Ernest Kankam was born in 1995 in Kumasi, Ghana. He holds B.A honours in Fine Arts at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology Kumasi Ghana from 2018. He lives and works in
Ghnana. He had a couple of solo shows at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, College of Arts, Kumasi. Kankam has participated in several group exhibitions and an art fair in Ghana and Germany.
Kankam won the Baden-Württemberg scholarship for an exchange program in the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Karlsruhe in the 2022 Summer semester. The artist had the privilege to show his recent artworks in the booth of Gray & Gray Gallery at the Positions Art Fair, Berlin.
Ernest Kankam
b. 1995, Kumasi,
EDUCATION
2014–2018
• B.F.A. Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, KNUST, Kumasi
EXHIBITIONS
2022
• Here und There. Karlsruhe, Germany.
2022
• The Gray Space in the Middle, Kumasi, Ghana • Bra Krom, Kumasi, Ghana
Selected Group Exhibitions
2022
• Zoom, Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Kunste Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe,
Germany. • All the King’s Horses, Gray and Gray Gallery, Karlsruhe, Germany
2019
• canvas on the wind: an ode to wilderness. Akuapem Odwira Festival 2019,
Foundation for Contemporary Art, Accra, Ghana
2018
• We Know Within,TabArt Ghana, Kumasi, Ghana
Awards & Art Fairs
2022
• Baden-Wurttemberg-Stipendium for University Students
• Position Art Fair, Berlin 2022
2018
• Bachelor in Fine Arts
2012
• Best Graphic Design Student (Senior High School)
2009
• Best Art Student in Middle High School (Grade 9)
COLLECTIONS
•TheArtApe Collection,Germany
REFERENCE
1. Dr. Akoi Jackson
Professor
njoonam@yahoo.com
2. Clemen Koehler
Collector
clemens.koehler@gmx.net
ARTIST STATEMENT
Ernest Kankam is fascinated by image composition. Therefore, his works vary from videos, printmaking, painting, sculptures, and installations. These works are mostly inspired by pop culture, history, and issues in society (both culturally and geographically). In using his subconscious as a muse, he draws from memory and experiences. The works offer second-hand information by the artist with the technique of collage both within the virtual space technological software like Photoshop and physical space use of mundane materials like a mosquito net, thread for sewing, stiff and pieces of coloured fabric. The composition within the paintings is worked on both sides of the surface material first by printing it digitally on Calico fabric and later
using other techniques like quilting in sewing, acrylic painting, and fabric collage. The composition at both ends of the painting reflects each other and it behaves like a stain of obscured events and experiences within each other. The ‘two sides of the same coin’ mixed media paintings are presented in a structural format to offer a sculptural experience of the painting of the works in the exhibition space. This mode of exhibition tends to continue the past gestures of the 1960’s minimalist quest to subvert the modernist way of pictorial experience of a painting by bringing the painting within the same space of the body present in the exhibition. Here it’s not just about the disembodied eye but rather the whole body reacting with the painting. In his recent show titled “Here und There”, he instigates reflections on the uniquely temporal states of two urban spaces, Kumasi (Ghana) and Karlsruhe (Germany). With videos, objects, and paintings, Ernest Kankam’s artistic preoccupation with information accumulation, memory, and recollection leads his efforts to complicate the similarities and differences between his home city in Ghana and Karlsruhe, following a six-month exchange program under the Baden-Württemberg-STIPENDIUM. Kankam’s work derives from curiosity, observation, and interventional tactics that speak of cities as inspiration and a medium for visual culture.