What is Their Secret? Artists from KNUST at American Universities

Six years ago, in a First Word for this journal, Alissa Jordan and I reflected on the contemporary art scene in Ghana with a particular focus on the contributions of the Department of Painting and Sculpture and the artists’ collective blaxTARLINES at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi, Ghana (Nagy and Jordan 2018). Currently, I am examining the impact of undergraduate preparation at KNUST on the university's alumni pursuing graduate studies in the United States. I seek to understand the synergies between art programs at KNUST and those at American art schools and the impact of transatlantic experiences on the careers and oeuvres of the artists. Soon after I retired as director of the Harn Museum of Art at the University of Florida (UF) in 2018, I learned that KNUST alumni Emmanuel Manu Opoku and Eugene Ofori Agyei had been accepted into UF's College of the Arts to pursue Master of Fine Arts degrees. As they graduated and began their careers, a new cohort of KNUST artists began their MFA studies at the university. Currently, of the thirty-six MFA students at UF, five are KNUST graduates: Alex Awuku, Samuel Aye-Gboyin, Ebenezer Nketsiah Mensah, Benedicta Opoku-Mensah, and Mohammed Sharif Umar (Fig. 1). Their areas of concentration include sculpture and painting, installation and performance, art and technology, graphic design and ceramics. This remarkable confluence of KNUST artists at UF inspired me to learn about KNUST graduates studying at other American universities. For the Nineteenth Triennial Symposium on African Art of the Arts Council of the African Studies Conference (ACASA) in Chicago in August 2024, Eugene Ofori Agyei and I convened a roundtable of five artists who graduated from KNUST in the last decade and currently are in MFA programs, teaching positions or residencies in the United States (Fig. 2). In addition to UF alumnus Emmanuel Manu Opoku, participants were Beatrice Opokua Atencah, Michael Dela Dika, Glover Marfo, and Joy M. Okokon. Having known and worked longest with Emmanuel Manu Opoku and Eugene Ofori Agyei, I began my research with them, then turned to the five MFA students presently enrolled at UF as well as the four artists in addition to Opoku who participated on our roundtable in Chicago.1 As I continue my research, I look forward to following the careers of other KNUST alumni studying or teaching in the United States. At present my growing list includes forty-one such artists in fourteen states.International recognition of the curriculum of the Department of Painting and Sculpture at KNUST has resulted from the transformational work of blaxTARLINES, a fluid collective of art faculty, alumni and students formally established and named in 2015 by its acknowledged “godfather” kąrî’kạcha seid'ou together with faculty colleagues.2 Dr. seid'ou is currently associate professor and dean of the Faculty of Art at KNUST. Beginning with his appointment as a lecturer at KNUST in 2003, he had introduced a radically transformed curriculum deeply informed by philosophy, postcolonialism, political activism, resistance to control by market forces, and social engagement. His “emancipatory teaching” would form the foundation for the blaxTARLINES ethos. Painter and sculptor Emmanuel Manu Opoku, the first KNUST alumnus to enroll in graduate school at UF, cites the influence of seid'ou as seminal in his development as an artist. Opoku explains that seid'ou required students to develop a conceptual basis for their work by the end of their second year and then to explore and develop that concept through their chosen mediums. Further, students were taught to pursue their ideas and practice without bowing to pressures from the art market and to embrace the principle that teaching and curation are forms of artmaking.3 At UF, Opoku taught classes, directed an art gallery, curated exhibitions, and developed his art practice. He currently resides in Boston and teaches at Assumption University in Worcester, MA. His paintings are mostly self-portraits and portraits of family and friends in which the human figure morphs with everyday consumer objects that frequently replace or sprout from the head to reflect the interests, values, and histories of the individual portrayed (Fig. 3). His sculptures are assemblages that reference the Ghanaian practice of repurposing broken materials into useful objects. The found objects he employs carry memories of their previous functions and the people who used them.Ghanaian MFA students arrive in the United States having completed a mandatory year of national service after their undergraduate studies, which enriches their academic readiness.4 Since the official language of instruction at Ghanaian schools and universities is English, they also arrive with English language proficiency. Emmanuel Manu Opoku's national service was as a teaching assistant for the Department of Painting and Sculpture at KNUST.Another alumnus of that program is Ebenezer Nketsiah Mensah, a third-year MFA student at UF. He extended his year of national service teaching art in high school for two additional years. In his practice he draws on the admonition of seid'ou and blaxTARLINES to “go to town,” which sends students into the surrounding community to engage with people outside