The Scroll series, inspired by language and writing systems, are subtle references to hieroglyphics and other textual and symbolic forms. She creates fictive glyphs on jute fabrics, pandanus mats, and fabric pieces. The motifs, made from twisted jute ropes, resemble embroidery, but are perhaps mysterious codes out of reach for the profane.
The Strength Within, made of macrame knots, used lady's handbags and jute ropes, questions gender, intimacy, identity, and social structures. What is the role and place of women? How much do they have a say, and the freedom to decide for themselves? How do they navigate these too many mental and physical boundaries imposed by traditional as well as contemporary societies?
Habitation Variations, the two large installations made of cotton polyester fabric, kapok, pandamus mats, explore notions of geography and contestations of space. How does one deal with restriction of movements and borders? According to the artist, "the installations embody the logic of an extraneous system that progressively takes over another, resulting in a new being, not altogether homogenous. Some of the elements are conceived like parasites. They infiltrate the space, slowly giving it their particular nature over time. They may merge physically or could be combined optically from particular angles into new entities. They emerge not as "normalized" beings but become unfathomable and quite unnerving."
In The Moon Light and Through the Sun, face each other like two sides of the same coin. Through the Sun is a reference to a sunset she was contemplating in the US Virgin Islands. The beauty of that moment also made her realise where she was, raising the memory of enslaved people from Gold Coast - today Ghana - shipped to the island, before losing their identity and their freedom. The sun comes every day, revealing beauty in the merge of dawn. But as it goes, vanishing beyond the horizon, it invites the moon to take over the sky to prevent darkness from swallowing the surroundings and a fragmented culture that keeps communities together. The sun and the moon, eternal allies, act as guardians of light, wrapping these societies in a warm, protected receptacle of infinite resilience and faith.
Harmonics of Dislocation is yet another reflection on duality. Black and White, the two opposites, cohabitate to create a safe space. As harmonisers of chaos and the uncanny, they regulate the minds to appease the souls and create a collective sense of belonging.
Together We Stand alludes to Ghanaian communal life. Borrowing from the Ghanaian idea of Nsaasawa (a textile made by joining leftover pieces of African prints), the work is made of pieces of fabric cut into squares and rectangles from donated clothes. The technique of quilting adds a layer of warmth for the body and for the mind. Placed on a high pedestal, it is an invitation to reflect on the Akan proverb "tikro nko agyina," which encourages teamwork and teaches that true wisdom comes from collaborative discussion rather than solitary thought.
Dreaming is a Map!!!!...Navigation...? is an invitation to dive into negotiated spaces, while keeping in mind the power of the collective and its capacity to overcome uncertainty and transcend imagination.
N’Goné Fall
Curator
Personal and communal items tend to be repositories of oceans of identity and curiously carry enough messages from the owners. Clothes and other personal objects of adornment, for example, not only cover the individual's body by leaving it at the point of the reterritorialized, but become a vehicle for conveying the content of spatiality— psychic subjectivities.
Re-use of the personal, communal, and/or public thus brings about the deconstruction of the owned into the reconstitution of a spatial and temporal entity. This would be for interaction—a space of negotiation, which in Rogoffian terms, constitutes inhabitation, and may be referred to as an 'antechamber'. In the deconstruction, objects and spaces of intimacy are opened for investigation and then reconstituted into new relationships between materials, persons, and the objects/spaces that resulted from the interactions.
The natural, psychological, and/or metaphoric "space" is thus a very important factor when I create. My works tend to draw attention to the way space is occupied and inhabited. Spatiality thus becomes an inevitable ingredient when I investigate the dynamics of personal and public space. I explore the fine line between the physical, psychological, and metaphoric spaces in human existence and responsibilities. I continually, in my works, question the identity of the individual in today's transnational global society.
Working mainly with fibres and fabrics, I create work that act as allegories to women and issues that concern them. Not focusing on only women, I extend my engagement to the entirety of humanity. The processes, as well as the objects or situations that manifest, are done in a bid to explore the balance between control and spontaneity. My art involves the literal manipulation of fabrics and fibres into objects and spatial installations that evoke feelings of containment and protection or even subtle repulsion. Devotion, duty, and daring become recurring metaphors in my use of materials, laborious processes, and communal strategies in the production of my work. I generally present familiar and unfamiliar objects and installations that evoke contemplation.
Time is an essential component in my work. My processes tend to be laborious, so my sculptures end up embodying the time taken to create them. My long and arduous processes of fiber and fabric manipulation hope to subtly unite the human heart and hand in an unspoken language of symbol and metaphor, which in turn examine the nature of our daily actions, woven through our values. My work thus casts an alternative glance at the practice of sculpture in the contemporary Ghanaian Art context.
Dorothy Akpene Amenuke
Artist