SLOW DOWN: CATTLE BATTLE AHEAD blaxTARLINES @ Biennale Arte 2026 by Koyo Kouoh
blaxxMEDIA (Livestream and Pre-Recorded Broadcasts)
Consistent with our duplex exhibition model, events in host cities such as Kumasi and other blaxTARLINES "stations" in Africa and around the world will be broadcast to Venice serving as a viewing centre for blaxxMEDIA programming off-Venice, while looping pre-recorded videos of events staged by blaxTARLINES members and affiliates. Exhibitions, Workshops, Art Talks, concerts, listening sessions, reading sessions, poetry, meetings, and more will be planned, programmed, and livestreamed. This component is also progressive and will run throughout the period of Biennale Arte (May 9 - November 22, 2026).
Press Release
kąrî'kạchä seid'ou (signed Kevin Amankwah), 1995. UNTITLED: [SLOW DOWN: CATTLE BATTLE AHEAD], Oil on Canvas, 105 × 135 cm approx. Private Collection.
On the historic occasion of blaxTARLINES KUMASI's invitation to In Minor Keys, the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia by Koyo Kouoh, the collective deploys its strategic open-source portals: blaxxRADIO, blaxxMEDIA, and blaxxLIBRARY. blaxTARLINES may be described as an open-source art coalition, an art-labour movement, a pedagogical experiment, a sharing economy, an underground emancipation network—and none of these exclusively. Hosted by Ghana's foremost art college at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, the coalition remains globally dispersed across five continents.
The conceptual motifs guiding In Minor Keys, curated by Koyo Kouoh, include: "Shrines," Procession/Invocation, The Threshold, Rest, The Creole Garden, and Schools. blaxTARLINES KUMASI is invited as one of six artist-led organisations forming the "Schools" motif. The curators define "Schools" as "ecosystems rooted in their local territories and, at the same time, transnational spaces of learning and regeneration founded on encounter, shared knowledge, and autonomy from market forces." Within the broader exhibition framework, "Schools" is intended to "reflect a shared ethic and a collaborative practice that intertwines art and social responsibility."
This commitment to "shared knowledge and autonomy from market forces" is rooted in the long-standing instigation and guidance of kąrî'kạchä seid'ou, whose painting, SLOW DOWN: CATTLE BATTLE AHEAD (1995), gave the title to the blaxTARLINES exhibition at Venice. seid'ou's leadership—specifically through the Emancipatory Art Teaching Project (2003–present) and various iterations of the Non-Proprietary Art interventions—laid the groundwork for the founding of blaxTARLINES.
By championing an emancipatory pedagogy, seid'ou and his collaborators, including Kwaku Boafo Kissiedu "Castro", Tracy Naa Koshie Thompson, George Buma Ampratwum, Dorothy Amenuke, Ibrahim Mahama, Bernard Akoi-Jackson, Edwin Bodjawah, Adjo Daiki Apodey Kisser, Nuna Adisenu Doe, Rosemary Esinam Damalie, Keziah Ouomoye Owusu-Ankomah, and Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh, have fostered a culture of non-reciprocal generosity that challenges conventional property forms of artistic production. Under this initiative, the blaxTARLINES collective continues to be guided by the maxim: "transforming art from commodity to gift."
For Biennale Arte 2026 by Koyo Kouoh, the Underground Railroad—a historic network that engineered the emancipation of enslaved people, is the muse of blaxTARLINES. By analogy, blaxTARLINES serves as a contemporary system of "underground railroads," "stations," "havens", "conductors," "fugitives" and "escorts."
blaxTARLINES deploys "fractal curating", a method that zooms in and out across nested spaces and time signatures. This is extended through Duplex Exhibition Models, enabling bi-directional exchange of live projects between Venice and external sites. Within these tonal registers, blaxxRADIO and blaxxMEDIA function as open-source portals staging interviews, pre-recorded sonic content (linked to our podcast channel), music playlists, and livestream infrastructures connecting Venice, Kumasi, Kampala, and other "railroad stations" as simultaneous viewing, streaming, and listening centres. blaxxLIBRARY, sub-titled On Ghosts, Resurrections, and Debris from by-passed Futures, anchors a multi-sensory haptic space. It features objects, sound, books, ephemera, braille texts, murals, weaver-loom performance, installations, video and sonic archives, digitized exhibition brochures, magazines, documents, theses, and more. The haptic dimension is further emphasized through a homage to Lionel Idan, designer of the Boku loom (a modern adaptation of the kente loom incorporating a warp roller), and the Affortey [Invaloom], designed for wheelchair users or persons with paraplegia.
blaxTARLINES CURATORIAL TEAM (Slow Down: Cattle Battle Ahead @ the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia by Koyo Kouoh):
Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh, George Buma Ampratwum, Kwaku Boafo Kissiedu (Castro), Tracy Naa Koshie Thompson, Bernard Akoi-Jackson, Ibrahim Mahama, kąrî'kạchä seid'ou.
