Bio & CV

Bio

Kelvin Kweku Haizel’s artistic practice spans painting, conceptual photography, and archival interventions. Beginning his photographic interests with an ontological question – what is the object of an image? He develops experiments in manufacturing images via the expanded field of the photographical. From snap to staged, documentary to archival inquiry, his approach to image has been consistent with his interest in the speculative potential of the materiality of images. He mines through the diverse ecologies within archival images as ways of unsettinling the dependency on fixed narratives in colonial images. It is a materialist attitude towards the production of images that sides with the multiplicity and plasticity of the image in its phenomenological manifestations. Haizel’s materialist attitude to manufacturing images has resulted in different bodies of work that has shown in exhibitions in his home country Ghana and internationally. His work has shown in OderlyDisorderly (2017), Rencontres de Bamako, Biennale Africaine de la Photographie (2017), Stellenbosch Trienniale (2020), ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum (2021), Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago (2022), MARKK museum, Hamburg, as part of the 8th Hamburg Photography Triennial (2022). Haizel also participated in Documenta Fifteen as an artist through the blaxTARLINES KUMASI collective. He was a research scholar at the Northwestern University on invitation of the Black Arts Consortium in 2022, during which period he focused on images in response WJT Mitchell’s notion of the desire of the picture. In 2024 he was invited by Thinking Tools, The Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp and MORPHO as a resident artist to further his research into the ecologies within colonial archives. He continues this experimental approach to painting and imaging through subversions, decoys, and speculations.

CV

EDUCATION

Ph.D. Candidate: Kwame Nkrumah University Of Science And Technology (KNUST) Kumasi, Ghana.

MFA. (Painting and Sculpture). 2017: Kwame Nkrumah University of Science And Technology, Kumasi, Ghana

BFA. (Painting and Sculpture) 2010: Kwame Nkrumah University of Science And Technology, Kumasi, Ghana

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

Solo Exhibitions

2024: “The Gestures of Happiness” Solo Exhibition at Gallery Farrah Fakhri, Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire.

2024: “We Do Not Sleep To Dream” Solo Exhibition curated by Ato Annan at Gallery1957, Accra. Ghana.

2022: “Archive of Experiences”. Solo exhibition at the Museum am Rothenbaum-Kulturen und Künste der Welt

2019: “Babysitting a Shark in a Coldroom” A solo exhibition curated by Urs Stahel in Zurich, Switzerland.

2018: “A Fish Story”, A filming event organized in response to the historicity of Socovia, in the Comoros Island. Comoros Island

2017: “things and nothings” solo exhibition held at the Old Knust Museum. Ghana

Biennales, Triennials, Quinquennials

2022: “Documenta Fifteen”. Participates as a member of the blaxTARLINES KUMASI Collective, Kassel.

2020: “Stellenbosch Triennale” The maiden edition of the Stellenbosch Triennale curated by Bernard Akoi Jackson and Khanyisile Mbongwa in Stellenbosch, South Africa.

2017: “Afrotopia” 11th edition of the Rencontre de Bamako, Biennale Africaine de la Photographie. Musee de Bamako, Mali.

Other group exhibitions

2023: “Worldmaking” Group Exhibition at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, Chelsea, New York.

2024: “Untitled III: The African Family” Gallery1957, Accra, Ghana

2022: “Beautiful Diaspora/You Are Not The Lessor Part”. Group exhibition at the MoCP, Museum of Contemporary Photography,

Chicago.

2021: “This is not Africa: Unlearn what you have learned”. Group exhibition at the ARoS Aarhaus Art Museum, Denmark.

2019: “Lagos Photo Festival” Showed in the 10th anniversary of the Lagos Photo Festival themed “Passports”. Lagos, Nigeria

2018: “SpectacleSpeculation” An art exhibition curated by Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh at the Ablade Glover Hall. Ghana

2018: “Afrotopia” 11th edition of the Rencontre de Bamako, Biennale Africaine de la Photographie. Restaged in Africa Museum,

Netherlands.

2017: “Bizindalo: Art & Technology in Africa” Group show at Funcahal’s ‘Casa da Luz’ investigating strategic narratives on Africa and technology. Madiera, Portugal.

