blaxTARLINES KUMASI
DEPARTMENT OF PAINTING AND SCULPTURE K.N.U.S.T.
Curatorial Statement Spectacles. Speculations… takes an experimental exhibitionary approach to analyzing the contemporary condition of the image given its immanence of aesthetics and politics. The exhibition grounds its conception of images in the logic of appearances. Images thus considered conflate symbolic, gestural, material, still, moving, analog, virtual, digital, aural, and textual forms. These, in often sophisticated and multivalent configurations, tend to construct our everyday reality and, in some cases, determine the absolute experience by which our daily lives are regimented mainly via mass media, advertising, and the Internet. How have images been used in conditioning imaginations in a global society plagued by mass surveillance, mass hacking, ecological crises, financial meltdowns, obscene wealth concentration and privatization of mass media: in short, the spectacular crises of capitalism and the failure of democracy in our time? Since the early twentieth century, there have been organized efforts by artists, filmmakers, dramatists and intellectuals to pervert the conventional as well as institutional limits of art; from the Soviet Union, through Euro-America, to Latin America and Africa — we can cite the Constructivists and productivist filmmakers of the Soviet Union; Dadaists, Auteur cineastes and Situationists in France; Minimalists in the U.S.A; and Third Cinema practitioners in Latin America, Africa and its diaspora. Although these dispositions oscillate between reformist and revolutionary attitudes, what they share is the tendency for art’s profanation; subverting its commodification, and, by this, undermining the traditional values of capitalism. Artistic practice, in this context, is no longer thought of merely as fulfillment of aesthetic enjoyment or contemplation oblivious to the systemic conditions that determine its “distribution of the sensible”1, but for its political viability and making the production, spectatorship and ownership of art the property of commons. The curatorial model for the exhibition is informed by such emancipatory attitudes of the past century. In this spirit of transgression, Spectacles. Speculations… features works by fourteen artists based in Africa, Latin America and Europe who do not take their chosen image-making technologies of artistic expression for granted and actively seek to transcend the limits of what is possible. The exhibition remixes various visual, auditory and gestural technologies — photography, video, film, text, sound, black box theatre, computer-aided design, installation, sculpture, and spoken word poetry — into new spatio-temporal relationships. Through strategies of distraction, absorption, translation, relational aesthetics, and site-specificity, the exhibition functions as a constellation of sites reflexively manufacturing new visualities. — Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh , February 2018. Note: 1. I borrow this expression as used by Jacques Rancière in his book The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible (2004).
Date: 8th February — 10th March, 2018 Venue: Ablade-Glover Hall (blaxTARLINES KUMASI project space), Department of Painting & Sculpture, KNUST, Kumasi, Ghana Opening: 8th February, 2018 @ 7pm Open daily from 10am — 7pm Participating artists: María Leguízamo, Dzyadzorm, Ibrahim Mahama, Kelvin Haizel, Aisha Nelson, Mawuenya Amudzi, Men on Black (collective), Steloolive, Akwasi Afrane Bediako, Francis Kokoroko, Poku Mensah, Bright Ackwerh, Edwin Bodjawah, Kwabena Afriyie Poku, Koliko (collective) Panelists: Agyeman Ossei, Dzyadzorm, Senanu Gbedawo, Bernard Akoi-Jackson Curator: Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh Graphic design: Alvin Ashiatey, Victor Erskine-Erbah, Jesby Ayettey Construction Team: Elolo Bosokah, Francis Djiwornu, John Aganda, Hassan Issa, Larry Adorkor, Elvis Nsiah, Selom Kudjie, Kortey Samuel Baah, Frederick Okai, Gershon Gidisu, Caleb Prah, Fredrick Botchway, Bernice Ameyaw, Georgina Fynn Media and Publicity: John Owoo, Nana Osei Kwadwo, Kofi Ntow Nyarko, Jonathan Okoronkwo Advisory team: karî’kạchä seid’ou, Kwaku Boafo Kissiedu (Castro), George Buma Ampratwum, Kris Russo, Keziah Ouomoye Owusu-Ankomah, Ato Annan, Adwoa Amoah Supporting institutions: blaxTARLINES KUMASI, Foundation for Contemporary Art — Ghana (FCA - Ghana), Ehalakasa, @thestudioaccra For more information: t: +233 234 258 007 (WhatsApp) | w: www.iubeezy.wordpress.com | e: oheneayeh@gmail. com
María Leguízamo (b. 1988)
María Leguízamo is an artist from Colombia, currently working between Philadelphia (U.S.A) and Bogotá (Colombia). In 2017, she graduated with an MFA in Sculpture at Tyler School of Art with the support of a Fulbright Fellowship. She is a member of the PunkPop band Da Peeblz, an intersectional feminist music band for kids. Leguízamo has focused her practice on themes such as the phenomenon of absence of land and the potency of fragility and invisibility as subversive apparatuses; with her explorations always unfolding from personal experiences embedded in specific sociopolitical contexts. Her work has been shown at Temple Contemporary, The Woodmere Art Museum and ICEBOX-Crane Arts in Philadelphia; The Koppel Project in London; Artecamara Chapinero and El Claustro San Agustín in Bogotá.
