In conversation with Yussif Sachi
“There is a lot of culture in Ghana that you can put on canvas.”
- Yussif Sachi
Yussif Sachi, Image: MTotoe/FLOLondon
Yussif is a half Ghanaian half Burkinabé (from Burkina Faso) multi-disciplinary artist. Born in the Volta region of Ghana, Yussif grew up in Nima, Ghana. He has his own art shop at the Tetteh Quarshie Art Market where he sells his artwork and art by many other Ghanaian artists.
Hi Yussif! Can you tell us how you begun your journey into art?
I started art at a young age. When I used to visit the cinema I would look at the movie posters and would sketch what I could see on the film posters, imitating the work as best as I could, with pencils. When I went to school I met two other guys who were also interested in sketching movie posters. We soon started competing with each other.
By the time I got to JSS (Junior Secondary School, the equivalent of years 7 - years 9 in the UK) my abilities had got much better and one of my teachers would often ask me to create visual art in her classes for the younger students to copy and learn.
When I was studying art at SSS (Senior Secondary School, the equivalent of year 9 - year 11) it was mainly theory-based, however, when I eventually moved to Nima I was introduced to a famous artist in the area called Mozzay. This is when I really started to get to know about art. It took me back to my sketching roots. Mozzay would encourage a group of us to work on sketches until we were able to get their features perfect. So this was when I really started mastering free sketching with pencil. Then I moved on to art in colour.
How did you open your own shop?
Mozzay really encouraged us to develop our own style. Once I had developed my own style, I began selling my work to the Art Centre in Accra for shop sellers to purchase. The sellers would buy our art at low prices then sell it to tourists at much higher prices. Because of this, I decided to start a shop of my own.
A shop at the Art Centre in Accra is very expensive, so a friend and myself decided we would look at opening a shop at the art market at the Tetteh Quashie roundabout. At the time I still could not afford this, so I had to continue selling my artwork to other shops at low prices to save enough money to open my own shop.
Opening a new shop was tough to begin with, but I found that people enjoyed being able to talk to me about my work before buying it. This inspired me to keep going at it.
As sales started to grow, I started to get more commissioned work. I started to build more of a client base, so I asked my friends if they wanted to sell their artwork in the shop to offer more variety.
Image: Art by Yussif
What are some of the challenges you face as an artist in Ghana?
Being able to afford materials is a problem for most artists in Ghana. Acrylic colours are hard to come by and they are very expensive here, but they provide the best quality work so we must get a hold of it.
What inspires you to create your art?
Mozzay was an inspiration to me. I attribute my being an artist to Mozzay. I also used to get encouraged when I would see my artwork being sold – knowing that people were willing to pay for my work, and knowing that they thought it was of value was inspirational. This helped me continue to make more work.
Some NGO's used to provide us with paints, and they would encourage us to paint whatever we wanted on walls in the city like graffiti. There was a group of us doing this and we would often try to create art that would relate to what was currently going on around us to try to teach people something. We would also travel around the city to places like the market and other tourist attractions to take pictures and later create these images on canvas.
I hope that we motivate children to be artists through what we do.
What does an average day look like for you?
Some days I am working in my workshop creating art, or I’ll be in the shop selling artwork. Although since the start of the coronavirus pandemic it has been tough. Now that we are open again we get very few people coming here daily, as there aren’t many tourists. Business is really low now.
I just hope things return to what they were like before the virus.
Finally, what do you love about Ghana?
I love the environment, our daily life, our culture, there is a lot of culture in Ghana that you can put on canvas, and when people come to purchase the artwork I tell them all about this culture!
You can find Yussif’s shop at the Tetteh Quarshie Art Market. Click here for more interviews from our Ghana Culture Series.
Yussif’s shop at the Tetteh Quarshie Art Market, Image: MTotoe/FLOLondon
