Artist Roster

Emmanuel Aboagye is an artist of Ghanaian descent who currently lives and works in USA. Growing up in the “Zongo” (metropolitan space mostly populated with Muslims), Aboagye got his eyes fed with different imageries, from text, scribbles on walls, posters, objects to structures within the same space. Experiencing all these imageries, He uses the language of painting to create works that explore the tension between visibility and invisibility, presence and absence as it relates to identity politics, memory, movement and belonging. He creates images that reflect the everyday and his lived experience. For example, many of his paintings picture scribbled graffiti signage, lower-class and middle-class Ghanaian interiors, and figures. His research delves into the legacies of colonization and slavery, attempting to investigate the residue of colonization and slavery with the use of everyday materials like junk mail fliers he found in the United States as well as patterned plastic bags from Ghana. Language of fragments, disruption and distortion of time and space becomes his tools to create his paintings. He does this through Photoshop manipulation, silk screen-printings, heat and image transfers, text writing, painting in oils and acrylics on canvas, frost sheet and linen.

Emmanuel Aboagye has participated in group exhibitions in Germany (ALL THE KINGS HORSES, Gray and Gray Gallery, Karlsruhe, 2022), USA (ECHOES OF LIBERATION SOMETHING TORN AND RENWED, 2025) Art O Mat, Wilmington, Delaware (CLOUDS OF MEMORIES, 2025) John Williams Gallery, Wilmington, Delaware (SOMETHING DIFFERENT, SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL) Columbus Metropolitan Library, Carnegie Gallery, 2022), (RECIDUES OF YESTERDAY) Newark/Delaware and (PACIFIC PROJECT) in Chile 2024. Emmanuel was chosen to work on a mural project for Google as they were setting up an office in Ghana. He has also worked closely with diasporic artist like New York base artist Derek Fordjour as an advisor to his art foundation in Memphis called Contemporary Art Memphis, Detroit base artist Conrad Egyir as a studio assistant. Emmanuel is also a member of the blaxtarlines community Kumasi in Ghana.

Emmanuel Aboagye’s works has been published by “the system” magazine and “the Journey” magazine. He has received award from the University of Delaware Community engagement fellowship, DELPHI fellowship, A. Magness award, Elizabeth Greenshields foundation award and Winterthur museum and library maker-creator fellowship.

Emmanuel holds a Bachelor’s degree in fine Art in painting and sculpture majoring in painting from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana and with an MFA degree at the University of Delaware, USA in 2025.

My work explores the object and materiality of painterly images, using the language of painting while examining its relationship to textiles, sculpture, printmaking, and architecture. It also considers the painterly image as a point of departure to explore themes of home, loss, displacement, belonging, memory, and identity politics. My work investigates the tensions between visibility and invisibility, presence and absence often using layered surfaces and fragmented imagery to evoke what lingers beneath or beyond immediate perception. Other main ideas shaping or guiding my practice is collaboration, plasticity, memory, and movement.

Collaboration is both a method and a theme in my work. I collect personal photographs from friends, scan them, and reinterpret them through painting, turning these shared memories into something new. I also see the tools and materials I use as collaborators. Items like scissors, electric irons, acrylic paint, canvas, and frost fabric all play a role in shaping the final image. They carry a kind of agency, influencing the outcome in ways I sometimes can’t fully control. This idea of collaboration extends to the viewers as well. When people encounter my work, they become part of it through their interpretation. For example, when a material like metallic foil is used in a piece, its reflective surface offers shifting viewpoints, inviting viewers to see the work from different angles and perspectives, becoming co-authors in the experience.

I think about movement in my work through the use of unconventional materials and printmaking techniques like image and heat transfer. These methods become symbols of movement, turning the images I create into itinerant or speculative body while presenting an open ended dialogue. The moving and open-ended form of my work means that the images are never fixed. They keep changing in response to their surroundings, the people who view them, and the inherent properties of the materials used. This idea — The Painterly Image as an Itinerant and Speculative Body — allows me to create work where boundaries blur, limitations are resisted, and hierarchies are collapsed.

Plasticity, to me, means being open to change, potential, and new possibilities. For example, I use acrylic paint to create images on large plastic sheets. After the paint dries, I apply adhesive and use an electric iron to transfer the image onto a material called frost fabric, in a way similar to monoprinting. This process allows the image to shift, stretch, and take on new forms, reflecting the ideas of movement and transformation in my work.

I think of memory as something physical, like a material that can be shaped and changed. It also has the power to be political through the way it’s presented. For example, when we keep old photographs or important papers in frames, the type of frame we choose can change the meaning of those memories. A fancy, expensive frame might suggest the memory is valuable or special, while a plain, simple frame might make it feel more every day. Even the price of the frame says something about class and status. In this way, how we present memories affects how people see and value them. The surface quality of the paintings presents a sense of time, one that alludes to memory or history. It takes into account ideas about erasure and fragment. My works hang devoid of stretcher bars, and acts like skins. They are trapped between the past and present, presenting themselves like palimpsest.