Gambian artist Anna Isatou Bah in her studio at the ART27 Studio in Sanyang, a coastal town in the West Coast Region of The Gambia. Photo: Osman Kargbo, bird story agency.
From selling paintings at a roadside craft market to earning an international artist residency, Gambian artist Anna Isatou Bah is helping revive the country’s overlooked printmaking traditions while building a new generation of creatives.
By Osman Kargbo, bird story agency
In a sunlit studio in The Gambia, layers of ink, carved linoleum and bold patterns draw on centuries of West African tradition while speaking to the realities of life today. Through her distinctive printmaking and mixed-media practice, Gambian artist Anna Isatou Bah is helping to revive traditional artistic techniques, preserve cultural heritage and introduce a new generation to the country’s rich visual identity.
Her work bridges past and present, using the language of traditional West African motifs and contemporary storytelling to explore culture, identity and social change.
Seven years into her career, Anna Bah continues to build her reputation in The Gambia’s art scene. While influenced by artists such as Pablo Picasso, she also credits her mentor, Ferenc Donderer, founder of the ART27 Group, whose organisation has helped provide exhibition and development opportunities for Gambian artists.
After Anna completed high school in 2019, she tried to set aside her ambition of becoming an artist. The need to support herself and her mother led her into hair braiding, but the pull of art never faded. She found herself returning to memories of the classroom, where her talent had earned the admiration of teachers and classmates, and realised she could no longer ignore the desire to create.
By the end of that year, she had picked up her tools again and began making art from home. She took her work to the craft market in Brikama – some 20km from Fajikunda in the Kanifing Municipality of The Gambia where she lived with her family – to sell and eke out a living to assist her siblings and mother.
Anna’s journey mirrors a broader shift in The Gambia, where the creative industries are increasingly being recognised as a source of employment and economic growth. UNESCO has identified the sector as one with significant potential to create jobs for young people while strengthening the country’s cultural identity and tourism economy. Yet many artists still rely on informal markets and small galleries to earn a living.
“I sat down one day, after getting fed up with the braiding I was doing and told myself: ‘I know visual arts. I used to do well in it at school. Why not go back to it and struggle with it?’ So, I summoned up the courage and dropped the braiding I was doing, and started to do my artwork at home,” Anna recalls.
“After getting some collections, I started taking them to the craft market to sell,” Anna narrates.
A turning point came in 2024 when Anna’s work caught the attention of Ferenc Donderer, founder of the ART27 Group, an organisation that supports and promotes Gambian artists.
Donderer, also known as Mr Ferry, first met Anna at the craft market in Brikama. Impressed by the quality of her work and her commitment to her craft, he invited her to become one of the organisation’s first members.
“Anna is one of the founding members of ART27,” says Donderer who has more than four decades experience as a practising artist. Since then, ART27 has supported Anna with art materials, exhibition opportunities and professional guidance, helping her develop her printmaking and mixed-media practice.
“She has grown enormously as an artist,” says Donderer. “Today, I see her as one of the leading female visual artists working in The Gambia.”
For many Gambian artists, talent alone is rarely enough. Limited exhibition space, few commercial galleries and scarce training opportunities make it difficult to build sustainable careers. Organisations such as ART27 are beginning to fill that gap by providing artists with studio space, professional mentoring and access to exhibitions.
Donderer believes the next step is the creation of a permanent gallery or museum for West African art in The Gambia, giving artists a dedicated space to exhibit their work year-round, connect with international audiences and inspire the next generation of creatives.
His vision reflects a broader shift across the continent. A recent Afreximbank study, Estimating Potential Economic Contribution of Cultural and Creative Industries in Africa, identifies Africa’s cultural and creative industries as an emerging economic sector with significant potential to generate jobs, increase exports and drive economic growth. In The Gambia, initiatives such as ART27 are helping artists like Anna translate creative talent into sustainable livelihoods through access to mentorship, studio space and professional networks.
Anna works across linocut printmaking, wood relief printing, collage and acrylic painting. Her printmaking draws on long traditions of African wood carving and relief printing, techniques once used to create intricate patterns on textiles such as the adinkra cloths of West Africa. By adapting these methods to contemporary themes, she is helping revive printmaking traditions that have become increasingly rare in The Gambia.
Alongside her prints, Anna creates art brut collages that combine text, found objects and unconventional materials, as well as bold abstract acrylic paintings.
Her work reflects the influence of pioneering African printmakers such as Azaria Mbatha and John Muafangejo, whose experiments with relief printing at the Rorke’s Drift Art Centre in South Africa helped establish printmaking as a distinctive form of African artistic expression.
Anna looks at other iconic visual artists too: “One of my role models is Pablo Piccaso. I read about him and admire what he did. I want to do great works like him,” she says.
Her growing reputation has earned her an international opportunity with a first artist residency in Spain in October. The programme will include advanced training in relief engraving at the Art Print Residence in Barcelona, research at the Picasso Museum, and a mixed-media masterclass at Cherrie’s Attic Art Space in Tenerife.
For Anna, the residency represents a chance to deepen her skills while learning from the artistic traditions that have long inspired her work.
Anna currently exhibits and sells her work through several venues in the country’s Western Region while also teaching linocut printmaking to aspiring artists: “I run workshops for beginners who are interested in learning printmaking. They provide an income that helps me support both my work and myself.”
A self-taught artist, Anna has become part of a new generation of Gambian creatives using art to preserve cultural traditions while experimenting with contemporary forms. Through her linocut workshops, she is also passing those skills on, introducing young artists to a craft that has long been overlooked in The Gambia.
Today, her work reflects not only her own journey but also her belief that Gambian art has a future rooted in its past.
“I’m happy because I’m doing what I love most,” Anna says, surrounded by her prints at the ART27 Studio in Sanyang. “If I can inspire someone else to pick up the tools and tell their own story through art, then I’ve achieved something worthwhile.”
As Anna Bah prepares for her first international artist residency, she sees the experience not as a departure, but as an opportunity to refine her craft and bring new ideas back to The Gambia. The residency marks another milestone in a journey that began with paintings sold at a craft market and has grown into a career dedicated to preserving Gambian artistic traditions while opening new possibilities for the next generation of artists.
“I am not travelling to leave,” Anna says. “I am travelling to learn and bring that knowledge back home to my country.”
bird story agency
Leave a Reply