Is it?
Nubuke Foundation, the organization—“for Ghanaians, by Ghanaians”—that aims to record, preserve, and promote Ghanaian histories and heritage, put together this art exhibition titled Ghana: Independence/ In Dependence to explore the state of Ghana’s independence.
Political unrest in the 1970s and the economically fallow Structural Adjustment Years of the 1980s drove trained artists—like numerous other professionals—underground and out of the country. These setbacks did not kill the spirit of artistic expression. Today, Ghanaian art—both contemporary and its older traditional forms—thrives in private homes, hotel foyers, corporate boardrooms, exhibitions, and museums both locally and internationally. It is important that as different Ghanaian communities reflect on their role in the nation’s development during this jubilee year, artists also stand up to be counted.
Thirteen artists ponder the state of Ghana’s independence through paintings, sculptures, and installations:
Emmanuel Adiamah, Bernard Akoi-Jackson, Adjoa Amoah, Robert Aryeetey,
Sam Bentil, Seth Clottey, Wiz Kudowor, Nii T. Mills, Larry Otoo,
Kwesi Owusu-Ankomah, Kofi Setordji, Glen Turner, Rikki Wemega Kwawu.
Juxtaposed with the art are two journalistic exhibits: a video stream featuring interviews with artists and members of the general public on the subject of Ghanaian independence, and a scrapbook of newspaper clippings on independence produced by Odile Agyare, Nubuke’s co-founder and head. The exhibits fall under three broad categories.
The first category may be referred to as the “cultural portrait.” It constitutes paintings, each drawing on recognizable cultural images, themes, and practices. In Glen Turner’s We Are, a lone drummer is fixed mid-drum beat above his fontonfrom. Its meaning need not be spelled out. In many Ghanaian cultures, the drum is a tool for communication, the drummer an adept linguist. Through their drums, drummers transmit community messages, summon important meetings, praise chiefs, dignitaries, and ordinary people, translate proverbs, and accompany dance. Turner’s fontonfrom drummer could be engaged in any one of these activities, each of which is central to our jubilee year of celebration and reflection. Seth Clottey’s lone painting entitled Apathy depicts a scene in which a large crowd looks on as a small group of people gather around a small stream. Lush greenery and a large tree dominate the painting, evoking a sense of rural idyll, but look closely—is there a subtext? The rural stream has many uses: it provides water for drinking and cooking; it acts as a laundry source; it can be a bathhouse; it is open for the pleasures of paddling and swimming. These multiple uses pose significant health risks for the users. Could the detached crowd be standing in judgment of the actions of the minority, gathering energy for ecological activism? This is one possible reading of the subtext, but there are as many permutations to this “village scene” as there are contradictory social and environmental stories to Ghanaian village life. Finally, Larry Otoo’s Edikanfo utilizes the cultural-political motif of the asafo flag. Against a backdrop of bright pink, Otoo throws a mix of recognizable icons—for example, the Ghanaian flag, the Union Jack, caricatures of past Ghanaian leaders—to retell a colorful history of pre- and post-colonial relations. Conceptually, Otoo’s Edikanfo fits easily in both first and second categories, but its homage to the uniquely Fante asafo lends immediacy to the cultural.
