Collins Obijiaku: Gindin Mangoro (Under the Mango Tree)
ADA Contemporary Art Gallery, Accra, Ghana (until 19 November)
A show of works by the young Nigerian artist Collins Obijiaku inaugurates the new ADA Contemporary Art Gallery in Accra. Founded by the African art adviser Adora Mba, the new space is meant to serve as an incubator for emerging artists from the continent. In the 17 rich, mixed-media portraits, Obijiaku looks at ideas of Blackness and identity, but his works also hope to speak to something beyond race, culture, religion or skin colour—the common experience of simply being human, albeit in a very beautiful way. Prices range from $4,000 to $16,000.
Self-Portrait, Woman Artist Painting, by anonymous artist (around mid-17th century) Courtesy the artist/GAVLAK
Nasty Women
Gavlak, Los Angeles (until 12 December)
Marking the centenary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which gave women in the US the right to vote, this group show at Gavlak Los Angeles centres around the work of female-identifying artists from the past 100 years. Including works by Candida Alvarez, Delia Brown, Karen Carson, Gisela Colon, Kim Dacres, Marilyn Minter and Cindy Sherman, among others, the show challenges the Trump administration’s attempts to define what women and LGBTQ+ individuals choose to do with their bodies and is dedicated to the late feminist Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Kwesi Botchway’s Morning Swagger (2020) Botchway: Courtesy Gallery 1957
Kwesi Botchway: Becoming as well as being
Gallery 1957, London (until 13 December)
Launching the Accra-based gallery’s new London space is a show of large-scale portraits by the young Ghanaian artist Kwesi Botchway, co-curated by the writer Ekow Eshun. The show explores contemporary Black identity, with paintings based on both the artist’s friends and images sourced from social media. Botchway paints in vivid hues: “I don’t want to just produce realistic work but works that prompt dialogue…I want to elevate Blackness and also what Black truly represents,” he says. Prices range from around £10,000 to £30,000.
