October 20 - 31, 2020
critlab
CritLab Aims To Build A Network Of Professionals Who Desire To Push The Boundaries Of Art Thought, Production And Exhibition In The International Field Of Contemporary Art.
Project initiated by Foundation for Contemporary Art-Ghana in partnership with ExitFrame Collective, blaxTARLINES KUMASI and SCCA Tamale.
Participation in CritLab will be open to 12 participants (artists, curators, and art writers) selected through an open call.
No fee is charged for participation.
CritLab. 2020
Programme Syllabus
October 20th-31st, 2020
The inaugural edition of CritLab is predated and inspired by the Global Critic Clinics— organised by Kianga Ford and Shane Aslan Selzer— hosted by the Foundation of Contemporary Art in Ghana between 2012-2014. In the spirit of peer-to-peer learning, CritLab will establish a system of exchanges that will bring facilitators and participants together in developing their respective practices with the aim of generating and participating in locally relevant conversations on contemporary art. The intellectual infrastructure that is created enables participants respond to, as well as intervene in, emerging trends, ideas, and standards in the international exhibition culture, the art market, art history, critical theory and much more.
This inaugural edition of CritLab will focus on the climate of Ghanaian contemporary art, while also reflecting on how the commitments and responsibilities associated with making art, curating, and writing about art today necessitates a globalised disposition. With regard to the seminars, working proficiency in English is essential and familiarity with at least one local language is recommended.
CritLab aims to build a network of professionals who desire to push the boundaries of art production, art thought, and exhibition making in the international field of contemporary art. It is designed as a 12-day intensive programme adaptable to the framework of the participant’s practice, irrespective of medium. The programme rigorously absorbs participants in a schedule of site visits, seminars, curated screenings, thematic roundtable discussions, and presentations that lean into critical studio practice, while addressing the processes involved in developing concepts, exhibition proposals, and professional profiles related to portfolio development, graduate study, critical writing, documentation of work, accessing global resources and social networking.
CritLab brings together professionals from art institutions and universities in Ghana and elsewhere around the world who will facilitate practical and intellectual exchanges. Individual and group advisement sessions, lectures, studio visits, and roundtable discussions will be led by a group of professionals that includes Bernard Akoi-Jackson, Ph.D (artist and academic, Ghana), Adwoa Amoah (artist and Co-Director of FCA – Ghana), Ato Annan (artist and Co-Director of FCA – Ghana), Kelvin Haizel (artist, Ghana), Nontobeko Ntombela (curator, writer, and academic, South Africa), Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh (artist, curator, and critic, Ghana), among others.
Program overview:
CritLab is designed to compel participants to be conscious of the universality of art as well as the responsibilities and challenges that come with contemporary art practice. The initiative aims to establish a network of professionals from Ghana, Africa and other regions of the world concerned with growing and sustaining criticality in art practice. CritLab is targeted towards independent and self-driven practice— whether participants work independently or in institutions. Topics will range from the pragmatics of professional development; creating infrastructure in conditions of hopelessness; constructive approaches to building relationships with other professionals and institutions, locally and internationally; understanding the theoretical underpinnings of art history as inherited from imperialist structures and the necessity of emancipating professional practice; and incorporating more ways of creative thinking beyond human-centered approaches to making and thinking about art.
Readings: Literature covering art, curating, art writing and more will be made available to all participants before the programme officially starts, with the objective to strengthen understanding on the polemics and topical issues in contemporary art.
Seminars and Site Visits: All participants will meet every morning as a group to have up to three-hour workshop seminars and presentations led by the key and guest facilitators. The seminars will be supplemented by site visits ranging from artists’ studios, to commercial and private art spaces in order to plug participants into the local professional context through direct engagement.
Individual Meetings: During the 12 days, each participant will be scheduled to take part in two individual meetings with select key and/or guest facilitators. These 20-minute sessions will provide the opportunity for one-on-one advising on topics that are tailored specifically to the participant’s project proposal.
Presentations: Peer-to-peer learning between facilitators and participants will be stimulated by individual presentations made by each participant about the project/idea articulated in the applications. Participants will be required to give longer presentations at the end of the programme that outlines the status of the project they have been developing during the course of the CritLab. The final presentations will be held in a public forum, where discussions will be between colleagues and members of the general public.
Post-CritLab: After the period designated for the CritLab, participants will have the opportunity to become part of the alumni network, and will continue working with key and guest facilitators to develop their respective proposals. Finalised project may be published on the CritLab website.
Requirements:
- Attendance in all programmed sessions
- Reading of course materials
- Participation in discussions, workshops, site visits and other programmed events
- Constructive/critical feedback to be offered to peer proposals
- Using free time to develop respective projects/proposals
- Participation in final public forum and proposal presentation
Who can apply?
Applications are open to artists, curators and art writers in Ghana who have been professionally active for at least 2 years.
Participants can be working in any medium– text, curating, painting, sculpture, textile, ceramics, photography, video, performance, installation, spoken word poetry, sound, VR, AR, etc.
Our Partners
Project initiated by Foundation for Contemporary Art-Ghana in partnership with Exit Frame Collective, blaxTARLINES KUMASI and SCCA-Tamale

