The process of artification means being included, positioned and valued in a vast art archive. On the periphery of the art world and art market, how do African artists, especially those who produce “sign paintings” in Ghana, perceive and strategically utilise the archives constructed by Western art professionals? Is the sign-painting archive entirely in the hands of them? What kind of archives, if any, are woven by African artists themselves? How can their artistic practice and the proactively compiled archives be cross-referenced? This presentation will examine these questions and concerns.
The following results revealed that there are sign-painting archives that have been built up by the Western art world and archives that have been compiled and built up by African artists themselves. In their local workshops, sign-painters are well aware of the differences and characteristics of both types of information, and utilise them strategically as different information collections.
Looking at the practices of local painters and the strategies of African artists, it is clear that they combine different kinds of archives to navigate, bargain, negotiate and invent their daily practice in the vast global art market. They make full use of existing archives, and actively communicate their own stories and presence by building and compiling their own archives. If we unravel the practices of sign painters and artists who are positioned on the overwhelming periphery of the art world and art market, pick up their voices and visualise their activities, we can see how archives would be, how they should be used and how they should be perceived in a way that has never been seen before. The archival research spun out the practices of local African artists will open up new perspectives on local artistic practices and figurative expression.
