• YAA ASANTEWAA ART PRIZE 2022
    2022 Yaa Asantewaa Prize recipients

    YAA ASANTEWAA ART PRIZE 2022

    AN ART PRIZE FOR WOMEN ARTISTS from GHANA and its diasporA.

  • Gallery 1957 announced the second edition of The Yaa Asantewaa Art Prize this summer, an art prize dedicated to women artists living and working in Ghana and its diaspora.
     
    We are pleased to announce Priscilla Kennedy as the recipient of the 2022 Yaa Asantewaa Art Prize for Women. Born in 1994, Kennedy lives and works in Kumasi. She is a member of the blaxTARLINES KUMASI collective and is presently pursuing her MFA at the Department of Painting and Sculpture, KNUST-Kumasi, Ghana. She holds a BFA degree from the same Department.
     
    Elisabeth Efua Sutherland and Naomi Amevinya as first and second runner up respectively. 
     
    Named after the prominent Ghanaian queen, the prize launch coincided with the gallery's Cultural Week celebrations, and aims to further strengthen our commitment to supporting and promoting emerging and established artists.
    The art prize is open exclusively to Ghanaian women and self identifying women artists either living in Ghana or across its diaspora. In the future, we look forward to expanding the prize to include all African and African diaspora identifying artists. The prize will award GH₵40,000 alongside an artist residency and exhibition at Gallery 1957, to one winner. A second and third prize of GH₵20,000 and GH₵15,000 will be offered to runners up.
  • The winners were selected by a jury of international experts: Tokini Peterside-Schwebig, Founder of ART X Lagos; Joana Choumali Visual...

    The winners were selected by a jury of international experts: Tokini Peterside-Schwebig, Founder of ART X Lagos; Joana Choumali Visual Artist; Ibrahim Mahama, Artist, Founder of the SCCA, Artistic Director of the 35th Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts (2023); Azu Nwagbogu, Curator, and Founder and director of African Artists' Foundation; Natasha Becker, Curator of African Art at de Young Museum; Katherine Finerty Curator, Art Historian and Writer.

  • We extend gratitude to The Nana Sao Foundation for sponsoring this important moment. The Foundation takes pride in supporting the...
    We extend gratitude to The Nana Sao Foundation for sponsoring this important moment. The Foundation takes pride in supporting the development of young artists through the funding of projects and providing materials for the creation of artistic media.
  • Marwan Zakhem, Founder of Gallery 1957:

    'Listening and working closely with our local community, we have identified a need to support particularly women artists in Ghana. In creating The Yaa Asantewaa Art Prize, we hope to offer a way in which to address the lack of existing support for women and women identifying artists in the country, and its diaspora. Beyond the financial support, the goal is to give participating shortlisted artists a platform for their work, and exposure worldwide.'

  • Priscilla Kennedy, Prize recipient
     

    Priscilla Kennedy

    Prize recipient

    In 2017, Kennedy won the First Merit Award in the Barclays L'atelier Art competition in South Africa for outstanding work. Her practice explores thematic intersections of the body, race, sexuality and fictional histories of objects and life forms. Her method interfaces tapestry, embroidery and painting as means of translating personal narratives mediated by both technology and artisanship. Kennedy projects her stories from fanciful perspectives and uses forms of imaging that reference her body as a medium or site that draws connections between personal narratives, race and feminist politics. While acknowledging the historical connections between craft work and the subordination of women through oppressive structures and domestic systems, she also views these as sites of subversion and potential emancipation.

  • Efua Sutherland, First Runner up

    Efua Sutherland

    First Runner up

    Elisabeth Efua Sutherland has a background in theatre and dance, with a career that encapsulates sculpture, performative objects, cultural production, film and storytelling. Using her body and various elements, she employs a form of myth making to explore the power relationships of our past to our future; our spirit and our material; our elders and our youth; and the idea of custodianship of people, narratives, culture, history, and the future. Her current 2022 projects include ‘The Mud People’, a contemporary circus work and an immersive performance piece, ‘A Spider! A Spider! A Spider!’ as well as ‘Asetena, or The Art of Sitting Down’ an installation using Ashanti traditional architecture and domestic stools.

  • Naomi Amevinya, Second Runner up

    Naomi Amevinya

    Second Runner up
    Naomi Amevinya lives and works in Accra and Mampong Akwapem. She has a background in painting and holds a Bachelor of Fine Art from the Department of Painting and Sculpture of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, Ghana. The artists paintings are inspired by plants and the body presented in an abstract way. ‘I found myself in a space that has led me to an endless process of discovery, also learning about my space, and society’. She is interested in the feminine characteristics of plants in terms of procreation as givers of life, beauty in terms of colour and textures, shape and the forms of nature as a reflection of a woman's body.

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