Organizing Team: Chris Edzordzi Parker Sefogah (Megborna), Gideon Hanyame, Samuel Baah Kortey, Kekeli Bamezor, Andrews Siaw Nubuour, Dennis Nii Ankamah Addo, Justice Amoh, Sam Amegavi, Al Hassan Issah, Paul Amoatey, Ansu Joel, Isaac Kusi, Apini Moses, Eleagbe Gracious, Owusu Emmanuel, Thomson Kwabena, Oliver Kwadwo, Baffoe Kwabena, Annoh Kofi Martine, Sudai Osman, Jonathan Agyeman, Alfred Aboagye, Larry King Jambuke, Mensah Ceron Selorm.
Produced with support of: Teiger Foundation, in partnership with American Friends of Zeitz MOCAA, APALAZZOGALLERY, Mercedes Vilardell, Archive Books, Compound House Gallery, VODO Arts Society, UNDER GROUND Kampala, SCCA Tamale, and Red Clay.
"After the revolution, who is going to pick up the garbage on Monday morning?"
—Mierle Laderman Ukeles, 1969
"Who shall be Artists and who shall be Servants in the world to come? Or shall we all be artists and all serve?"
—W. E. B. Du Bois, 1920
blaxTARLINES! You may call us an open-source art coalition or an art-labour movement. Both designations fit the bill. We are also a pedagogical experiment, a support hub, a sharing economy, and an underground emancipation network. We are hosted by Ghana's foremost art college at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) Kumasi, but there are many more "stations" along our "railroads", dispersed across five continents. Kwame Nkrumah's maxim, the gown must go to town, is our watchword.
We are inspired by the non-proprietary art practice and pedagogical projects of kąrî'kạchä seid'ou. Our operations are tactical responses to crisis points and moments in the distribution networks of global contemporary art, especially in Ghana and several regions on the African continent, where the lack of public and private support systems for the art field is the rule rather than the exception. We are also inspired by key moments in emancipatory politics across history and cultures.
The coalition has African Unity in sight, but we approach it by other means. We are a growing alliance of Peg Leg Joes or Harriet Tubmans; our solidarity is also the proof of the crises we embody; as we "follow the drinkin' gourd", our North Star is a black hole of uncertainties and paradoxes; and fugitivity, our hallmark:
When the sun comes back, and the first quail calls [. . .]
Well the river bank makes a mighty good road
Dead trees will show you the way
Left foot, peg foot, travellin' on . . .
We are suspicious of ready-mades, so we hack them, translate, and redistribute – global contemporary art and its network of 3 Ms (Museum, Market, and Media) included. That is our response to Tania Bruguera's call to return Duchamp's urinal from the art museum to the lavatory. We have seen our comrade Ibrahim Mahama chart this path admirably in Tamale, a location previously written off the default routes of international contemporary art. Currently, blaxxKITCHEN, blaxxRADIO, blaxxMEDIA, and blaxxPROJECTS, our open-source set-ups, are a significant part of the resource hacking and repatriation job – picking up the garbage on Monday morning.
As fugitives and hackers, the Ghanaian Sankᴐfa ("go back and fetch it") bird is a welcome muse, but we re-read the legend away from pure return-to-past nostalgia. Rather, we imagine the Sankᴐfa bird "going back" to grasp what the present might have "forgotten" from futures yet to come, and vice versa. Taking the position of the Sankᴐfa bird forces our hand to alter verbs, asterisk adjectives and adverbs, and hyphenate pronouns, but we may hence alter and multiply the nouns and time signatures of existing practices and those yet to come. The subjunctive is our future, our past, our present, our joy.
Sacrifice may be a morally freighted word today, but we reclaim it to describe the work of the Harriet Tubmans, the Peg Leg Joes, and the underground "conductors", "agents", "escorts", "station masters", and "parcels" on our "railroads". The coalition's core is a horizontal network of teachers, labourers, artists, curators, students, technicians, and co-inhabitants. They work across disciplines and span generations. Today, blaxTARLINES plays leading roles in the growth and sustenance of criticality in art practice in Ghana and beyond. We build hard and soft infrastructural support for both artworld practitioners and allied communities. These include co-developing living curricula, experimental hubs, residencies, social networks, workspaces, start-ups, cultural platforms, and public-access art spaces across Ghana, and linking them to other regions in Africa and elsewhere.
We celebrate emergence. We generate, train on, and share contingent tools, recipes, codes, systems, lifeforms, models, prompts, and means that are "impossible for someone to have and another to lack". Put another way, we "transform art from commodity to gift" – hopefully, a non-reciprocal gift!
blaxTARLINES! We hack, we liberate, we share, we fail, we resurrect!
