Kofi Dawson

Ghana, 1940

BiographyGalle Winston Kofi Dawson was born in 1940. He is a modernist who coined the term Afro-Journalism to describe his socially-committed art practice. Spanning over six decades, his body of works include drawings, paintings, prints, objects, and texts. His paintings, largely untitled and undated, cut across portraiture, everyday life, religious subjects, and landscape. Using vivid colors, Dawson evokes emotion rather than realism in his paintings.One of the first to complete the BA Art programme at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, and later, the Slade School of Fine Art, his education was deeply Eurocentric. But like others who came after him at KNUST, El Anatsui most popular among them, their education turned personal, leading to incorporating objects found in their local environment into their works.At the heart of Dawson’s art is improvisation or experimentation, as it were. Jelly Fish Lamp from 2011 is an installation made from split plastic bottles shaped to look like electric bulbs which are attached to other found objects. They are arranged in such a way that when they hang, they look like traffic lights at the intersection of two adjoining highways. In addition to the various installations he has produced from wood, bottles, plastic, and sawdust, the exhibition space is also littered with installations of ‘ants’. He explains that he had a “miraculous visitation” from an army of ants and has tried to replicate what he saw. Made from groundnut shells and electric copper wires, the ants crawl on the floor and on top of walls. Other installations are painting tools that Dawson made at a time that brushes were scarce in Ghana. He attaches goat hair and electric wires to kebab sticks, some of which are now split open. Over the years, he mastered the art of using these tools even as economic normalcy returned.Dawson never stuck to a particular approach but kept experimenting with materials, forms, processes, and subjects, all the while vigilantly keeping notes, drawings, and diaries. His multifaceted drawings, paintings, prints and objects, as well as his perplexing texts are saturated archives, which are typical examples of his Afro-Journalism.In March 2019 a retrospective of Kofi Dawson’s work inaugurated The Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art in Tamale, Ghana. Titled “Galle Winston Kofi Dawson: In Pursuit of something ‘Beautiful’, perhaps…”, it was curated by Bernard Akoi-Jackson. The SCCA is a new artist run project space, exhibition and research hub and artists’ residency program set up by Ibrahim Mahama.

Person TypeIndividual

Terms