Ouattara Watts
Ouattara Watts (b. 1957, Abidjan, Ivory Coast) uses materials as diverse as acrylic and fallen leaves, sacred objects and photographs, and textiles and gouache to create large-scale paintings. After just over a decade in Paris, where he moved from Ivory Coast in 1977 to study at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Watts relocated permanently to New York. Over the course of the last four decades, the Ivorian-American artist has honed a unique visual lexicon, abstract and figurative in equal measure, that aims to transcend worldly boundaries in favor of the metaphysical and geographic borders in favor of the transcultural. Inspired at once by artists such as Pablo Picasso and Mark Rothko, West African sculptural and architectural traditions, and mathematical and linguistic codes, Watts’s work, as he notes, “is not bound to a country or continent . . . I am painting the cosmos.” He lives in New York.
Recent solo exhibitions of his work were held at, among others, Karma (New York and Los Angeles, 2024); Almine Rech, Paris (2023); Galerie Cécile Fakhoury, Dakar (2023); Karma, New York (2022); Espace Paul Rebeyrolle, Eymoutiers, France (2019). His work has been featured in landmark exhibitions such as Afriques Capitales at La Villette, Paris (2017); Body of Evidence at the National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC (2008); and The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945–1994 at MoMA PS1, New York (2001). Watts was included in the Gwangju Biennale (2021), Dakar Biennale of Contemporary African Art (2018), Venice Biennale (2017), Documenta 11 (2002), and Whitney Biennial, New York (2002). His work is held in the collections of the Cleveland Museum of Art; Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire; Kistefos Museum, Jevnaker, Norway; Mohammed VI Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Morocco; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina; Smithsonian National Museum of African American Art, Washington, DC; and Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Saratoga Springs, New York; UC Berkeley Museum of Art and Pacific Film Archive, California, among others.
Photo by James Fischetti
Born 1957, Abidjan, Ivory Coast
Lives and works in New York, New York
EDUCATION
1984
L’École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, France
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2024
Karma, New York, ’90s Paintings
Karma, Los Angeles
2023
Almine Rech Paris, France, Ouattara in Paris
2022-23
Galerie Cécile Fakhoury, Dakar, Senegal, Ouattara Watts in Dakar
2022
Karma, New York, Paintings
2019
Fondation Paul Rebeyrolle, Eymoutiers, France, Resonances
Magazzino d’Arte Contemporaneo, Rome
2018
Galerie Cécile Fakhoury, Abidjan, Ivory Coast, Before Looking at This Work, Listen to It
La Rotonde, Abidjan, Ivory Coast, Get Ready
2016
Magazzino, The Armory Show, New York, New Painting
2015
Galerie Boulakia, Paris
2013
FIAF Gallery, New York, Ouattara Watts: The Project Room
2012
Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld, New York, Vertigo
2009
International Contemporary Art at Glen Carlou, Paarl, South Africa, Hess Art Collection: Andy Goldsworthy and Ouattara Watts
2008
Galeria Leyendecker, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands
Hess Art Collection, Paar, South Africa
Magazzino, Rome, Outlaw
2007
Mike Weiss Gallery, New York, Ouattara Watts: For Lily
2006
Mike Weiss Gallery, New York, Ouattara Watts: Works on Paper
2004
The Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover
Magazzino, Rome, Crossing Currents-The Synergy of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Ouattara Watts
Marella Arte Contemporanea, Milan
Tracy Williams Gallery, New York
Magazzino, Rome, Ouattara Watts: Opere Recenti, curated by Okwui Enwezor
2002
Leo Koenig, New York
1999
Magazzino, Rome, Ouattara: in Roma
1998
Baldwin Gallery, Aspen, Ouattara: New Work
1996
The Kemper Museum, Kansas City, Ouattara: Dark Star
1995
65 Thompson (Larry Gagosian / Leo Castelli), New York, Ouattara: Recent Paintings
1994
University Art Museum, Berkeley, Ouattara
1993
Galerie Boulakia, Paris
1992
Vrej Baghoomian Gallery, New York
1990
Galerie Boulakia, Paris
Akira Ikeda Gallery, Nagoya
Vrej Baghoomian, New York
1989
Marilyn Butler Gallery, Los Angeles
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2024
Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, New Hampshire, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Ouattara Watts: A Distant Conversation
Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica in collaboration with Aïshti Foundation, Palazzo Barberini, Rome, Day for Night: New American Realism, curated by Massimiliano Gioni and Flaminia Gennari Santori
2023-24
14th Shanghai Biennale, China, Cosmos Cinema
2023
Marlborough, New York, Schema: World as Diagram
2021
Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju, South Korea, Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning
Museum of Modern Art, New York, Surface Tension
Bienvenu Steinberg & Partner, New York, The Queen of Spades…and other stories
2019
Foire internationale d’art contemporain, Paris
Galerie Cécile Fakhoury, Abidjan, Ivory Coast, L’Esprit du large chapitre II
Galerie Cécile Fakhoury, Dakar, Sénégal, L’Esprit du large
Exposition Panafricaine Itinérante, Casablanca, Prête-moi ton rêve
2018
MAXXI, Rome, African Metropolis, an Imaginary City
13th Dakar Biennial, Dakar, L’heure rouge
2017
FM, Milan, The White Hunter, curated by Marco Scotini
Grande Halle de La Villette, Paris, Afriques Capitales
2016
11th Dakar Biennial, Dakar
2011
Bertrand Delacroix Gallery, New York, Ouattara Watts and Katy Schimert
2010
Charest-Weinberg Gallery, Miami, In Dialogue : Four Generations of Painting, curated by Peter Makebish
2009
Charest-Weinberg Gallery, Miami, HERD THINNER, curated by David Hunt
2006
John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, Wisconsin, Intersections: Shifting Identity in Contemporary Art
Mike Weiss Gallery, New York, Realm of the Spirit
National Museum of African Art, Washington D.C., Body of Evidence
2003
New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, Black President – The Art and Legacy of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti
2002
Documenta 11, Kassel, Germany
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Whitney Biennial
MoMA PS1, New York, The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945-1994
2001
Gorney Bravin Lee, New York
1997
Fukui Fine Arts Museum, Fukui, Japan
Chiba Museum of Art, Chiba, Japan
1994
Vrej Baghoomian Gallery, New York
Centro Atlantico de Arte Moderno, Las Palmas, Un Altre Pais
La Caixa, Palma de Mallorca, Barcelona, La Virreina Expositions
1993
Venice Biennale, Venice
1992
Calvin Morris Gallery, New York, Other Drums: Visionary Works
Navara Gallery, New York, Haessle, Ouattara, Ray Smith
1991
Alternative Museum, New York, Syncretism: The Art of the 20th Century
Vrej Baghoomian Gallery, New York, Social Sculpture
New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York
University Art Museum, Berkeley, African Explores: New and Renewed Forms in 20th Century Art
1990
Vrej Baghoomian Gallery, New York, It Must Give Pleasure: Erotic Perceptions
Patrick and Beatrice Haggerty Museum of Art, Milwaukee, Images of Death in Contemporary Art
1988
Vrej Baghoomian Gallery, New York, Summer Exhibition
1986
Galerie Georges Lavrov, Paris
1985
Musée National des Arts Africans et Océaniens, Paris
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire
Kistefos Museum, Jevnaker, Norway
Mohammed VI Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Morocco
Museum of Modern Art, New York City
Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington D.C.
Tang Museum, Saratoga Springs, New York
UC Berkeley Museum of Art and Film Archive, Berkeley
AWARDS
2023
Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Award, The American Academy of Arts and Letters
