About – alniinod

Biography:

Albert Nii Nortey Dowuona – alniinod (b. 1987) lives and works in Accra, Ghana. He earned his Bachelor of Fine Art (B.F.A.) in Painting and Sculpture from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi in 2010. Nii Nortey is interested in discarded materials as objects embedded with certain narratives and histories. He makes use of African Wax Prints, newspapers and lotto papers in creating his works.

Artist Statement

My practice explores how social identities are formed, layered, and continually negotiated through systems of production, circulation, and cultural memory. Working across material, screen printing, and digital processes, I examine accumulation and erasure as parallel forces shaping meaning over time.

African wax print is central to my work, functioning as both material and metaphor. I engage its dual systems of identification, social names assigned by market traders and serial codes imposed by manufacturers, to investigate tensions between lived cultural authorship and industrial production. By tracing the fabric’s movement from manufacture to use, I consider how identity, value, and influence shift across social and economic contexts.

Layering operates as a key strategy through palimpsest. Juxtaposition, rupture, and partial visibility allow multiple histories to coexist within a single surface. These constructed images draw on personal memory and inherited lineage, positioning identity as unstable, cumulative, and continually rewritten.

EXHIBITIONS

Solo Exhibition

2011 – “the KNUST Muse_um is A_muse_um”, KNUST, Kumasi – Ghana.

Selected Group Exhibition

2024 – (Group Exhibition) – Accra In Motion, Ghana National Museum, Accra & British Council, Ghana – Accra
2023 – Woori Art Festival, Nubuke Foundation – Wa, Ghana.
2019 – EVOLUTION OF SCIENCE EXHIBITION, GHSCIENTIFIC, MUSEUM OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, ACCRA
2019 – YBG ECO ARTS FESTIVAL, MUSEUM OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, ACCRA

2010 – “Time + Space [Technology] = Event”, Final year Show, KNUST, Kumasi – Ghana.

WORKSHOPS AND RESIDENCES

2024 – Accra In Motion Residency, Ghana National Museum, Accra
2022 – Blue Canvas Studios Residency, Cape Coast
2021 – CRITLAB Artists, Writers, Critics and Curators Workshop, Kumasi

RESEARCH ARTICLE

PORTRAIT OF A PORTRAITIST – AMON KOTEI, 2010. (link: https://www.alniinod.com/portrait-of-a-portraitist-amon-kotei/)

PRESS AND PUBLICATIONS

Featured exhibition in FORBES Magazine: https://www.forbes.com/sites/evaamsen/2019/12/14/artists-and-scientists-in-ghana-reflect-on-the-countrys-scientific-achievements/?sh=760309235a01
Made in Bed (Sotheby’s Institute of Art in London and New York): https://www.madeinbed.co.uk/emerging/xbwvxivarrt8fs8tolg0a4vqxst7vt

GhScientific (ARTISTS AND SCIENTISTS REFLECT ON SCIENCE IN GHANA AND THE COUNTRY’S SCIENTIFIC ACHIEVEMENTS) https://ghscientific.com/exhibit-reflects-on-science-in-ghana/

SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS:

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/alniinod1

INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/alniinod1