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blaxTARLINES is a growing alliance of Peg Leg Joes or Harriet Tubmans; their solidarity is also proof of the crises they embody. As they “follow the drinkin’ gourd” towards emancipation, their North Star is a Black Hole of uncertainties and paradoxes as they serve as underground “conductors”, “agents”, “escorts”, “station masters” and “parcels” on their railroad to self-determination. For them, the struggle creates its refuge, and the refuge its struggle. At the core of blaxTARLINES is a horizontal network of teachers, labourers, artists, curators, students, technicians, and co-workers. They are a pedagogical experiment – inspired by kąrî’kạchä seid’ou’s Emancipatory Art Teaching Project – a support hub, a sharing economy, and an underground emancipation network hosted by Ghana’s foremost art college at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi. There are many more “stations” along their “railroads”, dispersed across five continents. Kwame Nkrumah’s maxim, “The gown must go to town,” is our watchword.
Besides their guerilla experiments in Kumasi, blaxTARLINES exhibitions resonate across the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia by Koyo Kouoh titled In Minor Keys (2026); Silent Invasions: The Art of Material Hacking (2023-2024) in Masaka, Uganda; documenta fifteen (invited by lumbung member, Gudskul); Fragments of a World After Its Own Image (2025) co-organised with APALAZZOGALLERY in Brescia, Italy; and The Allegory of Decoy (2024) hosted by Gallery Hubert Winter in Austria. The inaugural edition of Art Schools – ArtReview’s new and wide-ranging report on the state of art education launched in March 2023 – features the work they do. ArtReview has also named blaxTARLINES in its annual Power 100 ranking list every year since 2022.
