Karî’kachä Seid’ou

karî'kachä seid’ou is an artist-intellectual, poet, teacher, mathematician, and associate professor of modern and contemporary African Art. Recognized as Ghana’s leading figure in non-proprietary art, he conceived and implemented the “Emancipatory Art Teaching Project”, which fundamentally transformed the fine art curriculum in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at KNUST at BFA, MFA, and PhD levels. His mentees and protégés now form the core of Ghana’s Contemporary and Post-Contemporary art waves, flourishing as artists, curators, scholars, and cultural professionals. His impact has been acknowledged widely, especially in prominent art journals and media, including African Arts, ArtReview, The New York Times, The Guardian, and Financial Times. The Guardian refers to karî'kachä seid’ou as “one of the most significant proponents of art on the continent in the 20th century”. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2024/apr/08/barbican-pink-fabric-ibrahim-mahama-robes He has advised, collaborated with, and consulted for reputable artists, collectives, curators, contemporary art museums, art centres, academies, and alternative spaces in Africa and worldwide. He co-founded blaxTARLINES, an open-source and community-driven art collective inspired by his non-proprietary art practice and emancipatory pedagogy. In 2021, African Arts dedicated a special issue (Volume 54, Issue 2) to the achievements of both blaxTARLINES and the Emancipatory Art Teaching Project. Furthermore, blaxTARLINES has been repeatedly included in ArtReview’s Power 100, ranking among the world’s most influential figures in contemporary art in 2022, 2023, 2024, and counting. In particular, the 2022 issue lauded blaxTARLINES as “a template for independent art scenes around the world,” noting seid’ou’s pivotal role: [P]rofessor karî’kachä seid’ou developed an ‘Emancipatory Art Teaching Project’, which eventually led to a series of collectively curated multigenerational exhibitions that prioritised a dynamic, democratic approach over any specific media. This has helped form an ongoing, shifting group of collaborators, and to inspire a web of affiliated projects and collectives throughout Ghana. (ArtReview, December 2022, Vol. 74, No. 9, p. 95)karî'kachä seid’ou continues to mentor a large number of faculty members, students at the Faculty of Art, and artists across Ghana and beyond. Although deeply influential, he chooses to work with quiet discretion—preferring to remain incognito and operate silently from his base within Africa.