Cecilia Lamptey-Botchway‘s exhibition “Make We Dance” examines dance as a type of development where she presents different figures that stand, turn and dance. The components of these artworks unite her various creative flows and are on display at the Nubuke Foundation in Accra through August 31, 2022.
Prepared at the Yaba College of Technology School of Art, Design and Printing in Lagos, Nigeria, the botanical foundation summons the reflection of Cecilia Lamptey-Botchway‘s material practice. Patterns from the spread of batik texture and custom proactively appeared in the bases of her past works. They were layered on the material as they would be on a texture. Today, they are freed from the imperatives of the material format.
The patterns interface with the figures. In the largest aspects, the motifs float behind and in front of the figures, confusing the polarity of the front area of the foundations. The actual figures are decorated with a bordered fleece. Adopting an anthropological strategy on location, Cecilia Lamptey-Botchway observed her subjects in commercial areas, temples, and dance courts, focusing on their developments and delivering them on her canvases.
When Cecilia Lamptey-Botchway began using wash fleece, it was because she made an association between the object of cleaning, domestic life, and the activities of women. The fleece comes in pre-made strands that are then painstakingly glued into the sketch spaces left vacant by the use of acrylic and oil paint.
As a reminder, the exhibition “Make We Dance” is open until August 31, 2022 at the Nubuke Foundation in Ghana.