ABOUT Kwadwo Amfo

Kwadwo Amfo was born in 1990, in Ghana
He lives and works in Amsterdam

Kwadwo Amfo established an early interest in art making while growing up which led him to be enrolled into the Visual Arts department in secondary school and did his elective courses in Textiles, Graphic Design, General Knowledge in Art and English Literature. While in secondary school, Amfo developed his love for textile and graphic design while re-enforcing his interest in photography/filmmaking and realised that the two can go hand in hand as he pursued photography (Fiction) at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague.

Social commentary became the base of Amfo’s work throughout the years ranging from societal beauty standards, identity politics, social inclusion and conformity, and topics on the self and the other. Amfo has expanded this into works that speak representations of misrepresentations, stereotypes and struggles of people of colour. Amfo’s decision to almost exclusively depict black characters, individuals of African heritage, reflects his desire, born of his own experiences, to bring to the fore the inadequate and troubling representations of black people in today’s media, as well as throughout history. In this way their blackness is both a reminder of his search for truth and a microcosm of how the societies in which we live construct the value systems that affect us all.

Use of video media in the virtual space and augmented reality is a new feature in Amfo’s ever expanding creative process. Amfo has broadly exhibited his work at the Scotia Bank Contact Photo Festival in Toronto, in Netherlands and Ghana.