Residency reflection / Material process

The La Chapelle Saint-Antoine residency offered quiet time and enough space for the paintings to settle. The work was made in a studio in Naxos, where the paintings could remain visible, be moved around and be reconsidered from one day to the next before their final presentation.

Being in Naxos changed the pace of the studio. The sea, the white buildings and the stillness of the space did not appear as landscapes in the paintings, but they affected their rhythm and the way the figures were arranged. Working away from Accra also made familiar ideas feel different and opened room for slower decisions.

Working alongside another artist and meeting people on the island also became an important part of the residency. The exchange was informal: sharing ideas, looking at work in progress and hearing what different viewers noticed in the paintings. Those conversations made me more aware of how the same image can carry new meanings when it is seen in another place.

Shredded plastic was pressed into the painted surfaces by hand. It built texture around the figures and kept its own history as a used and discarded material. The process was slow and physical, and each piece changed the surface a little. In the paintings, the material became a way to think about consumption, memory and the environments people live with.

The scale of La Chapelle shaped the final installation. Individual and group portraits were placed across the room so they could be encountered separately and then read together. The residency ended with an open studio, where the work was shared directly with visitors. Small changes in expression, distance and repetition became clearer through those conversations.

After returning to Accra, the experience continued to influence my studio practice. I began looking more closely at how figures occupy space together and at how the plastic could become more fully embedded in the painted surface. The residency encouraged a slower and more deliberate way of building larger group compositions, while keeping the work open to the places, conversations and people surrounding it.