The Alchemy of Colour and Matter

Accra, Ghana

13 March - 11 May 2025

In collaboration with ADA contemporary art gallery

The Alchemy of Colour and Matter examines how each artist manipulates materiality and colour to imbue their work with meaning, mirroring the ancient practice of alchemy. Curated by Sosa Omorogbe, this exhibition features six artists whose work explores how pigments and textures hold memory, evoke emotion, and serve as vessels of cultural resonance.

The exhibition invites reflection on how tactile and visual elements inform our understanding of identity, heritage, and the creation of personal sanctuaries. Colours hold symbolic weight in the language of alchemy. They represent stages of transformation. Each artist is paired with a colour that reflects the essence of their work, reinforcing the metaphysical nature of materiality and forming a mosaic of narratives that spans the stages of enlightenment, purification and rebirth.

Together, these six artists engage in a practice of creative transmutation—where pigments, textiles, metals, and memory evolve into something greater than their origins. Like alchemists, they harness the power of transformation, demonstrating that art is a continuous process of expansion, reinvention, and rebirth.

The idea that materials hold memory and the potential for reinvention is central to Sika Amakye’s work, which embodies the reflective essence of silver, associated with fluidity and the convergence of past and present. She repurposes secondhand textiles, intricate beadwork, and reclaimed objects to channel ancestral histories while redefining their contemporary relevance. Her practice becomes a portal—mapping identity, community, and intergenerational storytelling through tactile compositions.

The exploration of transformation is equally present in Mimi Adu-Serwaah’s work, which further resonates with silver’s symbolism. Using wire mesh, raffia, stone beads, and metallic pigments, her compositions reflect an ongoing metamorphosis, whereby the processes of fragmentation and reconstruction are revelatory of strength, and mirror the process of alchemical change. The metallic hues of her work which interact with changes in lighting conditions symbolize motion and renewal; embracing the space between erosion and rebirth.

Expanding the palette of alchemical colours, Araba Opoku’s multidisciplinary practice is steeped in the symbolism of purple—a shade tied to wisdom, mystery, and transformation. Incorporating textiles, painting, and performance, she examines the fluid nature of cognition, memory, and identity. Her background in psychology informs her approach as she layers textures to mirror the shifting nature of selfhood, crafting works that bridge the cerebral and the visceral; like an alchemist elevating and refining raw.

The themes of worldbuilding and mythmaking are central to Na Chainkua Reindorf’s practice. She resonates with the colour red—a hue of vitality, passion, and initiation. Her work blends masquerade traditions with contemporary storytelling, reimagining cultural narratives through disguise and transformation. Stitching and fabric are woven throughout her pieces, symbolizing change, while her figures undergo both physical and symbolic evolutions, embodying red’s duality—destruction and creation, sacrifice and empowerment.

Building on the exploration of identity through transformation, Roisin Jones explores the alchemy of adornment through pink, a shade tied to love, softness, and inner reflection. Inspired by Morocco, Thailand, and Japan, she examines embellishment as a sacred act where layering, pattern, and texture serve as tools of renewal. Drawing from childhood memories of collecting fabrics and beads, she changes surface into substance, weaving past and present into a meditation on vulnerability and trust.

Together, these six artists engage in a practice of creative transmutation—where pigments, textiles, metals, and memory evolve into something greater than their origins.

Tizta Berhanu

Roisin Jones

Mimi Adu-Serwaah

Sika Amakye

Bringing these themes of metamorphosis into an emotional realm, Tizta Berhanu’s work embodies the depth of black—the void from which all change begins. In this context, black symbolizes neither an end nor a beginning, but an eternal void where emotions and experiences coalesce, forming the foundation for renewal and transformation that have birthed all other artistic expressions. Her paintings, awash in swirling pigments, create dreamlike atmospheres where emotions take on tangible form. Here, hue becomes both medium and message, and her brushstrokes blur presence and absence, revealing how tones shape emotion, much like alchemists once sought to turn base matter into gold.

WORKS

Tizta Berhanu

Fulfilment,

110 x 110 cm

Oil on canvas