the academy and to gather inspiration and materials from the local environment. In Kumasi, Mensah developed a body of work around the labor of gold miners. His oldest brother is a miner and the artist himself had worked briefly in the mines before transitioning to work in construction to earn money for college. In various media—painting, photography, video, sculpture, and performance—he explored the work, tools, and social networks of gold miners. In Gainesville he spent time at three building construction sites getting to know workers, winning their trust, and engaging them as participants in the development of a new body of work. Mensah's work resonates with his relationships with both Ghanaian and American manual laborers as well as his own experience in mining and construction jobs.Many KNUST alumni studying and teaching in the United States are graduates of other departments within the Faculty of Art of the College of Art and Built Environment, including the Departments of Communication Design, Industrial Art, and Indigenous Art and Technology (formerly Integrated Rural Art and Industry). Up to now my research does not include the Department of Publishing Studies, which is also part of the KNUST Faculty of Art.5 Whereas the curriculum in painting and sculpture was revolutionized since 2003 through the influence of seid'ou and, later, blaxTARLINES, the traditional curricula in other departments of the college also have begun to reflect more flexible and experimental approaches to andragogy and artistic practice. This has occurred as faculty members have participated in international exchanges and embraced some of the reforms introduced in the Department of Painting and Sculpture. The ceramics program in the Department of Industrial Art has been notable in this regard, and graduates of this program comprise about half of the KNUST alumni now pursuing MFAs or teaching at American universities.While completing his MFA in Gainesville, Eugene Ofori Agyei invited his mentor, Associate Professor Dr. Samuel Nortey, to speak at UF as a guest of the interdisciplinary Arts in Africa Working Group of the Center for African Studies. In a presentation titled “Navigating Complicated Grounds in Ghanaian Art Practice: From Obscurity to Emerging Talents,” Nortey explained how he has transformed the curriculum of the ceramics program in Industrial Art over the last decade. Nortey has also detailed these changes in articles coauthored with KNUST faculty.6 Students work alongside faculty in a nonhierarchical approach as they explore theory and practice. He introduces students to traditional materials and techniques, but allows them to experiment with new materials, methods and forms. At the undergraduate level he encourages scholarly research, participation in workshops and seminars, use of digital networks and communications, engagement in social practice, and development of exhibitions with wide appeal to diverse audiences. Nortey introduced a collaborative exchange with traditional women potters from a rural community into the curriculum. The women participate in workshops with students and eventually show their works alongside student works in an exhibition on campus. The exchange has been fruitful for the traditional potters, whose work has received greater recognition and gained in monetary value, and for Nortey's former students, many of whom reference traditional materials, methods and symbolism in their nonfunctional, often abstract, ceramic sculptures.Nortey has inspired many of his students to apply to graduate programs abroad. Connections and exchanges with international scholars and artists spending time at KNUST have contributed to the large numbers of students successfully applying for MFA programs in the United States and Canada. Jeannie Hulen, professor of ceramics at the University of Arkansas, was posted at KNUST in 2018-2019 as a Fulbright Scholar. She and her husband, University of Arkansas ceramics instructor Adam Posnak, taught professional practices and coached KNUST ceramics students on how to prepare winning applications, focusing on developing strong portfolios, curriculum vitae, artist's statements, exhibition histories, and photographic documentation of works. During his application process, Eugene Ofori Agyei found a mentor at UF in ceramics professor Anna Calluori-Holcombe (now emerita), who continues to champion Agyei and other KNUST ceramists.7 She assured him that the MFA program at UF supported both development of one's work and preparation to be an educator. This curriculum appealed to Agyei, who is equally committed to teaching and pursuing his artistic practice. He found another mentor in Derek Reeverts, teaching lab specialist for ceramics in the School of Art and Art History, who coached him on how to interview for residencies, encouraged him to apply at every opportunity for juried exhibitions, and advised him to start building his professional network. While at UF, Agyei developed a body of ceramic sculptures and assemblages about his experience navigating a new social, cultural, and academic environment while maintaining close ties to his Ghanaian roots. His abstract sculptures combine clay with batik fabrics and colorful yarns sourced from the Makola Market in Accra and found objects. After completing his MFA in 2024, he assumed a three-year