Kojo Marfo in Ghana: Butcher-turned-painter performance sold out
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Kojo Marfo is an artist born as a butcher, determined to promote the importance of dairy cows to the world.
“The cow established civilization,” Malfoy said. “In Ghana, we use them to cultivate the land. If you have two or three animals, you can find a beautiful woman to marry you. In parts of India, they are considered gods.”
His appreciation began in childhood in rural Ghana, where he was raised by his mother and grandmother, and gradually grew after moving to New York to work, where he became a short-term career as a butcher.
“I’m really desperate. I don’t know much about meat, and I will cheat,” the 41-year-old said.
“There are anatomical drawings of animals on the wall detailing each incision. I have to use them as a guide. Even so, my boss will catch me. All I have to do is chat with the client.”
He may have sold their meat before, but his canvas inspired by cows is now selling for three times the asking price. Marfo’s work now graces a series of designer scarves from London’s Aspinal.
Other topics close to the artist’s heart are the power of women, the value of single parents, and the beauty of vitiligo.
At first glance, his works give a vivid African feel—he grew up in the Kwahu Mountains, about four hours’ drive from Accra—but each piece is a carefully pieced together of different continents.
The Renaissance collar from Britain, the sacred cow from India and the birth doll from Ghana are all features.
“We live in a melting pot-there are many cracks in it,” he said. “But I want to bring people together and let everyone see their culture reflected.”
Marfo remembers spending his years of growing up in the local library, looking at Picasso’s pictures, and watching the craftsmen in Accra selling their wares to tourists, but he said that his own artistic ambitions were initially only on the river bank.
“I think I should become a doctor or an accountant, but I will go to the river to collect tough clay or berries, and then press them into dyes.
“I would paint petroleum jelly on paper to make tracing paper so that I could trace it from art books or magazines. But it wasn’t until I left Ghana that my work became serious.”
Eventually, he found a way from New York to England, where he worked in his aunt’s grocery store in London.
In the 2000s, Marfo admitted that he gave up his art, but once the inspiration came back, he was attracted back again.
“I want to show how active the single parent lifestyle is,” he said.
“In the mountains, women are the most industrious people, and only women nurture me. A staunch feminist once told me that men always dominate and women are always victims. But where I come from, women always dominate. “”
His work also began to play with the idea of beauty—painting all the white spots of his character on his face. The medical condition is the formation of paler, non-pigmented patches on the human skin.
“Those faces that look like collage cuts, I got these ideas from a person I know who suffers from vitiligo,” Marfo said in a recent interview.
“When I try it, it works for me. I always say to myself, I don’t want to paint beautiful art… I just want to paint something that I can use to talk about problems.”
Being raised by the mother of Jehovah’s Witnesses also stimulated his curiosity about religious symbols.
“Africans have a completely different understanding of art from Europeans. Europeans can play with art and express themselves, but in Africa, they view art from a different perspective.
“If you draw a beautiful person, a man or a woman or a nature-it is accepted. But when you delve into spirituality and witchcraft, everyone will say:’This person is dangerous!’ Even a good friend I would say: “How can I refer to these things, this stuff can’t be used.””
Marfo started selling his work online, and then sent his work to an open artist recruitment center called Isolation Mastered.
Their vitality and strength attracted the attention of the judges-including Sotheby’s art historian David Bellingham and art collectors, and Gavin Rosedale from the British rock band Bush, who bought a Marfo picture The paintings are his personal collection.
Suddenly, all of Marfo’s works were sold out.
“I don’t know if it’s because of Black Lives Matter’s background,” Marfo said.
“I heard two things from buyers: they saw something different in my work-‘No one is doing what you are doing,’ they said, they like the person I have attached to them story.”
Such stories include the coronation ceremony, in which a couple stares intently ahead. At first glance, you notice that the female figure is wearing boxing gloves with clenched fists. Marfo said that this was an ode to a woman he knew who discovered that her partner had an affair during confinement.
In the first exhibition at the JD Malat Gallery in London, all his works were sold out in the first month. In his second exhibition “The Dream of Identity”, all his works were sold out at the end of the first day.
But Malfoy, a boy from the mountain, didn’t care about money. All this is to overcome difficulties.
“In Kwahu, the land is not suitable for planting things, so you have learned your own way. In Ghana, if you come from Kwahu, you will be considered a money grabber, but I am always grateful for something. in the pocket.”
And he did not completely cancel the replacement of his paintbrush with a butcher’s knife.
“I’m still fascinated by the job of a butcher, I want to learn this skill and make it well.”
Kojo Marfo’s “Identity Dream” is currently on display at JD Malat Gallery in London
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