Abdul-Salam Alhassan

Presentation

Abdul-Salam Alhassan is an artist who lives and works in Kumasi, Ghana. He seeks to understand the languages of painting and sculpture by way of experimenting with a variety of materials including, but not limited to plastic mats. Alhassan collects these materials which are embedded with histories of spirituality, knowledge, and leisure from mosques, schools, and various homes across the country. Merging a background in painting and a keen interest in the materiality of these mats, their colours, textures, and the space they occupy, as well as a delight in layering, Alhassan employs burning as a technique to create abstract paintings, objects and sculptures. Burning is one of many methods in which these materials are discarded after having reached their end-of-life phase By his praxis, Alhassan revives the material into new life using the very methods that would otherwise have concluded their demise. His works explore the potentialities that lie within “ruined” materials and how destruction may yet give birth to new narratives. Alhassan earned his BFA in Painting at the Department of Painting and Sculpture, KNUST-Kumasi, where he is also currently pursuing a MFA. He has participated in an augmented reality exhibition dubbed “The Powerhouse” hosted concurrently at Kunstmuseum Bonn in Bonn, Germany and KNUST Museum in Kumasi, Ghana.