Ernest Boateng: POP YOUR COLLAR
We are excited to announce our next rOGUE Gallery exhibition: POP YOUR COLLAR by Ernest Boateng! The exhibition will open with a reception on August 7th from 6-8pm, during which Ernest will be giving an artist talk starting at around 6:30pm! There will be plenty of snacks and refreshments at the reception; we hope you’ll join us to celebrate Ernest and his work! Click here to RSVP to the Facebook event.
This exhibition celebrates the untold stories of tradespeople in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, and beyond. Through intimate portraits, workplace scenes, and artifacts, Ernest Boateng bridges local and global narratives, capturing the humanity, craftsmanship, and resilience of workers. Highlighting the intersections of labour, identity, and culture, the exhibit invites viewers to reflect on the vital contributions of these “unsung heroes” to our communities.
Ernest Boateng would like to thank ArtsNL for their support.
Ernest Owusu Boateng is a Ghanaian visual artist, photographer, and educator based in Corner Brook, Newfoundland. His work spans portraiture, documentary image-making, and scan-based experimentation, shedding light on marginalized communities within peripheral geographies through the lenses of working-class labour and race. Drawing from lived experience in both Ghana and NL, Boateng brings attention to the emotional, social, and material traces of working bodies, and the everyday spaces where they decompress, rehearse identity, and hold memory.
This lens grounds his current exhibition, Pop Your Collar, a documentary portrait series exploring the performed identities of tradespeople in Corner Brook — the uniforms, gestures, and domestic spaces where labour is rehearsed and set down.
He holds an MFA in Visual Arts from Memorial University of Newfoundland, where he teaches in the Visual Arts program, and a BA in Communication Design from KNUST, Ghana. His work has been exhibited at the Tina Dolter Gallery, Eastern Edge, and the Grenfell Art Gallery, and published in Riddle Fence and Black Is Magazine. Boateng is the 2026 recipient of the VANL-CARFAC Excellence in Visual Arts Emerging Artist Award.
His practice bridges design, photography, and critical research to expand the presence of those who are seen, centred, and historicized in place.