Michael Kofi Adzah (b.1998) is a contemporary Ghanaian artist living and working between Accra and Kumasi. His practice is rooted in a deep sensitivity to cultural memory, displacement, and the evolving relationship between place and identity. Adzah draws from his upbringing in Mepe, Ghana, as well as his academic training at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), where he is currently pursuing his Master’s degree in Painting and Sculpture. He is also an active member of the blaxTARLINES – Kumasi collective and the recipient of the 2024 Artis Arundo Scholarship from the Omenaart Foundation (Poland).

This exhibition presents a series of works developed during Adzah’s exchange residency at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Karlsruhe. Created while navigating unfamiliar surroundings, these works reflect a period of transition and gradual attunement to a new environment. The pieces capture this evolving relationship through their material sensitivity and subtle visual language.

Narrative plays a vital role in Adzah’s process—his works draw on personal memories, cultural stories, and imagined pasts. Yet, they resist easy interpretation. Rather than functioning as illustrations, the works ask viewers to engage directly with their presence. Meaning arises not from predetermined context, but through the viewer’s active encounter with the artwork. This open-ended approach forms a space where intuition and interpretation intersect.

A central thread running through the exhibition is Adzah’s reflection on the historical displacement of African cultural artifacts, many of which remain housed in Western museums. He speculates on the trajectories contemporary African art might have taken if those objects had remained within their communities. In the absence of direct access to these lineages, Adzah turns inward—drawing from ancestral memory, inherited sensibilities, and instinctive mark-making to navigate the gaps left by this loss.

Through this exhibition, Adzah invites us to consider how memory, imagination, and place shape creative expression—and how, in reaching back, artists can also move forward. The result is a body of work that is both deeply personal and resonant in broader conversations around cultural continuity, artistic inheritance, and reclamation.

Photos from the exhibition below.