2017: “Orderly Disorderly” Group show organized by blaxTARLINES in collaboration with Ghana Museums and Monuments Board, at the Museum of Science and Technology, Accra, Ghana

2017: “Something Played” Group exhibition curated by Selorm Kudjie. Ghana

2017: “Art in Process” Group exhibition organized by Gallery Sol. France

2016: “Cornfields and Accra” Group exhibition organized by blaxTARLINES in collaboration with Ghana Museums and Monuments Board, at the Museum of Science and Technology, Accra, Ghana

RESIDENCIES

2024: MORPHO, Antwerp, Belgium

2023: Gallery1957, Accra, Ghana

2022: Black Arts Consortium (BAC) artist-in-residency, Chicago, USA

2022: Hyde Park Art Center Residency, Chicago, USA

2021: Museum am Rothenbaum-Kulturen und Künste der Welt residency, Hamburg. Germany

2020: La Condition Publique, Roubaix, France.

2019: Moroni, Comoros Island.

2015: Asiko: 5TH International Art Programme, Maputo “A History of Contemporary Art in Maputo in 4 weeks”, Maputo, Mozambique.

AWARDS

2022: David C. and Sarajean Ruttenberg Arts Foundation Award

2018: Young contemporary photography “A New Gaze 2” presented by Vontobel Art Commission, Switzerland

2015: Kuenyehia Prize for Contemporary Art: 2nd Runner up.

LECTURES/WORKSHOPS/ ART TALKS

2024: Lecture: “On Simultaneous Multiplicities”, Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp.

2022: Black Arts Consortium (BAC) artist-in-residency art talk.

2022: Hyde’n in the park: Reflections on the desire of image. Art talk at Hyde Park Art Center

2022: Artist talk at the Museum am Rothenbaum-Kulturen und Künste der Welt residency, Hamburg. Germany

2022: In Conversation: Kelvin Haizel and Dr. Robert Hanserd of Colombia College Chicago. MoCP post-opening programming for the exhibition Beautiful Diaspora/You are not the lessor part”

2022: SAIC Parlor Room lecture series. (Zoom)

2021: Art Talk: Embracing the Traumatic in the Aesthetic Unconscious. In company of Tracy Thompson, Eric Gyamfi and Wolgang Tillmans.

2021: Lecture to Graduate students of Photography at SAIC taught by Dawit L. Petros (Zoom)

2020: ‘Photography in an Expanded’. Lecture at the Stellenbosch Academy of Photography and Design

2019: Presention at the Research Center for Material Culture’s (RCMC) workshop on the topic ‘Beyond Representational Certainty: Rethinking the Future of the Afrika Museum’.

2013: “Dubois in Our Time” sound and video art workshop organized by Nubuke Foundation in collaboration with University Museum of Contemporary Art at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Uzora Projects and VAN Lagos, Nigeria.

2012: Global Crit Clinic, FCA, Accra, Ghana

PUBLICATIONS

Monopol Magazin. Documenta Fifteen edition. Ein Künstler Der Uns Augefallen Ist.

Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh (2022) The Artist as Historical Materialist: Kelvin Haizel Exposing the Photographic Real.

https://iubeezy.wordpress.com/2022/05/30/the-artist-as-historical-materialist-kelvin-haizel-exposing-the-photographic-real/

Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh (2021). Indeterminate Images. OVER(2), 34-45.

Siddhartha Mitter (2020). Stellenbosch Triennale, a Bold Experiment. The New York Times.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/25/arts/design/otellenbosch-triennale.html

Khanyisile Mbongwa and Bernard Akoi-Jackon (2020). Stellenbosch Triennale: Tomorrow There Will Be More Of Us. Edited by Khanyisile Mbongwa (Cape Town, with Tip Africa Publishing Ltd), Exhibition catalogue

Katrin Schregenberger (2019). Kunst ist ein Witz. Aber ein komplexer. Neue Zurcher Zeitung.

https://www.nzz.ch/feuilleton/afrikanische-kunst-kelvin-haizel-gewinnt-vontobel-preis-ld.1466675 

Jens Hinrichsen (2019). Glaube an die verandernde Kraft von Kunst. Monopol Magazine. https://www.monopol-magazin.de/barrierenund-blutiger-ernst

Christoph Heim (2019). Auch Fische brauchen Zartlichkeit. Tages-Anzeiger. https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/kultur/kunst/auch-fischebrauchen-zaertlichkeit/story/29970286

CONTEMPORARY AND Print Edition No.9 (2018). You Are Already In It: Looking At A Global Diaspora. Pgs 32-33

Afrotopia (2017). 11th Edition Rencontres de Bamako, Biennial Africaine de la Photographe. Exhibition catalogue, pgs 32-33

I.U.B (2017). Notes on Kelvin Haizel’s ‘Things and Nothings’… https://iubeezy.wordpress.com/2017/05/23/notes-on-haizels- thingsand-nothings/

CCA Lagos (2017). Àsìkò: On the Future of Artistic and Curatorial Pedagogies in Africa. Pgs. 8-11