Residencies

Gallery 1957 is glad to host Nala Opiangah in residency.

 Naïla Opiangah (b. 1994, Libreville, Gabon) is an artist and writer working between New York City and Accra. In 2013, she moved to the US from Gabon to study architecture and design. She attended Chicago’s Harold Washington College and the Illinois Institute of Technology from which she graduated with a Bachelor of Architecture. While undergoing her architecture training, she started developing a strong interest in the drawing and painting of nude Black women. Her work today explores concepts of identity, self-assessment and interpersonal relationships, through a more abstract depictions of nude Black women. Her paintings are primarily oil on diverse fabrics and watercolor on paper.

Her solo show with Gallery 1957, Accra will be presented in June 2022.

Gallery 1957 is proud to have had the brilliant artist Tjasa Rener in residency for the past two months.
Ghana-based Slovenian artist, Rener has studied painting at Academy of Fine Arts & Design at University of Ljubljana and printmaking at Academy of Fine Arts at the University of Zagreb, Croatia and has participated in many group and solo exhibitions around the globe.
During her residency at Gallery 1957, Rener has painted a number of large and medium portraits with extremely fast strokes of paint and charcoal through a sketchy technique that defines her unique aesthetic by capturing her personal impression of the person portrayed. Every figure she has painted has a particular relationship to Gallery 1957 and has posed during a live painting session with the artist in her studio.
We look forward to exhibiting her work in Accra in her first solo exhibition with the gallery opening later this year.

We are so happy to have had brilliant artist Isshaq Ismail (b. 1989) in residency with us.
Ismail's  bold and colorful paintings explore how the social, cultural and political conditions of contemporary life impact identity. In a style that he describes as “semi-abstraction,” Ismail paints peculiar faces and figures in vivid impasto, typically using black or brown hues and depicting them with accentuated features. His work embodies dynamism with thick sweeps of gestural brushstrokes, sharp strikes of the palette knife and the precise application of acrylic paint across the canvas. The everyday process of human society inspires his pieces and engages viewers with personal experiences and projection into the future from a personally perceived point of view. Through these striking and evocative works, he aims to subvert and question canonical ideas of beauty; explore themes of desire, resilience, hope and power and in his own words, “represent the masses and advocate for the voiceless.”
Ismail was born in Accra, Ghana. Since graduating from Ghanatta College of Arts and Design in 2012, he has exhibited in both his native Ghana and internationally in New York, Miami, London, Dubai and Cape Town.
We look forward to his opening May 13, 2022 at Gallery 1957 Accra.