photo by shootsnapper
Nando Nkrumah
Nando Nkrumah is a painter and interventionist artist based in Cologne. Born 1979 in Kumasi, Ghana, and raised in Germany, he has always moved between cultures — and it is precisely from this in-between space that his art draws its strength.
At the heart of his practice is painting: a place of retreat where personal narratives, memory, and cultural heritage become visible. Traditional symbolism meets contemporary visual language — pre-colonial visuality, carried forward into the present and the future.
Alongside this, he has been working for years on site-specific interventions in public space, in particular with Augmented Reality works that disrupt established narratives in museums, at monuments, and in urban environments. His interventions have been shown at the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum, Charlottenburg Palace, and the Chale Wote Festival in Accra, among others. His first institutional solo exhibition took place in 2024 at the Max Ernst Museum in Brühl.
Nkrumah's process: Imagine. Materialise. Witness. — a cycle he calls Authentism. Art as a space for healing, empowerment, and freedom.
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Selected exhibitions & interventions:
Solo Exhibitions
2025 Imagine. Materialise. Witness, Alte Feuerwache / africologne, Cologne
2024 Die Unsichtbaren, Kirche St. Michael, Cologne
2024 Heute schon Morgen, Max Ernst Museum, Brühl
2016 Polymorphosis, Art of Buna, Cologne
2007 Sankofiction - The Story of Komfo Anokye continued, KHM — Graduation, Cologne
Group Exhibtions
2026 We Are Each Other's Harvest - BlackArtistsNRW, Mouches Volantes, Cologne
2025 Unforgotton - Black Art & Resistance Festival, Alte Feuerwache, Atelier Automatique, Bochum
2025 Hope Is the Thing with Feathers, Sakhile&Me, Frankfurt
2025 re:trace – Colonial Traces in the Rhineland, Stadtmuseum, Düsseldorf
2024 Artbey, Cologne
2024 Die Wasserträgerin — Transmedial Theater Play, BGAC e.V., Düsseldorf
2023 TIBA, Kulturbunker, Cologne
2022 The Powerhouse, Kunstmuseum Bonn, KNUST Museum Kumasi & ARX Africa, Bonn & Kumasi
2018 THE COMET – 150 years W.E.B. Du Bois, Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin
2017 Into the Light, Chale Wote Art Festival, Accra
2010 Soul Food, Duo Exhibition with Stephen Lawson, Cologne
2009 La Mercè, Light Painting, Barcelona
Interventions
2023 This is not hi(s)story, THIS IS OUR STORY, Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin
2023 Looted, British Museum, Intervention (uncommissioned), London
2020 Conversations, Rauthenstrauch-Joest-Museum, Cologne
2019 Jamestown Arbotage, Chale Wote Art Festival, Accra
2019 Arbotage No. 1, Walraf-Richartz-Museum (uncommissioned), Cologne
Curatorial Projects
2023 Africomics, Goethe-Institut, Cologne
2022 The Powerhouse, Kunstmuseum Bonn, KNUST Museum Kumasi & ARX Africa, Bonn & Kumasi
Teaching
2024 Shaping Memories – Intervention Workshop , EOTO, Berlin
2020 Lecturer in Art, Currenta Kulturwerkstatt, Leverkusen
2017 Artistic Research Associate with teaching responsibilities, KHM, Cologne
2016 Lecturer, Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences, Kamp Lintfort
