what they need to do. I think that is how the Ghanaian art space has become vibrant.”