By Nii B. Andrews.
It has been announced that the Ghana Pavilion at the 59th International Venice Biennale will be on display to the public from Saturday April 23 to Sunday November 27, 2022 with the theme BLACK STAR; THE MUSEUM AS FREEDOM.
The pavilion will feature three artists: Na Chainkua Reindorf, Afroscope and Diego Arauěja; it will be curated by Nana Oforiatta Ayim – the Director at Large of Ghana’s Museums and Cultural Heritage.
Dk Osseo Asare who practices out of Texas and Ghana has been named as the design architect.
The five pointed Black Star is a cherished symbol that has referenced the relationship between Africa and its Diasporas; the Ghana National football team and in its central position in the tricolor national flag within a band of gold, has been designated the Lodestar of African Freedom – a genuine liberation that unleashes the full potential of the human and material resources of the great continent, the cradle of humankind.
How far these aspirations and references achieve accuracy or gel with national policy or have been achieved are entirely separate questions which when raised or discussed never fail to engender passionate and robust debate including the ire of the disingenous uber nationalists and their toadies.
What will be interesting is to see how the exhibit achieves its stated aim of “(examiming) new constellations of this freedom across time, technology and borders.”
Na Chaikua Reindorf – one of the featured artists, has expressed her “fascination with how a human body can become a vessel for the projection of identities, experiences, and messages — and how fluid the transition can be between these projections”.
Her artwork for the pavilion will take on masquerade and secret society traditions that historically were largely male, and create her own mythology of Mawu Nyonu, a fictional secret society made of seven women, at one with the elements around them.
The seven masquerade characters “serve as mediums through which actions can be performed and in some cases transformations can take place”.
She has been described as a multimedia artist and myth maker.
Aeroscope, winner of the 2017 Kuenyehia Prize for Contemporary Ghanaian Art, will explore technology as an essential life force element akin to water.
The third featured artist, Diego Araúja was born in Salvador-BA, Brazil, where he lives and works as an artist, director, and writer.
He will present, A Congress of Salt, in which the Atlantic Ocean that served to separate those taken from the shores of West Africa to its diasporas, now acts as a unifier, the birthplace of a new creole.
The Ghana pavillion will be under the patronage of POTROG, His Excellency Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.
