Tiwani Contemporary is delighted to announce its participation in Frieze New York 2023, with the first ever solo booth presentation of British painter, Emma Prempeh.
Founded in London in 2011 by Maria Varnava, Tiwani Contemporary represents emerging, early career and established artists from Africa and its diaspora. For its first appearance at Frieze New York, which follows its sell-out booths at Frieze Los Angeles 2023 and Frieze London 2022, Tiwani will show a new body of work by Prempeh comprised of paintings made by the artist in London and Kampala.
Prempeh, a London-based, British artist with Ghanaian and Vincentian heritage, explores interior spaces together with aspects of her personal history in her practice, reconstructing environments in an attempt to physically grasp moments of familiarity, expectation and nostalgia. The paintings reflect upon how one can simultaneously occupy different spatialities, intersecting architectural, spiritual, supernatural, and transcendental realms.
The booth will feature a suite of new paintings featuring light projections and a soundscape, designed by the artist to create a semi-immersive, intimate spatial and sensorial experience. These works represent an almost ethereal merge of all the spaces the artist calls home linking the artist’s Caribbean upbringing, Ghanaian heritage and recent exploration of Uganda and its capital city. Scenes of intimacy, sociability and conviviality include the artist’s mother at the centre of a family gathering; her grandmother’s front room, a space that evokes poignant memories and speaks to her grandmother’s identity as a Caribbean woman living in the UK; and the artist enjoying companionable moments with friends in Kampala.
Prempeh graduated from Goldsmiths University of London in 2019, winning the Alumno/Space bursary award for 2020. She won first place for the Ingram Collection Purchase Prize and participated at Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2019. Prempeh graduated with an MA Painting from the Royal College of Art under the LeverHulme Trust Arts Scholarship, winning the Valerie Beston Trust Arts award 2022. She was the inaugural Tiwani Contemporary artist in residence at G.A.S Foundation, Lagos, Nigeria, followed by a solo exhibition at the gallery’s Lagos space.