The Ghanaian Memories of Ewuresi Archer

by K.A. Letts

 

“Alluring Souls,” a solo exhibition of provocative new artworks by Ghanian-American artist Ewuresi Archer, opened on March 4 at the Beltline Project in Detroit. Sponsored jointly with Toledo’s River House Arts, this promising, though uneven, collection of prints and paintings introduces a raw and gifted talent whose unique perspective is born of her dual identity.

 Though she was born in Vermont, Archer spent her childhood and adolescence in Ghana before returning to the U.S. in 2019 to study painting and printmaking at the Cleveland Institute of Art. In her boldly colored and richly textured paintings and prints she displays keen nostalgia for her African past leavened by exuberant pleasure in her formal means. Archer honors the beauty of Africa and Africans in iconic portraits of her friends and family in a variety of domestic settings.

Of all the formal elements that interact to create the alchemical magic of a successful painting, color is the most mysterious and emotion laden. Archer is fortunate to have an innate talent for conveying expressive content through brilliant color. With remarkable skill, she applies saturated lush tropical hues that dance on the canvas to evoke her affection for, and pride in, her native land.

 

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 Ewuresi Archer, Untitled, 2020, acrylic on unstretched canvas, 82 x 132 inches. Photo: K.A. Letts.

 

Archer also possesses a rare ability to paint fluid compositions on a grand scale. The largest painting in the show, an untitled mural-sized interior, invites the viewer into a Ghanaian living room pulsing with vertiginous pattern and color. The compositional space is loosely defined by a checkerboard floor. Mismatched easy chairs, tables, a green ottoman and assorted potted plants mark out the space occupied by the two subjects. Throughout and behind it all, an aqueous flow of fluorescent abstraction unifies the whole. The self-possessed young woman and her green-hued male companion stare dispassionately out of the picture plane, her outsize afro projecting a presence of its own.

 

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Ewuresi Archer, Come In, 2020, acrylic on canvas, 46 x 60 inches. Photo: River House Arts.

 

In her large canvas Come In, Archer sets up a more welcoming pictorial space with loosely organized grids of floor and kitchen cabinets. Impressionistically painted modern appliances contribute a mysterious sense of place, modern yet somehow exotic. The two young women in the picture seem at ease in their surroundings, informally dressed and ready to make friendly contact.

 

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Ewuresi Archer, Make Him a Gentleman, 2021, acrylic on canvas, 50.5 x 69.5 inches. Photo: River House Arts.

 

Of the three large paintings in the show, the standout is Make Him a Gentleman. In this vibrant yellow environment, a barber prepares to arrange the hair of a young man. The combination styling salon and boutique in the picture is typical of men’s specialty shops in Ghana, where personal grooming rituals are conducted alongside displays of shirts, ties, and, sometimes, shoes for sale. Both figures are rendered in grisaille. The standing figure’s slightly distorted head holds the center of the composition and is framed by a poster illustrating men’s hairstyles. Archer deftly paints the folded shirts in the background, creating a small, satisfying abstract composition out of each one. The mood is warm but strange and certainly like nothing I’ve seen before.

 

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Ewuresi Archer, Jojoe, 2023, acrylic on panel, 12 x 12 inches. Photo: River House Arts.

 

Most of the remaining paintings in “Alluring Souls” are routine, though skillfully done, individual portrait heads. Vibrant color, once again, is their main distinguishing feature. A particularly successful example is Portrait of the Disoriented, a larger-than-life depiction of a woman’s face, the brilliant colors expertly balanced. The radiating lines of her collar and the roiling storm of gray playing across her somewhat exaggerated features eloquently expresses her confusion.

 

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Ewuresi Archer (Left), Beautiful Creature, 2023, acrylic on panel, 17 x 17 inches. (Right) Captivating Stare, 2023, acrylic on panel, 17 x 17 inches. Photos: River House Arts.

 

This is Awuresi’s Archer’s first solo show, but certainly not her last. The somewhat uneven quality of the work demonstrates that, as with most early career exhibitions, this is an exercise in range-finding. In “Alluring Souls,” we are privileged to witness an up-and-coming artist as she explores her medium and her own mind. She is looking for, and often finding, the signature approach that best expresses her prodigious inborn abilities.

 

 

K.A. Letts is the Detroit editor of the New Art Examiner, a working artist (kalettsart.com) and art blogger (rustbeltarts.com). She has shown her paintings and drawings in galleries and museums in Toledo, Detroit, Chicago, and New York. She writes frequently about art in the Detroit area.