On 17th March 2021 the Department of Painting and Sculptured was honoured to host three of its prominent alumni making waves in the international contemporary art scene. Yaw Owusu, Patrick Quarm and Gideon Appah took turns to share with the faculty and current students of the Department their achievements and upcoming projects.

Yaw Owusu (born in 1992) lives and works between Ghana and New York. He graduated from the Department in 2015 and won the Kuenyehia Prize for Contemporary Ghanaian Art that same year. Owusu makes sculptural installations in a playful alchemy that primarily repurpose coins into things of value. His work participates in the discourses of value, symbolism and meaning. He participated in Part IV International Artist Project Residency in Berlin in 2016. Owusu’s works have been included in group exhibitions around the world, such as the Science and Technology Museum in Accra; Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden in Marrakech; the ArtX Fair 2018 in Lagos, Nigeria, Galerie 102 in Berlin, and Gallery1957, Accra, which currently represent the artist.

Patrick Quarm, born in 1988 in Sekondi, Ghana, currently lives in the United States. He graduated from KNUST in 2012 with a BFA in Painting and Sculpture and finished an MFA at Texas Tech University in 2018. His work has been shown in Ghana, London, U.S.A. Quarm’s work is inspired by post-colonial identity and postmodernist hybridity of cultures using ‘African Print’ fabrics as metaphor to initiate this dialogue.

Gideon Appah was born in Accra in 1989 and graduated with his BFA from KNUST in 2015. He was selected as one of the top ten finalists in Ghana for the Kuenyehia Art Prize for Contemporary Ghanaian Art in 2015. He became the first international artist to win the 1st Merit Prize Award at the Barclays L’Atelier Art Competition held in Johannesburg, South Africa that same year. He has been featured in group and solo exhibition in Ghana, South Africa, U.S.A, London, and more.