Dzyadzorm (b. 1987)
Dzyadzorm is a Ghanaian-Liberian poet who interrelates the written and spoken word in her work. Her content occasionally finds form in music. Dzyadzorm’s performative style is delicately textured with surreal pathos while passionately exploring themes of love, desire, geopolitics, gender and identity politics from the perspective of marginalized subjectivities. She participated in Voyage of [Re] Discovery (2015), a group exhibition organized by Nubuke Foundation in Accra, Ghana.
Ibrahim Mahama (b. 1987)
Ibrahim Mahama is an artist who lives and works in Tamale, Ghana. He earned a BFA and MFA in Painting and Sculpture from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST). In 2012 he began producing “Occupations”, a series of itinerant installations made in collaboration with migrant communities using industrial materials, namely jute fibre sacks used to carry various commodities. These sacks are introduced into spaces that question the systems of production and that sense of occupation. Architecture plays the role of both protagonist and antagonist in these immersive yet temporal projects. Failure and crisis are fundamental to his production processes. His work has been included in a number of group shows including Pangea I (2014) and Pangea II (2015) at Saatchi Gallery, London, Silence Between The Lines (2015) in Ahenema Kokobeng, Kumasi, The Gown must Go To Town (2015), Accra, the 56th Venice Biennale “All The Worlds Futures” (2015), Orderly Disorderly (2017), Accra, and documenta 14, Learning from Athens, Athens and Kassel (2017).
Kelvin Haizel (b. 1987)
Kelvin Haizel investigates the contemporary condition of the image and expresses his ideas through video, photography, installations and objects. He holds a BFA in Painting and Sculpture from the College of Art, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) and due to graduate with an MFA from the same institution. He has exhibited widely in his home country Ghana, and elsewhere including Nigeria, Mozambique, France and Portugal. His body of work from a recent solo show “things and nothings” showed in Mali, at the 11th edition of the Rencontres de Bamako, Biennale Africaine de la Photographie (2017), dubbed Afrotopia. He served as guest curator for the maiden edition of the Lagos Biennale, 2017.
Aisha Nelson (b. 1986)
Aisha Nelson dreams, writes, thinks, teaches and lives in Accra, Ghana. A set of her poems were shortlisted by Erbacce Press in 2014; one won Akwantuo Writing’s 2015 Harmattan Poetry Contest. More of her poetry, short fiction, nonfiction and short plays have featured in outlets including Accra Theatre Workshop, One Ghana One Voice, Kalahari Review, Munyori Journal, Saraba Magazine, University of London’s Prairie Schooner, Writers Project of Ghana’s 2015 poetry anthology According to Sources and Caine Prize for African Writing’s 2015 short story anthology Lusaka Punk and Other Stories. Nelson shares some of her writing on her blog, Nu kɛ Hulu (Water and Sun), at aishawrites.wordpress.com.
Mawuenya Amudzi (b. 1992)
Mawuenya Amudzi’s photographic objects are created from disused cathode ray tube (CRT) television screens and computer monitors. His process involves taking photographs of activities in the scrap yards and repairer workshops, where he collects the materials, and transferring these images on transparent stickers onto the screens. Light fixtures are sometimes incorporated to augment theatricality in these objects. Amudzi has participated in group exhibitions including Orderly Disorderly (2017) organized by blaxTARLINES KUMASI in Accra, Ghana and the inaugural Lagos Biennial dubbed Living on the Edge in 2017.
