Following the highly acclaimed opening of the Ghana Pavilion ,at this years 59th Venice Biennale, the ANO Institute of Arts and Knowledge will present ‘Nkabom – The Museum as Community’ at the Biennale de Dakar, 2022.
© Kuukua Eshun. Courtesy of ANO Institute of Arts and Knowledge.
Nana Oforiatta Ayim, Director of the ANO Institute of Arts and Knowledge will be curating the works of Rita Mawuena Benissan, Kwasi Darko and Kuukua Eshun. The theme of the 14th edition of the Dakar Biennale, ‘Ĩ NDAFFA # – Forger – Out of the fire’, to call for the transmutation of concepts and the foundation of new meanings.
‘Nkabom – The Museum as Community’ explores the idea of community and connection through the work of three artists and the notion of Nkabom (coming together). Kuukua Eshun explores the reconnection of women of African descent with the earth in her film Born of the Earth; Rita Mawuena Benisson’s large scale and delicate interventions remodel the Afayhe, ceremonial, spaces; and Kwasi Darko’s installations look deeply into the layers of public urban spaces.
The exhibition is curated by Nana Oforiatta Ayim, Director of ANO Institute of Arts & Knowledge in Accra and Director at Large of Ghana’s Museums and Cultural Heritage, who also created the mobile museums which will serve as gateways to the exhibition; and as a gathering space and space of communion in Popenguine, facilitated by the community there. The mobile museums have been built as modular, open-source bamboo structures, fufuzela, by architect DK Osseo Asare. The mobile museum in Popenguine is produced in partnership with Wakhart, a cultural platform that provides spaces of communion for artists in Senegal. It houses works from artists Go Salam and Moussa of Delu6waat, reflecting on their connections with the sea and the communities around it, as well as their relation to the environment.
Nana Oforiatta Ayim states: “For each artist’s work, the curatorial space takes its cue from the places the artists reference: the colours associated with the earth which in Akan philosophy is feminine; the colours and textures of historical courtyard houses especially those linked with the ritual and sacred; the urban iconography and colours of street kiosks and places of transport and transition. ‘Nkabom’ brings these public exhibition spaces into the museum, and then reaches out and takes the museum out again.”
The exhibition will be on view from the 20th of May until the 21st of June 2022 at the Biennale de Dakar. For more information, please visit the Dakar Biennale and ANO Institute of Arts and Knowledge.
