Introduction

Growing up as a kid interested in the arts, the curriculum I was taught with in school was mostly skewed towards Western education and it’s histories. Hence, I was conditioned to think through a single foreign lens with regards to my academic and creative explorations. I looked up to Western Art forms and traditions as the sole epitome of Art of making. Consequently, I sought out romanticized dreams, goals, ideas, materials, tools and skills alien to me as the only way I could create Art or live my life in general. And that if I couldn’t produce work in the context of “Old Masters” I wasn’t creating Art. I, unfortunately, ignored the abundant inspiration and resources within my own sounding and culture, seeing them as secondary to the other.

 In hindsight, I hold a different view, and so through my practice and everyday activities, I try to reflect and question the frame of references I was conditioned to believe in as a kid. I now adopt alternative approaches other than the norm in almost everything I do. This affords me the creative freedom I didn’t enjoy/allow myself growing up.

My name is Emmanuel Amoakohene, a senior currently pursuing a BFA in painting and there are many layers to my being. Thus, I am a man, a son, a brother, a friend, a Ghanaian, a student, Christian and an immigrant currently living in a cosmopolitan space. Yes, I am black. I embrace all the layers and complexities within my everyday life experience as an identity, uniquely and inherently mine. Hence, I harness them both consciously and unconsciously through a multiplex approach to fuel my practice as an artist and decisions i make in my life. I believe this is the most sincere way of telling my own truth.