• “I wanted to taste colour.”
• Deconstructing, redefining, and celebrating black skin.
• Collabs with Puma and Apple Inc.
• Photographed Burna Boy for GQ.
• Featured “In Off White” by Virgil Abloh.

Africa’s creatives continue to shake the foundations of the global art world with unadulterated genius. From Accra Ghana, photographer and digital artist, Prince Gyasi’s work is immediately iconic, shedding the cliché of what African art should look like, and it comes through hard with an unapologetic boldness and authenticity, dripping with talent.

Seeing the world differently.

Prince Gyasi was diagnosed as a youth with synesthesia which is defined as “a neurological trait or condition that results in a joining or merging of senses that aren’t normally connected.” In this case, the stimulation of one sense may cause an involuntary reaction in one or more of the other senses. For example, someone with synesthesia may hear colour or see sound. “I was in primary school before I heard the word, but the signs were there. My mum says that as a baby I tried to eat paint and chew fabrics, as if I wanted to taste colour,” says Prince.

Raised in Jamestown, a fishing district in Accra, Ghana, Prince was exposed to photography, colour and composition from an early age as his mother would drop him at a photographer friend’s studio while she went shopping for fabric at the Makola Market. This would lead him to experiment with photography in high school, capturing the world he knew around him, by using his cell phone.

Global Cultural Impact.

The 26-year-old remains humble, regardless of his phenomenal impact on global culture, helping rewrite the narrative of African Art. In 2017, he was chosen as a contributing creative director for a collaborative campaign by Puma and the Amsterdam-based fashion label, Daily Paper, and was included in Vanity Fair’s “Nine of the Most Exciting Artists to Follow”, from Miami Art Week 2018.

More recently, he worked with Apple Inc. on a project in Ghana entitled “A Great Day in Accra,” photographing his close friend and British-Ghanaian breakout actress, Michaela Coel, alongside Nana Kwasi Wiafe (who was covered in the Wire last month). In 2020 he photographed Burna Boy for the March issue of GQ Magazine, and went on to be featured in the spring and summer collection for the late Virgil Abloh’s brand, Off-White. This April, Prince will be the lead artist featured at the Kyotographie festival in Japan.

Notably, Prince is strongly driven to give back and founded ‘BoxedKids’, an initiative supporting underprivileged children from Jamestown, Accra, setting up funds for their education; allowing them – most importantly – to “see in colour”.