CHALE WOTE STREET ART FESTIVAL

ACCRA [dot] ALT in association with Redd Kat Pictures and Chale Wote Street Art Projekt have begun preparation for the fifteenth annual CHALE WOTE Street Art Festival, which will be held over a one-week period from Monday 10th to Monday, August 17th, 2026.

CARNIVAL OF THE BLACK SUN

In the suspended hour of Africa’s contemporary moment, one perceives the spectral outline of what Frantz Fanon might diagnose as a profound, dialectical tension. The celestial metaphor is not merely atmospheric; it signifies the dawning of a collective political consciousness—what he termed the “pitiless mirror” of the people’s gaze—now turned inward upon the native soil and upward toward genuine sovereignty. This awareness is the violent, necessary birth Fanon foresaw, the end of the “manichaean delirium” of colonialism and the beginning of the true struggle.

Yet, the direct descendants of the colonial-era intermediary, works to stifle this birth. Their project of a digital surveillance State is not an aberration but the logical, cybernetic evolution of the imperial project Fanon dissected in The Wretched of the Earth. It is a new “system of repression,” designed not only to observe but to psychologically incarcerate, to internalize the border and the checkpoint within the mind of the living. This panopticon seeks to create a neo-colonized subject: one who is policed by the architecture of their own society, managed by a black mask worn over the interests of external capital.

It is within this suffocating pressure chamber that the Chale Wote Street Art Festival assumes its Fanonian urgency. It is more than a celebration; it is a cathartic, spatial revolt. The streets become a zone of occult instability, where the alienating, surveilled space of the State is momentarily shattered and reclaimed. The bodily act of painting, LABS, installing and performing is a collective therapy, a dismantling of the inferiority complex imposed by centuries of material and psychic violence. The art here, is not decorative. It is the spontaneous, disruptive language of the masses forging a new, unfettered reality—a prefigurative politics painted on the walls that would contain them.

Chale Wote stands as a living manifesto against what Fanon warned as the “blind alley” of national consciousness degraded into a self-serving bourgeoisie. It is, instead, the vibrant, chaotic sound of the living inventing their own souls, brushing against the digital bars of their newest cage, and sounding the first notes of a present they alone will author.

To speak of the Black Sun as the planetary core is to identify the ultimate source—the gravitational and geothermal heart whose energy Empire seeks to plunder, whose rhythms it attempts to override. The Carnival, then, is the moment this core becomes conscious and erupts through the integrated blockchain cages. The Black Sun is the defiant inner core, the consciousness that rejects the bio-tokenized marketplace—where life is data, trauma is currency, and identity is a traded commodity. Carnival of the Black Sun is a praxis of immediate re-ordering.

Chale Wote is signing up work that dismantle this spectacle by embodying a different logic: communal, ancestral, and self-defined. Make ritual public. Make memory tactile. Forge iconography that cannot be consumed, only experienced. The liberation path is cleared not by depicting freedom, but by constructing its palpable reality in the shared NOW. Your art is the rupture.

 APPLICATION PROTOCOL

Proposed artwork can be realized in any medium and there are no restrictions on form or content. However, proposals that demonstrate innovation and deep, nuanced understanding of contemporary art, craft, or design are preferred. Proposals must be site-specific, i.e. the Osu metropolitan area during CHALE WOTE 2026.

This call is open to all artistes who have been professionally active for at least 2 years and with a visible commitment to their professional artistic practice and media. [Having studied art is NOT a requirement; we accept applications from self-taught professional artists with at least two years constant working experience].

The concepts can be based on work to be realized as an intervention, a live performance, an installation, a video, photography, painting, sculpture, performance art, theatre, dance, animation or some other form newly imagined. All works should translate to being displayed or performed in a public space and should actively engage intentional and incidental audiences where possible.

As strong advocates of art education, we are also interested in works that can be tailored to include Salons and knowledge sharing Labs with children and/or youth during the festival period.

Selected artists will be expected to realize the works from August 1st to 9th, 2026 and have it ready for display/performance from August 10th to 17th 2025.

Please Note: CHALE WOTE is an independently produced by a number of community-based, art collectives across Accra.  International Artists selected to participate are encouraged to apply for funding from their home countries or other sources to support their travel, living costs and, where possible, funding for the cost of production for their work. Accommodation will be provided to some selected international participants for the period between August 10-17th, 2026.

How To Apply:

1. Current resume/CV: 3 pages maximum.

2. Application submissions must contain the following documents: 1) a concept note about your festival project and 3) work you’ve made within the past 2 years. You may submit either still images OR video.

We review video documentation if an artist’s work is time-based, interactive, web-based, kinetic, film, video, animation, and/or performance. If you work with installation, painting, sculpture, photography and/or drawing, you MUST submit images. Please note that if you submit plagiarized work, your application will be disqualified.

IMAGES: Five (5) jpeg images, at 180 DPI resolution maximum, maximum total file size 250kb. Images must be titled with your last name, first name, number with no spacing e.g. Kweinortey1.jpeg, Kweinortey2.jpeg, etc. Please do not submit: PPT, PDF, TIFF, GIF, or PSD files.

VIDEO FILE FORMAT:     HD1080i Quicktime/ H264

Deadline APRIL 16TH, 2026.
EMAIL all applications to chalewote@accradotaltradio.com & accra.alt@gmail.com                                    (NB: Applications should be sent to both emails)