Awanle Ayiboro Hawa Ali: Fine feathers don't make fine birds

In her paintings, Ghanaian artist Hawa Ali Awanle Ayiboro focuses on the lives of two marginalized groups of young women in Accra: the Kayayei girls - female porters who have migrated from the north of Ghana - and the Girly Girls, sex workers on Oxford Street. 

In her stories, Ayiboro questions issues such as power, gender, survival and agency from a female perspective. She challenges Ghana's entrenched social norms and raises critical questions about class, morality and representation.

At the heart of Ayiboro's work is an intense tension: the roles of these women are bound by social taboos that restrict them, yet they create spaces for survival and self-realization. Her opulent, Baroque-inspired settings also draw provocative parallels to the history of the Baroque, whose opulence and decadence were inextricably linked to the colonial exploitation of Africa, including the Gold Coast.