How Accra’s Gallery Soview Fosters Cross-Continental Connections

In early 2023, Daouda Traoré made history as the first French-speaking artist to win the top award at the Kuenyehia Prize for Contemporary Art, a Ghana-based awards initiative for West African artists. The Malian artist won over the jury with his use of found materials including worn sheets, wool, millet sacks, boxes, and wire, which he uses to create a series of artworks that address contemporary issues of immigration, conflict, and the education system in Mali.

As well as a recognition of Traoré’s practice, the award was also an acknowledgment of the efforts of Gallery Soview, the Accra-based gallery that has represented the artist since 2021, and where he previously showed his work in a solo exhibition in late 2022.

Established in May 2019 by Barbara Kokpavo Janvier, the gallery aims to connect English- and French-speaking artists from West Africa. The intent, Janvier told Artsy, was inspired by an innate desire to bridge “parallel artistic worlds in a way that benefits both Anglophone and Francophone artists, and avoids language barriers as a hindrance to collaboration.”

Cross-cultural collaborations and artistic exchanges are often facilitated by the gallery. Janvier recalled an example of when Togolese artist Tesprit visited the studio of Ghanaian artist Enoch Nii Amon. After speaking together, the artists realized that they shared similar ideas and started a beneficial working relationship in the process. Other examples include the story of a Ghanaian artist and a Chadian artist chatting about materials, with the former benefitting from the latter’s decade of experience in the art industry.

Gallery Soview also prides itself on having a “strong focus” on emerging African artists, who they showcase at fairs including Also Known As Africa (AKAA) and BAD+ art fair, both held annually in France.

The gallery’s roster includes painters, artisans, designers, and sculptors such as Traoré and Tesprit, as well as Chadian artist Appolinaire Guidimbaye, Ghanaian artist Prince Amanfo Okumkumabuo, Burkinabe artist Mouss Black, and Beninese artist Sebastien Boko.

For Janvier, it is important that the artists she works with are “very unique” in their practices and can be identified by their signature style. In Black’s body of work, for example, the artist draws with pencil, pen, laundry blue powder, and coffee. Tesprit, on the other hand, uses items such as discarded slippers from the beaches and landfills of the Togolese capital Lomé, which he assembles on canvases to draw attention to the situation of homelessness in his home country.

To illustrate further, Janvier cites Ghanaian artists Amoako Boafo, Kwesi Botchway, and Priscilla Kennedy as names who are known for their distinct works—much like the artists she works with. “I don’t need to have two [artists with identical styles and themes] at the same time,” she said. “One is enough.”

Janvier was born in Côte d’Ivoire to a father from the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and a Ghanaian and Burkinabe mother. She lived in Dabou and Abidjan in Côte d’Ivoire until she was a teenager and then spent the next 15 years in Burkina Faso. Before opening her gallery, Janvier worked as a consultant. She founded a communications and development agency to provide advice and support to NGOs and institutions in setting up agricultural development projects that focus on women’s groups in countries including Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Togo, and Benin.

In 2013, she started buying antiques including masks, bracelets, and sculptures during her travels throughout the African continent. It was during these same travels that she met “amazing” artists who were forced to put their ambitions on hold—or were not pursuing their artistic careers on a full-time basis—because it wasn’t financially sustainable.

Based on those conversations, Janvier offered to help these artists grow their careers with the same skill set she had brought to her agency work. Janvier recalled two key moments in 2018 that would prove formative: a trip to Burkina Faso, where an artist there told her that her “energy” was needed in the art industry; and a visit to the studio of an Ivorian artist, where she had goosebumps while taking in what she saw. These moments kicked off the drive to start a gallery, and led to her writing a detailed plan that would become Gallery Soview, which she started on her return to Ghana that same year.

“Upon arriving in Ghana, I noticed two artistically close yet distinct worlds in development,” Janvier explained, adding that she thought to use her “development expertise to support talented artists, often self-taught, who often lack an evolution strategy and administrative support.”