Facilitators

Bernard Akoi-Jackson (PhD)
Artist | Curator | Writer
Bernard Akoi-Jackson is a Ghanaian artist who lives and works from Tema/Accra/Kumasi. His multi-disciplinary, audience implicating installations and performative “pseudo-rituals”, have featured in exhibitions like An Age of Our Own Making (Reflection II), in Museet for Samtidskunst, Roskilde, Denmark, (June 2016); Silence Between The Lines in Kumasi (2015), Material Effects, Eli and Edythe Broad Museum.
Bernard Akoi-Jackson
Bernard Akoi-Jackson is a Ghanaian artist who lives and works from Tema/Accra/Kumasi. His multi-disciplinary, audience implicating installations and performative “pseudo-rituals”, have featured in exhibitions like An Age of Our Own Making (Reflection II), in Museet for Samtidskunst, Roskilde, Denmark, (June 2016); Silence Between The Lines in Kumasi (2015), Material Effects, Eli and Edythe Broad Museum. MSU, East Lansing, USA (November 2015), WATA don PASS: Looking West CCA, Lagos and Lillith Performance Studio, Malmö, Sweden (May 2015) and Time, Trade and Travel, Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam and Nubuke Foundation, East Legon, Accra, Ghana (August – October 2012 and November 2012 – February 2013). He has curated exhibitions with blaxTARLINES KUMASI, KNUST, most prominent being Cornfields in Accra, (2016) and Orderly Disorderly, (2017). Akoi-Jackson holds a PhD in Painting and Sculpture from the College of Art and Built Environment, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi where he lectures with particular interest in disruption and the revolutionary potential in contemporary art practice. He curated the inaugural exhibition: “Galle Winston Kofi Dawson: In Pursuit of something ‘Beautiful’, perhaps…” at the Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art (SCCA) in Tamale, Ghana. Akoi-Jackson is a member of the Exit Frame Collective. He was a co-curator of the first Stellenbosch Triennale which took off in February 2020.

Adwoa Amoah
ARTIST | CO-DIRECTOR (FCA-GHANA)
Adwoa Amoah is an artist and co-director of the Foundation for Contemporary Art – Ghana (FCA), an active network of artists which functions as a laboratory for the presentation, development and promotion of contemporary art in Ghana, aimed at investigating new positions of creative curatorial and art practice in relation to contemporary art on the continent.
Adwoa B. Amoah
Adwoa Amoah is an artist and co-Director of the Foundation for Contemporary Art – Ghana (FCA), an active network of artists which functions as a laboratory for the presentation, development and promotion of contemporary art in Ghana, aimed at investigating new positions of creative curatorial and art practice in relation to contemporary art on the continent. In her current role as co-Director of the FCA, she has managed, facilitated, coordinated and co-curated several local and international collaborative art and educational projects including the Global Crit Clinic, Accra, Ghana (2012, 2013, 2014) with faculty from Parsons the New School of Design –USA; Àsìkò Art School, Accra, Ghana (2013, 2017) on The Archive: Static, Embodied, Practiced in collaboration with Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA), Lagos; Curatorial Intensive, Accra, Ghana (2017) with Independent Curators International (ICI). With an interest in artistic interventions in public spaces, she has coordinated and managed the creation of parks, play spaces and exhibitions for children including Mmofra Park in Dzorwulu, Accra, (2014 to date) in collaboration with Mmofra Foundation. She is a member of the Exit Frame Collective based in Accra and Kumasi, Ghana. Adwoa is currently co-curator for an upcoming retrospective of Agyeman Ossei at the Savanna Centre for Contemporary Art, Tamale – Ghana (September 2020).

Ato Annan
ARTIST | CO-DIRECTOR (FCA-GHANA)
Ato Annan is an artist based in Accra, Ghana. With an interest in painting, installation, sound and video, he combines his artistic practice with curating projects with the Foundation for Contemporary Art – Ghana [FCA-Ghana] and working with Mmofra Foundation on their play spaces interventions for children in communities in Accra.
Ato Annan
Ato Annan is an artist based in Accra, Ghana. With an interest in painting, installation, sound and video, he combines his artistic practice with curating projects with the Foundation for Contemporary Art – Ghana [FCA-Ghana] and also worked with Mmofra Foundation on their play spaces interventions for children in communities in Accra.
Annan has been actively involved in a number of projects that seek to diversify the field of contemporary art by offering tools to artists to enable them to participate in rigorous idea and research-based practices. These have been done through collaborations with the Global Critic Clinics, Independent Curators International and the Asiko International Art Residency of the Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos. With interest also in public art and its ability to cultivate new and ‘wider’ audiences for contemporary art, he was one of the co-curators of the “visual art” component of the Chale Wote Street Art Festival from its inception in 2011 till 2016.
In 2019 he juried on The DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program selection panel for the 2020 artists in residence. He also served the Curatorial Advisory Board for the 2019 Visible Award.

Kelvin Haizel
ARTIST
Kelvin Haizel investigates the contemporary condition of the image by complicating its received notions via photography, video, braille, installations, and objects.
Kelvin Haizel
Kelvin Haizel investigates the contemporary condition of the image by complicating its received notions via photography, video, braille, installations, and objects. His MFA thesis project “things and nothings” was represented as part of the 11th Biennale of Photography, entitled Afrotopia, 2017, Mali. He cocurated the maiden Lagos Biennale in the same year. His experiments in photography won him the award for young contemporary photography “A New Gaze 2”, presented by the Vontobel Art Commission in 2018. He has exhibited extensively across the African continent and in Europe, his most recent being the Stellenbosch Triennial ‘Curators’ Exhibition’, 2020. Haizel holds an MFA degree in Painting and Sculpture from KNUST. He belongs to two collectives; blaxTARLINES and Exit Frame.

