The Ghanaian-French artist Kwama Frigaux and the Senegalese artist Fatoumata Sy have been announced as the joint winners of the 2026 Yaa Asantewaa Art Prize, the award for women artists founded by the London and Accra-based Gallery 1957. Each will receive 5,000 dollars, a three-month residency and a solo exhibition.

The prize was founded in 2021 to support women artists in Ghana and its diaspora, and this year it has expanded to include artists from Senegal, in partnership with the Institut Francais du Senegal. Frigaux will spend her residency in Senegal, a month in Saint-Louis and two months in Dakar, before a solo exhibition at Gallery 1957 in Accra. Sy will undertake her residency in Accra, followed by a solo exhibition at Galerie Le Manege in Dakar.

The prize is named after the former Ashanti queen mother renowned for her anti-colonial resistance when Ghana was under British rule. Applications for this year's edition opened in June and ran until September, open to Ghanaian and Senegalese women artists aged 18 or older, based either in their home countries or in the diaspora. The winners were announced during Accra Cultural Week, which ran from 29 October to 2 November.

Frigaux and Sy were selected by a jury that included Touria El Glaoui, founder of the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair; the Ghanaian artist Serge Attukwei Clottey; Marie Helene Pereira, a senior curator at Berlin's Haus der Kulturen der Welt; Jeanne Barral, a curator at the Fondation Cartier; the collector Alexa Waley-Cohen; and Dominique Heyse-Moore, senior curator of contemporary British art at Tate Britain. On view at Gallery 1957 until 5 December is The Lore of Care: Maternal Acts of Devotion, a solo show by Theresah Ankomah, the winner of the 2025 prize.