"The London-born and based artist Emma Prempeh hit a major career milestone in 2021, debuting in Africa with a solo show at ADA Contemporary Art Gallery in Accra, Ghana, her father’s homeland. The show was preceded by a month-long residency in the West African country.
It was a decision “to connect with my heritage”, she tells The Art Newspaper. “My father is a proud Ghanaian; it was important for me to seek him out and my art was able to bring me there.” Since then, her work has been shown at Gallery 1957 in Accra and she has also exhibited at Bwo Art Gallery in Douala, Cameroon and Tiwani Contemporary in Lagos, Nigeria, and during a residency in her fiancé’s home-country of Uganda. On 6 March, she opens her latest solo show at Tiwani Contemporary Lagos, Belonging In-Betwee (until 24 May), which responds to a visit to her mother’s homeland of St. Vincent, in the eastern Caribbean, and explores the “weird middle ground” that diasporans sometimes find themselves on, with ties to different cultures but still considered as strangers in those places.
Asked about her experience exhibiting across these different locations, Prempeh says: “To be able to continue to show my work in West Africa, I feel it’s important because it’s a part of me.”
