Many young artists of African heritage have emerged over the past several years with a central focus on Black portraiture with an aim of using their work to promote the telling of Black stories and the history of the people.

One such artist is the Ghanaian-born portrait painter Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe, an artist in residence at the Rubell Museum in Miami, Florida, USA. For his 2021 Artist-in-Residence Exhibition, Quaicoe, who lives in Portland, Oregon, draws on his personal and cultural history to create a body of work that is essentially a collection of paintings of Cowboys and twins.

In the Ga culture of his native Ghana, the birth of twins is viewed as evidence of an inherent connection between the corporeal and the spiritual, and being the son of twins, Quaicoe explores the phenomena in a series of double portraits. 

Normally, Quaicoe makes portraits of his friends and family and creates his images as a study in contrast and representation. He paints the skin of his subjects in shades of ebony and deep gray and employs a vibrant palette for their clothing. The dramatic approach captures the individuality and innate style of his subjects with photographic detail, with the result being that the portraits appear self-possessed with rich interior lives.

Along with his paintings of twins, Quaicoe is also presenting a trio of striking portraits done in his own take of contemporary fashion-forward interpretation of Black cowboy fashion consisting of cowboy hats; red turtlenecks; and long blue, black, and bleach-blonde braids with jewelry accents on a monumental 12-foot high canvas.

Kye Quaicoe’s stunning works of Black portraiture are currently on display at Art Basel Miami Beach, showcased by Los Angeles-based Roberts Projects in a special Kabinett installation, presented in conjunction with his debut at the Rubell Museum. They are also featured in “Black American Portraits” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe was included in “Aesthetic of the Cool: Amoako Boafo, Kwesi Botchway, and Otis Quaicoe” at Gallery 1957 in Accra, and “Ontology: Conrad Egyir, Derek Fordjour, Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe, Patrick Quarm, and Yaw Owusu,” curated by Larry Ossei-Mensah at Ross + Kramer Gallery in New York.