by Ify Obi

Gallery 1957 has announced the third edition of its coveted Yaa Asantewaa Women’s Art Prize.

 Named after the Ghanaian Queen Mother, the prize aims to strengthen the gallery's commitment to supporting and promoting emerging and established women artists. For now, the prize is open exclusively to Ghanaian women living in Ghana or across its diaspora.  The first prize winner will receive an artist residency and exhibition at Gallery 1957 and GH₵ 40,000. The second runner-up will be awarded GH₵ 20,000 and the third runner-up will receive GH₵ 15,000.

Application requirements include an artist bio and statement of up to 200 words as well as a portfolio (up to 6 high-resolution photos/videos/media links of the applicant’s artwork including a full caption of the title, date, medium and measurements.)  

The winner will emerge following a selection process by a jury of international experts and will have an artist residency and exhibition at Gallery 1957.

Submissions should be sent via email to applications@gallery1957.com and applicants may contact Tatyana on +233 26 196 6744 with any queries. The deadline for applications is 31st July with the winners announced in September.

The winner will emerge following a selection process by a jury of international experts and will have an artist residency and exhibition at Gallery 1957. The jurors include:

Ekow Eshun

Ekow Eshun is a writer and curator. He is Chairman of the Fourth Plinth, overseeing the foremost public art project in the UK, and former Director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. He is the curator of exhibitions including, most recently, the critically acclaimed In the Black Fantastic at the Hayward Gallery, and author of books including Black Gold of the Sun, shortlisted for the Orwell prize, and Africa State of Mind, nominated for the Lucie Photo Book Prize. Described by The Guardian as a ‘cultural polymath’, he has made and featured in documentaries on TV and radio including the BBC film Dark Matter: A History of the Afrofuture and the BBC Radio 4 series White Mischief. His writing has appeared in publications including the New York Times, Financial Times, The Guardian, The Observer, Esquire and Wired. He is a Contributing Editor at Wallpaper magazine and the recipient of an honorary doctorate from London Metropolitan University.

Erin Christovale

Erin Christovale is a Los Angeles-based film programmer and Curator at the Hammer Museum. She is the co-founder of the international experimental film program, Black Radical Imagination, which has screened in spaces such as MoMA PS1, MOCA Los Angeles, and the Museo Taller Jose Clemente Orozco. Exhibitions include a/wake in the Water: Meditations on Disaster (2014) at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts; Memoirs of A Watermelon Woman (2016) and A Subtle Likeness (2016) at the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives; and S/Election: Democracy, Citizenship, Freedom (2016) at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery where she previously served as Curator. During her time at the Hammer, she has curated numerous exhibitions, including the critically acclaimed Made in LA 2018 with Anne Ellegood, No Humans Involved (2021), and the groundbreaking retrospective Ulysses Jenkins: Without Your Interpretation with Meg Onli. Her curatorial projects have been mentioned in Artforum, New York Times, and Los Angeles Times, and she has been profiled in several publications, including TIME, Essence, and KCET.

N’Goné Fall

N’Goné Fall is an independent curator and consultant in cultural policies. She has been the editorial director of the contemporary African art magazine Revue Noire from 1994 to 2001. She is the editor of An Anthology of African Art: The Twentieth Century (Revue Noire / DAP2002); Photographers from Kinshasa (Revue Noire 2001); Anthology of African and Indian Ocean Photography: a century of African Photographers (Revue Noire 1998). She curated exhibitions in Africa, Europe and the USA and was a guest curator of the biennales of Bamako (2001) and Dakar (2002). She has been a professor at the Senghor University in Alexandria, Egypt; lecturer at the Michaelis School of Fine Art in Cape Town, South Africa and at the Abdou Moumouni University of Niamey in Niger. In 2018, French President Emmanuel Macron appointed her General Commissioner of the Africa2020 Season, a series of more than 1,500 cultural, scientific and pedagogical events held all over France from December 2020 to September 2021.

Katherine Finerty

Katherine Finerty is an Independent curator, writer, and educator focusing on research-based and socially-engaged practices, trans-local identity politics, and global contemporary art. She works collaboratively to develop alternative cultural discourses and multi-disciplinary art experiences that encourage progressive exchanges and participation. Finerty works as a Guest Curator for galleries and organisations in London, West Africa & beyond in addition to ongoing exhibition research and art education development in the UK, Sweden, USA, and South Africa. Most recently she was Strategic Partnerships Consultant at Pace Gallery, a leading international art gallery, and Curator-at-Large at The Showroom, a small not-for-profit contemporary arts organisation in London from 2019-2022.

Azu Nwagbogu

Azu Nwagbogu is the founder and director of the African Artists’ Foundation (AAF), a non-profit organisation based in Lagos, Nigeria, dedicated to the promotion and development of contemporary African arts and artists. Nwagbogu founded the National Art Competition in 2008, an annual art competition that provides a platform for emerging Nigerian artists as well as the Lagos Photo Festival, an annual international photographic arts festival that brings leading local and international photographers into dialogue with the multifaceted stories of Africa. He is also the creator of Art Base Africa, a new virtual space to discover and learn about contemporary African art and diaspora. More recently, in January 2023 Nwagbogu was appointed as a National Geographic Explorer at Large, through which he will serve as an ambassador for the National Geographic Society and receive support to continue his storytelling work across Africa and globally. Nwagbogu has been appointed as curator of the Benin Pavillion at the 2024 edition of the Venice Biennale, where the Republic of Benin will present a national pavilion for the very first time. Nwagbogu’s international career encompasses curating exhibitions, teaching at universities as well as curating private collections for various prominent individuals and corporate organisations in Africa. He currently lives and works in Lagos, Nigeria.

Ibrahim Mahama

Ibrahim Mahama is an artist known for large-scale tapestries of sewn-together jute sacks, materials with particular significance to Ghana's past and present, that he drapes over entire buildings. His work has been shown all over the world including the last56th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale in Italy. Mahama’s interest in architecture extends from draping to acquiring buildings and using his art as a means to enact social change. In 2019, in his hometown Tamale, he founded the Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art (SCCA) an artist-run hub for research, engagement and artist residencies. He also founded its sister organisation Red Clay, a vast complex that connects communities through various means such as screenings, meetings, workshops, and creating and is also where Mahama has his studio. More recently he acquired Nkrumah Volini, a silo building in Tamale that he converted into a cultural centre.Phot