Oscar Korbla Mawuli Awuku

Biography

The name Yonga Arts comes from the English word “young”: at first Awuku wanted to use body painting as therapy for the elderly, to make them feel younger. The idea stayed in the name, while the practice itself went in another direction.

He was born on 18 May 1999 in Accra, the eldest of three sons of Maxwell Awuku and Bridgette Dzidzineyo. He attended Senajoy Preparatory School in Accra (by some accounts from 2001 to 2014), then Mawuli School, where he studied visual arts, until 2017. He was raised mainly by his mother, who supported his interest in drawing, even though an artistic career in Ghana, in his words, is not held in respect. In an interview in 2020 he said that since childhood he had wanted to depict the strength of women and their ability to give birth and raise children. In 2018 he enrolled at Takoradi Technical University in Sekondi-Takoradi, in the painting department (commercial arts). He came to the body as a surface by chance, also in 2018: an acquaintance asked him to paint people for a music video. The practice became his main one, although he went on working in digital painting, on canvas and in sculpture. He calls his system Anansinism. Anansi, the mythical spider of the Akan, appears in it as the “greatest weaver”; Awuku links him to the weaving traditions of the Ashanti and the Ewe, in which threads are passed repeatedly over and under other threads to form a pattern. On bodies he paints spiderwebs and historical Adinkra symbols, with which, by his intention, he calls up the knowledge and wisdom of the ancestors, which are passing out of use. He has said that his work explores pre-colonial culture while also touching on decolonized practices in the present, and that its subject, in his formulation, is the essence of the identity of the black body. Of the ritual mask that appears in his work again and again, he has said that, by belief, it turns whoever wears it into the spirit it represents.

In 2020 Awuku was nominated for the Ghana Arts and Culture Awards. In November of that year he announced a short film, “Supremacy”, showing his art. He became known mainly through photographs and videos of his work on YouTube and Instagram; the videos have gathered millions of views. He is represented by a gallery in Johannesburg.

Protest is a separate theme in his work. In November 2020 he responded to the breaking up of a peaceful demonstration in Lagos, Nigeria. In 2021 he made “Vailant Souls”: four children with raised fists.