Biography

Dela Anyah is an artist and researcher based in Accra, Ghana, working across inner tube textile works, bronze sculpture, installation, moving image, and works on paper. His practice is grounded in the contemporary history of the tyre industry: the global systems that sustain its trade and circulation, the labour networks and migration patterns that underpin it, and the waste those systems produce.

Anyah's work draws on found and discarded materials sourced from vulcaniser shops across West Africa, sites of informal tyre repair that function in his practice as primary locations of inquiry. He engages the workers in these spaces through documentation and the acquisition of objects, which are repurposed through his own artistic process. The Vulcaniser Atlas, an ongoing photographic and digital mapping project documenting repair shops across the region, underpins this research and positions the vulcaniser shop as subject rather than backdrop.

His essays and research have appeared in Thresholds (MIT Press), Log, LIMN, and Adjacent (NYU ITP).

His work has been exhibited internationally, including at Biennale Internationale de Sculpture de Ouagadougou, Mitchell-Innes & Nash (New York), The Anzai Gallery (Tokyo), AKKA Project (Venice), Galleri Christoffer Egelund (Copenhagen), and Gallery 1957 (Accra). Solo exhibitions include Elementary Rebirth at Nubuke Foundation and The Dreamer's Cocoon at The Noldor Residency, both in Ghana.

Anyah is a finalist for the Ellipse Art Prize (2025), Second Runner-Up for the Kuenyehia Prize (2023), and a 2026 Building Beyond Fellow of the Prince Claus Fund. His works are held in the Celine Art Project, Sir David Adjaye Collection, and Fischer Shull Collection.



Photo Courtesy: Noldor Artist Residency