Nkabom –
The Museum as Community
Dak’art, African Contemporary Art Biennale, 2022
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.
Kukuua Eshun, Born of the Earth (an experimental film), 2022
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 artists work, the curatorial space takes its cue from the spaces 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 again through the mobile museum."
Artists:
Rita Mawuena Benissan
Kwasi Darko
Kuukua Eshun
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