Exit Frame, a five-member artist and curator collection from the Department of Painting and Sculpture, KNUST, has opened exhibition at Roubaix, France as part of the ‘AFRICA2020’ season. The team comprises Adwoa Amoah (artist, co-director of Foundation for Contemporary Art (FCA) Ghana), Ato Annan (artist, co-director of Foundation for Contemporary Art (FCA) Ghana), Bernard Akoi-Jackson (artist/lecturer), Kelvin Haizel (artist), and Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh (curator/critic).
Exit Frame initiated the annual 12-day peer-to-peer intensive professional development program, ‘CritLab’ designed for artists, critics, and curators from Africa and other parts of the world. This is to redefine the limits of contemporary art and exhibition making practices in the 21st century. CritLab was released in partnership with FCA - Ghana, blaxTARLINES Kumasi and Savannah Center for Contemporary Art (SCCA) Tamale.
Exit Frame collective was appointed as curator of the exhibition ‘of Materials and things’ (21st April - 25th July 2021) and co-organiser of the ‘Pile au Rendezvous’ festival (3rd July - 11th July 2021) with La Condition Publique - a creative laboratory and cultural facilitation center in Roubaix, France. La Condition Publique serves as one of the six headquarters of the Africa2020 Season in France.
The exhibition of Materials and things opened successfully on 21st April 2021 with works from 14 artists from Africa and diasporas. Some are internationally acclaimed while others are present in France for the first time. The theme of the exhibition sets the tone for experimental approaches through an array of open-ended forms ranging from organic, synthetic, digital, virtual, relational, and aural technologies. The artists are Bianca Baldi (South Africa), Akwasi Afrane Bediako (Ghana), Simnikiwe Buhlungu (South Africa), Rehema Chachage (Tanzania), Cheick Diallo (Mali), Latifa Echakhch (Morocco), Issah Alhassan (Ghana), Gladys Kalichini (Zambia), Godelive Kabena Kasangati (D.R. Congo), Evans Mireku Kissi (Steloolive) (Ghana), Tegene Kunbi (Ethiopia), Yara Mekawei (Egypt), Agyeman Ossei ‘Dota’ (Ghana), and Tracy Naa Koshie Thompson (Ghana).
In November 2017, the President of the Republic of France announced in Ouagadougou, then confirmed in July 2018 in Lagos, the organization of a Season dedicated to Africa, ‘Africa2020’, in France of which Ms. N'Goné Fall has been appointed as the Commissioner General. This Season, which is part of a renewed partnership with the African continent, was originally scheduled to have taken place from June to December 2020 throughout France but was pushed a year later due to the Covid-19 crisis. The Institut Français, in charge of the implementation of this Season, assembled in July 2019 a Franco-African Programming Committee to label the projects included in the official programming of the Season.
More information on the exhibition can be found here. Report on Materials and things, exhibition curated by Exit Frame collective in Roubaix, France.