Nontobeko Ntombela
CURATOR | LECTURER
Nontobeko Ntombela is a South African curator based in Johannesburg, where she works as a lecturer at the Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand. Previously, Ntombela worked at the Johannesburg Art Gallery (2010–12), the Durban Institute of Technology Art Gallery (2006–10), KwaZulu Natal Heritage Council (2005-6), the Bat Centre (2002-5) and Arts for Humanity (2000-1).
Nontobeko Ntombela
Nontobeko Ntombela is a South African curator based in Johannesburg, where she works as a lecturer at the Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand. Previously, Ntombela worked at the Johannesburg Art Gallery (2010–12), the Durban Institute of Technology Art Gallery (2006–10), KwaZulu Natal Heritage Council (2005-6), the Bat Centre (2002-5) and Arts for Humanity (2000-1). While working for these organisations, Ntombela produced several public exhibitions including – The Burden of Memory (2019) co-curated with Rose Jepkorir and Marilyn Douala Bell, a multiple cite event in the city of Yaoundé Cameroon; From No Fixed Place (ten Solo projects) at Cape Town Art Fair (2018); Disolo (2018) co-curated with Patrick Mudekereza and Sari Middernacht at Musée National de Lubumbashi (an on-going project on museum collections); Spectaculaire (2013) Frac Des PaysLa Loir, Carquefuo, France; The Two Talking Yonis (2013) (a multi-cite solo-installation of Reshma Chhiba’s work) in Johannesburg; A Fragile Archive at Johannesburg Art Gallery (2012); Looking as Learning (2011) co-curated with Musha Neluheni at the Johannesburg Art Gallery (JAG); uMaNyawuza (Mbongeni Buthelezi’s mid-career show) at JAG, MTN New Contemporaries (2010) at KwaZulu Natal Society of the Arts (KZNSA); Layers at the Goodman Gallery project space Johannesburg (2010); Modern Fabrics at the Bag Factory Johannesburg (2008); From Here to There at the Association of Visual Arts (AVA) Cape Town (2007), CAPE 07 fringe – among others. Ntombela also writes, and some of the publications that feature her work are the Yoni Book (2018) co-edited with Reshma Chhiba, Streams of Consciousness: A Concatenation of Dividuals. 12th Edition of the Bamako Encounters, African Biennale of Photography (2019) edited by Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, the co-curators Aziza Harmel, Astrid Sokona Lepoultier and Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh, Tribe/Untribe (2016) edited by Carolyn Hamilton and Ness Leibhammer, Exhibitionist La Critique (2016), Great Expectations: Prospects for the Future of Curatorial Education (2016) edited by Leigh Markopoulos, n. paradoxa, international feminist art journal (2013) a special edition, edited by Bisi Silva, among others. Ntombela has also served on several boards and committees like Standard Bank Art Gallery Committee (2019 – ), the National Arts Council (2011 – 2016), Visual Arts Network of South Africa (2007 – 2013), Art for Human rights Trust (2005 – 2010), African Art Centre (2005 – 2007) and so forth. She has served on several juries including Vera List Price, New School, NYU, New York (2018), Dak’Art Biennale, Dakar, Senegal (2016), Thami Myele Art Award, Ekurhuleni Art Galleries, Johannesburg, South Africa (2014), among others. Ntombela has participated on international exchange programs including, African Season residency at FRAC the Close Connections (Africa Reflected) Curator’s Workshop in Amsterdam (2009), the Bilateral Exchange Project between Germany and South Africa (2007), and Break the Silence Scotland (2002–3).

Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh
Curator | Writer
Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh is a curator and writer based in Kumasi, Ghana. He has co-curated ‘Silence Between the Lines: Anagrams of Emancipated Futures’ (2015), and ‘Orderly Disorderly’ (2017) — both organized by blaxTARLINES KUMASI.
Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh
Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh academically trained as an artist and now practices as a curator, and critic based in Kumasi, Ghana. He espouses blaxTARLINES KUMASI’s politically indifferent approach to twenty-first century emancipatory art practice — which operates on a conception of art paradoxically emerging from a multiplicity and a void, and principled on preemptive equality. Ohene-Ayeh recognizes writing and curating as necessary extra-artistic roles that enable him to critically respond to concerns related to the Ghanaian art scene in conversation with global matters. He is a member of the Exit Frame Collective and actively publishes texts on his personal blog www.iubeezy.wordpress.com. Ohene-Ayeh has co-curated ‘Silence Between the Lines: Anagrams of Emancipated Futures’ (2015) and ‘Orderly Disorderly’ (2017)— both exhibitions organized by blaxTARLINES KUMASI. He was guest curator for the inaugural Lagos Biennial (2017) in Nigeria; curator of ‘Spectacles. Speculations…’ (2018) in Kumasi; and co-curator of the 12th edition of Bamako Encounters: Biennale of African Photography, themed “Streams of Consciousness” (2019/2020) in Mali. Currently a doctoral student at the KNUST College of Art in Kumasi, Ohene-Ayeh is also a member of the curatorial team for Agyeman ‘Dota’ Ossei’s forthcoming retrospective exhibition titled ‘Akutia: Blindfolding the Sun and the Poetics of Peace’ (September, 2020) at SCCA Tamale and Red Clay in Ghana.