Silas Mensah is a Ghanaian artist who lives and works in Kumasi, Ghana. Mensah earned both Bachelor of Fine Art, 2015 (BFA) and Master of Fine Art, 2018 (MFA) in Painting from the College of Art and Built Environment, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, Ghana.

In 2014, Mensah developed an interest in how the local community was structured and mapped out. His particular attention was on layers of accumulated dirt, patterns and textures that are caused as a result of rusting roof tops of the old compound houses. 

He began staining plain or patterned fabrics with organic and inorganic materials and media. In expanding watercolor techniques for instance, Mensah has experimented with mixtures of an assortment of clays, vegetable extracts, and manganese dioxide extracted from discarded alkaline batteries as pigment, immersed in a solution of gum-Arabic or cassava starch as a binder. These dyes and stains have been applied with household brushes or been poured onto a variety of absorbent and semi-absorbent fabrics. He further populates the visual and tactile texture of the fabrics with wear-and-tear simulations. He does this by appropriating collaging techniques on the fabrics, employing photo-transfer of archival images, photographs or pieces of outdated newspaper cuttings. When dry, more objects like pieces of rusted roofing sheets are pasted onto the fabrics. They are then hanged in free space, draped against walls or arranged as amorphous object installations.

Amongst significant exhibitions in which his work has been shown are “The GOWN Must Go to TOWN”, (2015) and “Orderly Disorderly” (2017) organized by blaxtARLINES KUMASI, (Project Space for Contemporary Art), Department of Painting and Sculpture, KNUST, Kumasi. These exhibitions were held in the museum of Science and Technology in Accra, Ghana.

The “Noisy Wall” series (2017), has also been featured in the inaugural edition of the Lagos Biennale, (2017) in Lagos NIgeria.