Men on Black (collective)
Men on Black is a collective comprised of poet Sir Black and actors Dr. So and Jeneral Nta Tia. Adapting Franz Kafka’s characterization in The Trial into a three-person stage act, the trio explore the situational dynamic between performer and audience within the experimental space of black box theatre. In The Trial, Kafka tells the story of Josef K, Chief Clerk of a bank, who is, for no reason, arrested one morning and assumed guilty. His prosecution is a series of events shrouded in bureacracy and secrecy — from his offense to the rules of the law court, to the remote authorities behind the courts. The play was directed by Simon Eifeler and premiered in Theaterfabrik in Düsseldorf, Germany in 2016.
Steloolive (b. 1984)
Steloolive is a Ghana based flaneur DJ of electronic music who remixes content from live percussion, fashion, photography, sound and performance into his work. Spectacles. Speculations… restages sound from Steloolive’s recent performance in Accra where he employs readymades such as glass, water, spoons, empty cans, and musical instruments (eg. Xylophone and Conga), mediated by computer software and the drum machine, to create sound from electronic, synthetic, and organic sources. He has performed in Accra’s biggest street art festival, Chale Wote, Nairobi’s Thrift Social, Abidjan’s Electropique Festival and Bush Man Film Festival. Steloolive has also performed at We Don’t Contemporary festival in Hamburg, Germany, Afropean Mimicry and Mockery III, Frankfurk, Germany, and Iwalewahaus Future Ports of Entry Festival Bayreuth, Germany.
Akwasi Afrane Bediako (b. 1990)
Akwasi Afrane Bediako has a BFA and MFA from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Ghana. He has participated in group exhibitions including “if you love me…” (2016) co-curated by Robin Riskin, Patrick Nii Okanta Ankrah and Selom Kudjie in Kumasi and Orderly Disorderly (2017) organized by blaxTARLINES KUMASI in Accra, Ghana. For Spectacles. Speculations… Bediako’s installation functions as a surveillance apparatus — a network of two screens, webcams and computer — in the exhibition space reflexively confronting the spectator, raising issues of mass surveillance, mass hacking and censorship by governments and private institutions in twenty-first century global culture.
Francis Kokoroko (b. 1987)
Francis Kokoroko is a freelance photographer and artist living and working in Accra, Ghana. He has a B. Sc. in Computer Science from Ashesi University College. Kokoroko developed the passion for image-making after studying Projects in Photography at the New York University Campus in Accra — a program run by artist Lyle Ashton Harris. He is a member of Nuku Studio — a photography institution at the forefront of the advancement of imagemaking and its interpretation in Africa — and has participated in World Press Photo West African Master Class (2017). Kokoroko has a keen interest in documenting the upbeat everyday life on the African continent and its ever evolving cultures. He currently works on long term projects for Reuters Wider Image. His @accraphoto account on Instagram chronicles his encounters in Ghana and journeys through the African continent. His work has been exhibited at Addis Foto (2016) and Lagos Photo (2017).
Poku Mensah (b. 1992)
Poku Mensah a.k.a Poku Cheremeh was born in Accra, Ghana. He completed his bachelor diploma at Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Art de Paris. In 2016, he participated in the 12th Edition of the Dak’Art Biennale “The City in the Blue Daylight”. Admitted to Van Eyck Academie in Maastricht, Poku interned for Claudy Jongstra in Friesland during the summer of July 2017. His work for Spectacles. Speculations… is a video installation with sound which condemns formalities of Western perspectives and provokes questions aligned with integrity, alienation and the power of speech. Viewers are confronted with a black man portrayed as a wild animal presented on a wooden board in a 10-minute video stream. The image exposed to the viewer is acquired through the artist’s appropriation of painterly elements from 17th century Dutch Golden Age still life paintings.
Bright Ackwerh (b. 1989)
Bright Ackwerh is an artist from Ghana whose satirical computeraided illustrations make commentary on geopolitics and pop culture. He graduated from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) where he earned a BFA and MFA in Painting and Sculpture. Bright considers the internet (social media) as a site of intervention for his often provocative, exaggerated and controversial subject matter encountering different forms of censorship. His versatile practice is situated in the interstices of painting, illustration and street art. He is the recipient of the Kuenyehia Prize for Ghanaian Contemporary Art in 2016, an honor conferred on him by a jury led by Professor El Anatsui. He was also named one of the top 10 artists in the 2017 Barclays L’atelier.
