SOUTH SOUTH THINK TANK: Institutional Hybridity Curated by The Showroom, London
Convened by Director Elvira Dyangani Ose
For whom is all of this for?
Participating organisations in this panel hold themselves to work in non-hierarchical structures, when it comes to addressing their audiences. This session will seek to address, among other issues: Who is the ‘WE’ each project invokes? How do we build structures around specific contexts, audiences, their desires and goals? How do we galvanise art and non-art audiences to engage in a set of ideas or commitments? Moreover, if the ultimate goal is to support a democratic artistic experience, how does participation work and thrive? What roles do authorship and agency play in space-making and activating subjectivities?
Akutia: Blindfolding the Sun and the Poetics of Peace (A Retrospective of Agyeman Ossei ‘Dota’) – 4th September, 2020 – 7th March, 2021. Co-curated by Adwoa Amoah, Tracy Naa Koshie Thompson, and Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh at SCCA Tamale and Red Clay.
Akutia: Blindfolding the Sun and the Poetics of Peace (A Retrospective of Agyeman Ossei, ‘Dota’)
Co-curated by Adwoa Amoah, Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh and Tracy Naa Koshie Thompson
Savannah Center for Contemporary Art & Red Clay. 4th September, 2020- 7th March, 2021
Akutia: Blindfolding the Sun and the Poetics of Peace is a retrospective exhibition which traces the lifework of dynamic Ghanaian artist, dramatist, and educator Agyeman Ossei (Dota) to its earliest days in the 1980s. Remaining true to the artist’s irreverent attitude to art, the exhibition amplifies the dialogic relations between the linguistic, structural, and formal elements operative in Ossei’s work— inspired by Asante proverbial culture and philosophy, folk/Highlife music, and poetry translated via collage, drama, literature, painting, sculpture, video, and new media. As an artist whose aesthetic and cultural sensibilities have been shaped as much by formal education as by the “farmers and so called bums” he encountered during the inspired “Koforidua years” in the early 1990s, Ossei experimentally weaves a secular linkage between the traditional, modernist and extra-modernist elements evidenced in his practice.
This landmark exhibition marks twenty-seven years since the artist’s preceding solo exhibition and will run between Savanna Center for Contemporary Art (SCCA) Tamale and its sister institution, Red Clay, located in neighboring Janna Kpeŋŋ in the Northern Region of Ghana. To complement the main exhibitions, a rich lineup of live and virtual events encompassing other areas of the artist’s interests, ranging from musical concerts, theater, workshops, film screenings, and many more, will be programmed throughout the year. These events are designed to adhere to the requisite COVID-19 guidelines provided by the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture, and the Government of Ghana. There will also be a radio play, translated into Dagbani, which will circulate on airwaves, podcasts, and digital listening stations in Ghana and around the world.
The exhibition acknowledges the kind support of the Center for National Culture in Tamale, blaxTARLINES KUMASI, Foundation for Contemporary Art – Ghana, and Exit Frame Collective.
Virtual tour video of ‘Akutia: Blindfolding the Sun and the Poetics of Peace (A Retrospective of Agyeman Ossei ‘Dota’)’, the second major retrospective exhibition organised by SCCA Tamale and Red Clay.
SOUTH SOUTH THINK TANK: Institutional Hybridity. Curated by The Showroom, London
Convened by Director Elvira Dyangani Ose
For whom is all of this for?
Participating organisations in this panel hold themselves to work in non-hierarchical structures, when it comes to addressing their audiences. This session will seek to address, among other issues: Who is the ‘WE’ each project invokes? How do we build structures around specific contexts, audiences, their desires and goals? How do we galvanise art and non-art audiences to engage in a set of ideas or commitments?
Moreover, if the ultimate goal is to support a democratic artistic experience, how does participation work and thrive? What roles do authorship and agency play in space-making and activating subjectivities?
Panelists: •Prateek Raja & Priyanka Raja (Experimenter, Kolkata, India)
•Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh (blaxTARLINES KUMASI, Ghana)
•Pablo Guardiola (Beta-Local, Puerto Rico, San Juan)
Moderator: Fernanda Brenner (Pivó, São Paulo, Brazil)
The sixth session of Asia Art Archive’s Life Lessons invites Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh and Zeyno Pekünlü, two artists who are committed to collective pedagogical models. In this session, they discuss how they have developed these models within, outside, and despite the university, and the ways they contribute to larger solidarity networks in their cities and beyond.