The second category of exhibits may be termed the “political portrait.” This category moves beyond culture into the contemporary political realm and encompasses paintings by Wiz Kudowor and Adjoa Amoah, an installation by Bernard Akoi-Jackson, and sculpture by Kofi Setordji. The political portrait calls on political imagination and aims to galvanize action. Wiz Kudowor’s series of six paintings deal explicitly with uppercase ‘Politics’ and ‘Development.’ Puppets on a String and Independent Mentality, for example, both observe the unequal power relationships between our leaders and their development partners and lay bare the position of the ordinary Ghanaian as a casualty of these ideological interactions. Wiz does not only apply his usual technically intricate method of layering image on image and message on message. For selected paintings, he also adds a psychological twist that tests knowledge, attention, and memory. To my mind, the moral of the twist (which is worth discovering for oneself), is that if one understands the meaning and state of subjugation, then subjugation is recognizable in all its guises. Adjoa Amoah’s A Matter of Time depicts a clock whose time slots are replaced with development goals: education, agriculture, health, and so on. Against the clock stands a large question mark. With this simple, sober technique we are being asked: What time is it in our nation’s development? The subdued browns, khakis, and greens that grace the canvas provide a pessimistic response. Bernard Akoi-Jackson’s installation titled REDTAPE centers on an office desk on which a range of red office objects—phone, notebooks, folders—is assembled, and in front of which a collection of dark bottles arranged in a tidy triangle and tied with red tape sit. The installation is self-explanatory and perfectly pitched. The office desk—wherever one finds it—is a potent symbol of public service bureaucracy in Ghana. Those privileged to sit behind the desk wield significant power over the affairs of those who come to sit or stand before them. Often power is abused. Cynically, a caption above the desk tells us democracy is no panacea for bureaucracy. Kofi Setordji presents two sculptural installations titled Who is Next? and Why the Begging? which complete the circle of political critique. For Who is Next? Setordji creates gigantic figures of wire and brown paper, some of which stand in giant cardboard urns, others standing out. The figures represent (Ghanaian/African) politicians engaged in the vicious circus that is the presidential election, in which votes are won by any means necessary and the victor is made an untouchable deity until the next circus. Using wood carved into little figures depicting the minority of power-brokers that represent majority citizens—whether forcibly or with permission—Why the Begging? comments on the culture of aid dependency that frames national development in Ghana and elsewhere in Africa.
The third category of exhibits may be referred to as the “portrait of public discourse.” Each work under this category takes a physical medium of everyday communication and re-presents the medium in thought-provoking ways. Newspaper Review by Nii T. Mills constitutes annotated newspaper articles on canvas. The articles vary in content and style, most are undated, and they are arranged in no particular conceptual order. However, they all focus on themes in Ghana’s development and are all subjected to short critiques written in longhand by Mills. One gets a sense of Mills’s intense immersion in debates of the day. Collectively, his critiques provide a firm, unequivocal response to the question posed by the exhibition—Ghana is In dependence. Rikki Wemega Kwawu’s Liberty Liberty uses yet another ubiquitous tool of everyday communication: the phone card. Areeba, One Touch, and Tigo top-up cards share canvas space with international calling cards bearing transnational signatures. Like Mills, Wemega Kwawu’s media are not presented in any particular conceptual order; unlike Mills, however, Wemega Kwawu leaves the interpretation of his phone card arrangement solely to the viewer. I was surprised at the extent to which One Touch relies on national icons—the Independence arch, the Akosombo dam, the Larabanga Mosque—to sell its image and cards and the potential these cards provided for artistic re-presentation. By refusing to fit clear categories of painting, sculpture, or installation and eschewing subtlety for bold social commentary, both works might evoke the inevitable art purist query: “Is this art?” However, both hold you in place while you contemplate an answer, and their artistic merit lies in ensuring that contemplative moment.
These portraits of public discourse also, crucially, bridge the gap between the classical art exhibits and the more journalistic exhibits. Odile Agyare’s scrapbook of newspaper clippings hinges on the same concept as Nii T. Mills’s Newspaper Review, but unlike the latter which illuminates the artist’s ideological position, Agyare’s scrapbook remains a traditional scrapbook. One is urged to leaf through its pages, take in various scraps, and make of them what one will. However, it is the nature of a scrapbook, by virtue of the way it is put together, to reveal the psychology of its owner to its reader. Thus, Odile Agyare’s scrapbook tells us about what motivated her and Nubuke Foundation to put up this exhibition: Ghana and Ghanaians in all their contradictions, their successes and failures, communal highs and lows, and a concern for what the future holds. The fundamental contradictions of Ghana and Ghanaians are, interestingly, core themes in the video interviews with the artists and members of the public. Thus, through art and public discourse, the exhibition highlights a range of ideas and feelings about the state of Ghana’s independence. While some are highly critical of Ghana’s progress over the last 50 years, others express cautious optimism; while some draw on our rich cultural heritage to provide oblique messages, others utilize the vivid facts of our contemporary socio-political world for blunt commentary. Above all, by constructing a dynamic exchange between artistic vision, lay discourse, and media commentary, the exhibition urges the viewer to reflect on the complex meanings different people attach to Ghanaian independence in private and public life and their implications for the future of the nation and its citizens.