PoolAcrylic on canvas
Black bodies at rest in bright water. Leisure, ease and pleasure, painted at full saturation and without apology.
Baba Musah Swallah was raised in Nima, a dense and largely Muslim neighborhood at the center of Accra, where families of different faiths and ethnic groups have lived together for generations. He studied visual arts at La Presec Senior High School from 2003 to 2006, and at the same time apprenticed with two artists from his own community, Mozzay and Akirash.
That apprenticeship shaped everything that followed. He learned painting the way it is still passed on in Accra, hand to hand, in working studios, and he has spent his career passing it on in turn.
For Swallah, a painting is a way to say something in public: to make people visible, to start a conversation and to change what a place believes about itself. He has painted murals, shown in Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire, Washington, DC, New York, Cleveland, Detroit and London, and completed residencies in Italy, Kenya and Côte d'Ivoire. His work has been featured on CNN and France 24.
He moved to the United States in 2017 and took part in the New York Foundation for the Arts Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program. He lives and works in Brooklyn.