Exit Frame
Exit Frame emerged as a loose collective in 2012 after years of informal conversations and collaborations between its five members— Adwoa Amoah, Ato Annan, Bernard Akoi-Jackson, Kelvin Haizel and Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh. While serving artistic and extra-artistic roles in the contemporary art scene in Ghana, the collective operates on a peer-to-peer ethos through individual and networked projects both at home and abroad. Working between pedagogy, new materiality, curating, artisanal and other such forms, the collective approaches art as an expanded field of possibilities. Art exists as the beginning point to raise broader questions about both material and immaterial universes.

blaxTARLINES KUMASI
blaxTARLINES KUMASI is an experimental incubator of contemporary art and a sharing community. It has a lineage of radical art and community projects dating back to the 1990s. It is responsible for demystifying art from classical and pre-1960s European modernist predeterminations in Ghana’s foremost art college in KNUST, Kumasi. Formalized in 2015, blaxTARLINES functions as a trans-generational and trans-cultural community operating on a generative model and affirmative politics. These operations are tactical responses to crisis points such as the general lack of public funding for contemporary art practice in the region. blaxTARLINES has implemented a broad set of initiatives toward the growth and sustenance of criticality in art practice in Ghana and beyond by building hard and soft infrastructure including co-developing cultural platforms, curriculums, residencies, social networks, studios, and public access art spaces. Through parenting and mentoring of start-up art incubators, the coalition builds upon and opens up avenues for artistic and critical exploration, while probing and deepening modes and bases of knowledge hinged on the universalist principle of preemptive equality. The community’s projects explore the interfaces between the non-human, inhuman, human, and post-human.
blaxTARLINES KUMASI is affiliated with a growing number of schools, institutions, museums and art professionals across five continents. Among the schools and institutions in the network are Foundation for Contemporary Art (FCA)- Ghana, SCCA Tamale, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, CCA Lagos, Gudskul, Jakarta, HFBK Hamburg, Städelschule Frankfurt, SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin, and ENSBA Paris. The roster of art professionals in the network includes El Anatsui, Sam Durant, Touria El Glaoui, Helen Legg, Susan May, Phillippe Pirotte and Willem de Rooij who have had art talks and programmes with students in Kumasi and elsewhere.

SCCA-Tamale
SCCA-Tamale is an artist run project space, exhibition and research hub, cultural repository and artists’ residency. SCCA Tamale is an initiative of world-renowned Ghanaian artist, Ibrahim Mahama, as a contribution towards transforming the contemporary art scene in Ghana. The SCCA-Tamale team intends, with its diverse programming and research interests, to spotlight significant moments in Ghanaian and international art in a communal space. Affiliated to blaxTARLINES KUMASI, the Centre is operated by committed, dedicated and generous persons who produce critical discourse that will eventually be disseminated through exhibitions, publications and allied activities. SCCA-Tamale is dedicated to art and cultural practices which emerged in the 20th Century and inspire generations of artists and thinkers of the 21st Century and beyond.
SCCA Tamale
Funded by
Funded by




Contact
For any inquiries please email
info@fcaghana.org
+233 (0) 592399923 / +233 (0) 509338727
Location:All sessions will be at the foundation for Contemporary art- Ghana unless otherwise stated