'The importance of capturing two figures in juxtaposition was to create a sense of consolidation, synergy, and unity. The anthropomorphic silhouettes created by the bodies engulfed in silkscreened fabric print are emphatic of this unity.' —Emmanuel Taku

Immediately arresting in its large scale, bold patterning, and striking treatment of the Black figure, My Brother’s Keeper is a preeminent example of contemporary Ghanaian artist Emmanuel Taku’s practice. A graduate in Visual Arts and Textiles from the Ghanatta Institute of Art and Design, Taku makes use of a wide variety of materials and approaches, combining silkscreening methods, textiles, acrylic, and collaged newspaper on a painted canvas, fiberglass, or plywood ground. Frequently featuring twins or doubles with titles emphasising these familial bonds, Taku’s portraits use pattern and decoration to explore deeper questions related to identity, representation, and the Black body.

 

 

Band of Brothers

 

Executed in 2020 during Taku’s time with Ghana’s first independent artist’s residency program, the Noldor Residency, My Brother’s Keeper was also included in his first solo exhibition, Temple of Blackness - It Takes Two. As the artist describes, ‘This body of work came to me as an idea when I heard John Akomfrah speak about his experience as a child referring to museums capturing artwork by Turner and Constable as a ‘Temple of Whiteness’. I just remembered how that clicked for me and I truly wanted to create my own “Temple of Blackness” capturing black people as demi-gods or heroes without pupils or eyes.’ⁱ

 

Against a backdrop of broader calls to decolonise these European museum collections, Temple of Blackness – It Takes Two played with classical tradition and modes of representation in the creation of a new metaphorical space, a temple within which to honour a new cast of Black gods and heroes. Presented in strong, statuesque poses with blank, pupilless eyes, Taku’s figures recall ancient Greco-Roman sculptures, although the artist radically updates this classical visual language with his distinctive paisley screen-printing process and idiosyncratic collage technique. While the opalescent eyes of Taku’s figures from this body of work identify them as deities worthy of reverence, the intricately collaged newspaper material that adorns their faces makes a subtle but suggestive point about the complex construction of identity, and of the media’s role in the politicising and objectifying the Black body.

 

The Power of Print

 

Visually recalling the highly decorative surfaces of Viennese Successionist Gustav Klimt’s most celebrated works, and his masterful grasp of pattern’s propensity towards abstraction, the twinned figures in My Brother’s Keeper stand cheek to cheek, their bodies merging and separating in the flattening passages of green paisley that dominate the central section of the composition. Although Taku describes the painting as a portrait of the Residency’s founder Joseph Awuah-Darko, Taku’s doubled composition here not only speaks to the complex duality of any individual, but also of the uncanny likeness existing between the artist and his subject here. Creating a striking contrast against the pastel blue background, the layers of abstraction produced by the stunning green print heightens this confusion or blending of corporeal boundaries – what the artist describes as a mode of ‘figurative surrealism’ designed to ‘reclaim a Black narrative and identity’.ⁱⁱ

 

 

As well as playfully engaging with modes of abstraction in his treatment of these twinned bodies, the use of paisley in Taku’s practice also takes on political and culturally specific dimensions. As the artist describes in more detail: ‘The use of floral paisley prints comes from my personal fascination with the pattern and fabric that has always been a part of my life since youth – whether as a tablecloth or in garments. I also felt that paisley represents a melting pot of cultural identity; first being fashioned in India and expanding in reach before becoming adopted into a British sensibility and finally the sartorial mainstream. I’ve always worn paisley and have been practicing portraiture and art for almost ten years.’ⁱⁱⁱ

 

With a background in textiles himself, Taku links his silkscreen practice to the textile work produced by his mother and sister, at once a powerful expression of his own, lived experience and a celebration of the rich cultural history of West African textile design. In these compelling combinations of pattern and portraiture, My Brother’s Keeper also makes visual reference to the hugely significant post-colonial West African studio photography of the likes of Sanlé Sory and Malick Sidibé. In this manner, his portraits bear striking similarities to the effective reference to pattern, fabric, and mid-century West African photography employed in the work of Taku’s friend and fellow graduate from the Ghanatta Institute of Art and Design, Amoako Boafo, whose work is also represented in Phillips’ London Evening Sale this June.

 

 

Collector’s Digest

• Born in Accra in 1986, and a graduate of the Ghanatta Institute of Art and Design alongside friend Amoako Boafo, Emmanuel Taku is one of the region’s most prominent emerging figurative artists.

 
• Following the success of his first solo exhibition as the inaugural artist of the Noldor Residency Program, Taku’s most recent solo show The Chosen Few was presented at Maruani Mercier, Brussels in 2021.

 

• The current auction record for the artist was achieved for his work Sisters in Lilac, which sold at Phillips London for over 10 times its low estimate In March 2022.

 

ⁱ Emmanuel Taku quoted in ‘Joseph Awuah-Darko and Emmanuel Taku Interviewed by Africa First’, 25 February, 2021, online.
ⁱⁱ Emmanuel Taku, quoted in Romina Román, ‘Emmanuel Taku: Ghana’s Finest and Brightest’, Metal, 2020 online. 
ⁱⁱⁱ Emmanuel Taku, quoted in ‘Joseph Awuah-Darko and Emmanuel Taku Interviewed by Africa First’, 25 February, 2021, online.