Ouattara Watts was born in 1957 in Korhogo, Ivory Coast. He lives and works in New York in the United States.
A major figure in the visual arts of Africa and its diaspora, Ouattara Watts is regularly featured in international events such as the Dakar Biennale and the Venice Biennale. His work has been featured in landmark exhibitions such as The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945-1994 at MoMa PS1 (2001, curated by Okwui Enwezor); The Whitney Museum Biennial (2002); Body of evidence at the Smithsonian Museum for African Art in Washington (2008); and Documenta 11 in Kassel (2002). More recently, his works were presented at the Espace Paul Rebeyrolle during the personal exhibition Résonances(2021) or at the Gwangju Biennale (South Korea, 2021, cur. Nathasha Ginwala & Dephne Ayas).
In 2018, Galerie Cécile Fakhoury (Abidjan, Dakar, Paris) organized his first solo exhibition in Côte d'Ivoire in 30 years, Before Looking at This Painting, Listen to It; and then presented his work at the Fiac in 2019.
Ouattara Watts' work is included in major international collections such as the Agnès Gund Collection, the Mohamed IV Royal Collection, the Claude Picasso Collection, and the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art. In 2020, MoMa will acquire a work by Ouattara Watts and present it in the installation Surface Tension.