Artist in RESIDENCE: annan affotey
During the Sarah Kravitz Residency Programme, Ghanaian artist Annan Affotey developed a series of portrait paintings centred on identity, presence, and the representation of contemporary African subjects.
Working within a figurative tradition, Affotey’s portraits depict individuals drawn from his immediate cultural landscape, presenting sitters who are both specific and symbolic. Positioned against bold, flattened backgrounds, the figures are rendered with a heightened sensitivity to colour, where deep tonal contrasts and saturated hues shift the reading of skin, light, and atmosphere.
The subjects occupy the canvas with a quiet authority. Their poses, clothing, and direct gazes suggest distinct personal identities, while also resisting fixed narratives. Rather than situating his figures within descriptive environments, Affotey isolates them, allowing the psychological presence of each subject to take precedence.
Across the series, portraiture becomes a means of asserting visibility and agency. The works engage with the historical language of figurative painting while repositioning it within a contemporary African context, where the gaze is returned rather than passively received.