Edwin Bodjawah (b. 1970)
Edwin Bodjawah’s reproductions of face masks are made from decommissioned lithographic plates from the Ghanaian print industry and corrugated roofing sheets as well as other objects and materials appropriated from building sites. Borrowing from multi-layered processes embedded in African masking systems and their theatrical role in social life, Bodjawah improvises with techniques of mechanical reproduction, similar to industrial embossment and stamping. His new forms are thus infused with collective processes of production and spectatorship. Bodjawah has featured in group exhibitions including blaxTARLINES KUMASI’s largescale exhibitions at the Museum of Science & Technology in Accra — The Gown Must Go to Town (2015) Cornfields in Accra (2016) and Orderly Disorderly (2017). In 2017 Bodjawah’s solo exhibition “of Blood Soil & More… SILENCE SPEAKS” was held at the Cape Coast Castle in Ghana.
Kwabena Afriyie Poku (b. 1968)
Educated at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, where he currently teaches, Kwabena Afriyie Poku started his practice as a painter, illustrator and art teacher. Poku’s works have evolved into incorporating new territories of digital expression. Exploring performance and video, amidst other digital media, his work emphasizes Karate-related principles —regarding body movements, time, speed, and angles— as discourse for art practice. Poku has shown his work in residencies and several local and international exhibitions including Dialogue (2015-2016), a GhanaianDanish collaboration in Ghana and Denmark, and Orderly Disorderly (2017) organized by blaxTARLINES KUMASI in Accra.
Agyeman Ossei (b.1961)
Agyeman Ossei’s cross-disciplinary practice examines the linkage between the symbolic, semiotic and metaphysical in art. He dialogically relates painting, collage and sculpture as mediums of expanding Asante linguistic proverbial and philosophical ideas. His works celebrate cultural classics (literature, poetry, etc) and memorializes them through carving, modeling, painting and dramaturgy. He has translated and adapted literary works into theatre plays: notably “The Beautyful Ones are Not Yet Born” and “Osiris Rising” by the poet, novelist and scholar Ayi Kwei Armah.
Senanu Gbedawo (b. 1984)
After studying Aerospace Engineering in KNUST, Ghana, Gbedawo pursued his childhood dream of becoming an actor. During his National Service with The Ghana Airforce, he auditioned and landed the lead role in Shirley Frimpong Manso’s “Checkmate” (2010). After a few movies and television series as an actor to his credit, he set his sights behind the scenes as a writer and director. “Potomanto” (2014) was his first script which immediately gardened international recognition earning him a nomination for best script at the African Movie Academy Awards in 2014. Senanu has gone on to write scripts for MNET’s “Tenants”, Sparrow Productions “V-Republic” and “Shampaign”. He took time out to get his Director certification from the MET Film School, Ealing Broadway Studios in the UK in 2016 and has since started his own production company, Beat 9 Productions.
Bernard Akoi-Jackson (b.1979)
Bernard Akoi-Jackson is a Ghanaian artist who lives and works from Tema/Accra/ Kumasi. His multi-disciplinary, audienceimplicating installations and performative pseudo-rituals, have featured in exhibitions like “An Age of Our Own Making (Reflection II),” Museet for Samtidskunst, Roskilde, Denmark, (2016); “Silence Between The Lines” in Kumasi (2015), “Material Effects”, Eli and Edythe Broad Museum. MSU, East Lansing, USA (2015), “WATA don PASS: Looking West” CCA, Lagos and Lillith Performance Studio, Malmö, Sweden (2015) and “Time, Trade and Travel”, Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam and Nubuke Foundation, East Legon, Accra, Ghana (August – October 2012 and November 2012 – February 2013). He has curated exhibitions with blaxTARLINES KUMASI, KNUST, most prominent being “Cornfields in Accra”, (2016) and “Orderly Disorderly”, (2017). He has recently completed a PhD Studio in Painting and Sculpture at the College of Art and Built Environment, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi. Akoi-Jackson has currently joined the faculty in the Department of Painting and Sculpture, KNUST with particular interest in moments of disruption that have revolutionary potential in contemporary art practice.