Kwesi Botchway

KWESI BOTCHWAY
Born in Accra, Ghana, in 1994

Customize Car Surprise
2021
Acrylic and oil on canvas
240 x 200 cm

Gift of Maruani Mercier Gallery

Photo MMFA

Kwesi Botchway belongs to a generation of West African artists who explore figurative painting and a revamping of traditional portraiture to represent, celebrate and amplify the beauty of Black models. In Botchway’s work, these models may be friends, strangers or even figures borrowed from magazines and popular culture.

Describing his hybrid style as “Afro-Impressionist,” the artist expresses his interest at once in a form of “African social realism” and in the approach of Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, such as Claude Monet, Vincent Van Gogh and Émile Bernard. His affinity for these artists comes through in his brushwork and use of vibrant colours, as well as in the pictorial genre and his chosen subjects—portraits of ordinary people.

Customize Car Surprise, a large-scale painting, is particularly emblematic of Botchway’s work on portraits and Black female figures. It shows a woman lying on the hood of a car, who seems to be sliding towards the viewer while looking them straight in the eye, as if to challenge them. In this scene, Botchway makes multiple references to traditional painting and popular culture. He transforms a license plate into a cartouche bearing his signature and gives a nod to blaxploitation films depicting free-spirited women who aren’t afraid to express their desires and assert their independence.