position as the Robert C. Turner Teaching Fellow in the School of Art & Design at Alfred University in Alfred, New York.When I asked KNUST alumni what characterized their undergraduate experience, they spoke of a mandate to “make, make, make, make, make.” UF student Samuel Aye-Gboyin put it this way: “In Ghana, hard work is our motto. You don't sleep.” Clearly, the students who pursue MFA degrees abroad are among the KNUST alumni most committed to working very hard and producing large bodies of work as they explore their chosen media and modes of expression. They also have in common excellent command of materials, techniques, and tools and well-developed skills for surmounting obstacles through innovative solutions. In the Department of Indigenous Art and Technology, for example, students have six courses in their first year covering clay, wood, bamboo and rattan, leather, fibers and fabrics, and metal. In the second year, students specialize in four areas, and by the third year, each student selects two areas of concentration for the final two years of study. Traditional methods of working the various materials by hand, as still practiced in rural areas, are taught as preparation for careers in industries that make products such as ceramic vessels, furniture, shoes, clothing, and jewelry. After required three-month internships in related indigenous industries, students eventually seek employment in existing businesses or establish their own. With access to modern equipment, they transition from the hand-working techniques that they have mastered at KNUST to hybrid approaches that combine traditional rural with modern industrial tools and techniques. Indigenous Art and Technology students working in clay learn the coil and slab methods and make limited use of the wheel—not used traditionally in Ghana—unlike students in the ceramics section of Industrial Art, who employ the wheel along with coil and slab methods. In both programs only a select few pieces judged by the professor to be successful are fired. Objects that are not fired are tossed into a large concrete bin known as “the pit” for the clay to be reused later. This selectivity is a practical approach due to limited kiln space, but also has to do with a focus on mastery of processes rather than the finished product.Unlike students in Indigenous Art and Technology, who are exposed to various media during their first two years, students in Industrial Art focus on their chosen area of concentration from their first year at KNUST. Alex Awuku, a first-year MFA student at UF, studied ceramics in the Department of Industrial Art. He arrived here from Ghana as a mature artist, having already established an active art practice, founded and led an industrial ceramics company, and taught art and ceramics in high school for several years. Early in his first semester at UF, Awuku completed a new body of large-scale works from ready-to-use clay commercially available in the United States. By contrast, students at KNUST must purchase clay dug locally and prepare it themselves for use in the studio. Awuku says he intends to master the properties of the clay available here before he experiments with colorful ceramic glazes not available to students at KNUST. His monumental new ceramic sculptures combine abstract elements, masklike forms, figurative imagery, and visualization of Ghanaian proverbs. On some pieces he adds jute rope and repurposed tools and implements to the ceramic body to explore various themes such as traditional gender roles in society. His works also respond to injustice, particularly conflicts within families due to religious intolerance. As he adjusts to his life in Gainesville, he has begun to explore how immigrants face and overcome challenges to achieve success in their new environments.Michael Dela Dika, also an alumnus of the ceramics program in the KNUST Department of Industrial Art, uses glazes extensively on the ceramic sculptures he produces in the United States. He credits Senior Lecturer Dr. Lemuel Gbologah, a materials science engineer at with a foundation of about the science of clay bodies and glazes that him well for his with materials available in the United States. During his studies at the University of and during a at the School of Art and in about how the and of his work him as an artist and how he ideas through his work. The assemblages combine of traditional Ghanaian ceramic with abstract forms, and found objects as human experiences of labor and his MFA at the University of in and completed a teaching at the School of Art and at University in In he began a three-year as Fellow at the in artist Joy M. a to the KNUST In school in her were who the students She their approach and from an to to college in As an artist draws inspiration from her as a and enrolled in the Department of Industrial Art at KNUST was to work in clay the and tools her of The to “make, make, her own which credits to her Having learned to make vessels, began to experiment with figurative ceramic sculptures of forms. has to explore and during her graduate studies in the United first while an at University and currently in the MFA program at has on among including the and Opokua is a graduate of the studies program in the Department of Industrial Art, which on including and on On her own began to experiment with sculptures