Born in Amsterdam of Belgian-Ghanaian ancestry, Appiah-nti grew up consuming images through books and social media, and naturally took to camerawork given his mother's background in photography. During his adolescent years, he immersed himself in interests stereotypically associated with heteronormative male identity: cars, biking, kickboxing, skating, surfing, and other sports. These subjects have become recurring themes in the artist's growing body of work.

Alongside work for the fashion industry, Appiah-nti has developed social documentary projects that allow him to relive his boyhood memories through a focus on the adolescent experiences of others. Inspired by the urban realism and narratives of hardship in flicks such as La Haine (1995), City of God (2002), and Moonlight (2016), Appiah-nti's documentary photographs subtly expose and subvert degrading stereotypes that associate male youth with crime and violence, especially within minority and poor communities.

Shot on medium-format film, the subdued colours and dynamic compositions of Appiah-nti's images convey a high-octane energy, but the portraits, particularly those where the subject's gaze meets the camera, are also suffused with a tenderness that calls into question interpretive links between aggressive masculinity and extreme sporting.

Appiah-nti's Golden Boy is an ongoing compendium of images that stretches across Brazil, Ghana, France, the Netherlands, and Suriname. Begun in 2018, the project consists of nearly one hundred photographs of primarily black male subjects engaged in leisure and play: swimming in waterfalls, riding motorcycles, playing football on beaches, or assuming stylised poses before the camera. This 'boy stuff,' as Appiah-nti puts it, functions as a kind of global unifier among the black youth he photographs, irrespective of socioeconomic background, or locally specific cultural norms and value systems.  

Appiah-nti explains: 'I made this one image in Brazil of this surfer kid, he was on the beach and his hair was blonde, and in the photograph his skin glowed. So I began to describe him as "golden boy," and afterward I began to shoot and develop the project more purposefully.' 

For Appiah-nti, gold is also weighted by other kinds of symbolism associated with black life. Not only does it bring to mind the natural resources and mining cultures in Africa – from the Mali Empire to the Ashanti Kingdom – where gold has historically signified social prestige, but it also conjures up the visual culture of hiphop where conspicuous displays of gold jewellery have functioned as aspirational signs and markers of status.

The idealised and carefree spirit exuded by the portrait of Ghanaian model Ottawa Kwami, sporting gold necklaces while posing against a pale-gold backdrop in Accra, exemplifies the overall ethos of the series: it reflects Appiah-nti's visions of youth culture and black male subjectivity as that which is, like gold, precious and most of all, not without value.

This text is an excerpt of an article written by Antawan I. Byrd about Kwabena Appiah-nti's project Afterlife originally published in Foam Magazine 58, Talent, in 2021.

KWABENA APPIAH-NTI is a Belgian-Ghanaian photographer based in Amsterdam whose work examines the themes of boyhood, early manhood and Blackness. Having developed an interest in documenting communities that face societal prejudice, Kwabena aims to present them in a way that cuts through the clichés of stereotyped stories. His first major project Golden Boy was selected as part of Foam Talent 2021 and .tiff 2023 “Emerging Belgian Photography” by FOMU. As a way of exploring his own identity and gaining more insight into his heritage, Kwabena travelled to Ghana to visit his father’s homeland. Sika Kokoo, a photobook released in 2021, takes the viewer on an intimate journey through Ghana’s rich culture. In 2022 Kwabena’s work was featured in the 'The New Black Vanguard' exhibition when it opened at the Saatchi Gallery as part of ’New Gazes II’, a space within the exhibition developed in collaboration with Burberry. Kwabena has since become the recipient of the 2023 Mondriaan Fonds, to continue his ongoing work with Golden Boy. He is also currently involved in the prestigious Black Rock Senegal, West African artist residency and also part of the municipal art acquisition exhibition at Stedelijk museum in Amsterdam.

ANTAWAN I. BYRD is Assistant Professor of Art History at Northwestern University and Associate Curator of Photography and Media at the Art Institute of Chicago.