and assemblages as part of her undergraduate Professor Dr. Ebenezer has been a mentor to He first introduced her to the work of contemporary including sculptor and KNUST alumnus whose sculptures are an inspiration for her and After her national service as a teaching assistant at worked for two years in a in developing an in fabrics on bodies and of design and In an MFA program in found the in the United States limited to some of her students graduate at University a program well to her and In her sculptures employs indigenous Ghanaian materials and various art and techniques to explore the of human navigating between She completed her MFA at in and assumed a position as M. Teaching Professor of Art at graduated from the KNUST Department of Integrated Rural Art and the with a company, completed her national service as a teaching assistant at and worked for three years in the before to pursue an MFA in the United States. She is in her second year of the MFA program at UF and has already her work in five local and at UF and the in the Gainesville At in and leather, found a mentor in Senior Lecturer Dr. who teaches art and He is a strong for academic and She to pursue a as a artist rather than in and to work with and wood, materials with in artistic practice gender and her own of as employs materials and techniques to objects and assemblages with sculpture in (Fig. a which the artist's to have a the in Ghana and women to the are high from wood, to the by has to purchase a Marfo, who has a for is on the art faculty at University He graduated from the KNUST Department of Integrated Rural Art and in During and after his studies at KNUST he taught high school and spent his national service year as a teaching assistant in his In the United States he an at University and an MFA at he the on teaching was well to his and on his and his students with a strong foundation in materials, processes and of them to make their own At the he encourages each student to develop a language and of He in various and from traditional African by and with modern design He of his as a of and for women and in his such as (Fig. reference the of African as well as by in to a of and to the and the MFA students currently at the University of Samuel Aye-Gboyin and Mohammed Sharif graduated from the KNUST Department of Communication Design, which in graphic photography, and At Aye-Gboyin, who himself as an and on and For his required third-year he worked at a graphic design and in After his national service year as a teaching assistant in his KNUST Aye-Gboyin to prepare for a college teaching Lecturer in his advised him to pursue an MFA abroad and Professor Dr. in the Department of Painting and Sculpture of KNUST alumni already in the United States him on how to prepare a and other application materials and coached with practice on how to in the interview at the American in Having completed an in art at Aye-Gboyin is now a third year MFA student at UF, he teaches digital and, in his own work, photography, video, and to explore themes of and in of a He draws on his those of his and his and with a in Kumasi, whose and inspired a of and (Fig. UF Aye-Gboyin has begun to experiment with sculpture repurposed consumer products to explore some of the Mohammed Sharif Umar of an undergraduate in Communication Design at Lecturer Dr. encouraged him to pursue graduate studies in preparation for a in the for which he was well After a year in national service working as a graphic and for a established at the Umar as research assistant to while completing a at KNUST. During his graduate studies Umar received from local for and His working with members of the community in which he to challenges by for After about he an and for and of At that Umar had outside of or from his he to the by his mentor to apply to UF, he is now a first-year MFA student in graphic He to continue his focus on that in the of materials and the of his (Fig. inspiration from the and of after completing his MFA at UF, he to to his former in to the he my research here is a of what I have KNUST alumni who pursue MFA degrees in the United States the Ghanaian work Their is as they experiment with new ideas and materials in their and participate in exhibitions, and present They from their studies at KNUST and with their chosen materials, tools, and techniques. Having with limited space, and exhibition they at innovative to Having completed national and in many work experience in Ghana, KNUST alumni arrive with a of skills they apply to their studies and practice. of the Department of Painting and Sculpture and the ceramics program in the Department of Industrial Art, have from curricula and teaching practices that a strong conceptual for one's practice. In years, artists from other KNUST departments have also from approaches to teaching as their faculty have to new ideas within the KNUST Faculty of Art and through international The artists here me about at KNUST and in the United States who and supported them along their academic and professional I only a few of these by in this the of this I have been by the of KNUST artists in the United States to to their in through them in I have learned that scholars and students from the United States and other are to KNUST for residencies and workshops or to pursue degrees in practice. these are for and another