On Ghana Freedom
The following is an excerpt of a critical review of Ghana’s debut at the Venice Art Biennial.
There can be few occupations so interesting, so attractive, so full of surprises and revelations for a critic, a dreamer whose mind is given to generalization as well as to the study of details–or, to put it even better, to the idea of universal order and hierarchy–as a comparison of the nations and their respective products.1
The Venice Biennale of art is a biennial international art exhibition. It was first organised by the Municipality of Venice in 1895 to commemorate the King and Queen of Savoy, whose silver marriage anniversary roused celebration throughout Italy.2 Through the first and second World Wars, and the barrage of stylistic changes to mainstream western art post WW2, to the contemporary environment of decolonising discourses, the Venice Biennale continues to thrive. With over 500,000 visitors to the 2019 Art Biennale and an expansion to include Music, Cinema, and Theatre festivals, an Architecture and Dance exhibition, the Venice Biennale maintains and consistently reaffirms its status as one of the most prestigious cultural institutions in the world.3
The exhibition was originally conceived as a ‘by invitation’ competition, with reserved gallery space for international artists, and uninvited Italian works, all selected by a committee.4 The first Biennale took place in what is now the Central Pavilion on the Giardini de Castello, a public garden created under Napoleon Bonaparte’s occupation of Venice. In subsequent Biennales, prosperous European nations– beginning with Belgium in 1907–built their own pavilions on the Giardini to exhibit the work of invited participants from each respective nation. There are now twenty-nine national pavilions, the majority of which are European.
That sovereign nations pay to erect pavilions for the promotion of their ‘national self-image’ is the Art Biennale’s distinguishing factor compared to other Biennales, it is also likely the reason the Biennale is repeatedly described as the Olympics of the art world.
In 1980 the Arsenale, Venice’s productive capital in pre-industrial times, was used by the Biennale for the first Architecture Exhibition. It then came to house the Aperto, a section of the Biennale dedicated to uninvited artists and those whose nations lacked representation in the Giardini. From 1999 however, exhibitions in the Giardini and Arsenale were marketed as one, with the Central Exhibition– organised by a curator chosen by the Biennale’s committee–taking place within both the Giardini and Arsenale. The Arsenale now houses exhibitions for nations without a pavilion in the Giardini. There are also collateral events, which external organisations in Venice and beyond host to coincide with the Biennale. Each country typically exhibits a single artist who identifies as a national.
In the 58th international art exhibition entitled May You Live In Interesting Times, and for the first time in Venice, Ghana was to hold its first national exhibition in the Arsenale. Commissioned by the Ministry of Tourism, Arts & Culture, Ghana Freedom was pioneered by Ghanaian writer and art historian Nana Oforiatta Ayim, who doubles as its curator, and Sir David Adjaye OBE, the British-Ghanaian super-architect whose growing influence in Ghana undoubtedly made the exhibition possible.5 Unusually, six artists were selected for the Ghana Pavilion: Felicia Abban, John Akomfrah, El Anatsui, Ibrahim Mahama, Selasi Awusi-Sosu, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. The exhibition marks a discernible turning point in the development of a national art practice, as it is the first time Ghana has presented a unified national image outwith its borders at a cultural event of this prestige.
This essay is a critical review of Ghana’s offering in the 2019 Venice Art Biennale, Ghana Freedom. It will examine the extent to which the exhibition was successful, and the implications of success for Ghana’s production and the stature of its artists.
There is no longer any need to look back in the same way as an act of reclamation or reaction. These pathways remain with us and evolve. How we name them, shape them, and open them out is where the next part of the journey begins. - Nana Oforiatta Ayim
It is reasonable to expect an exhibition, exclusive of the sum of its selected works, to be endowed with a discernible message, especially in the context of the Biennale where the spaces are often altered to suit curatorial needs.6 If so, Ayim’s statement, proudly asserted in the exhibition catalogue, at first seems incongruous with the message implied by the Ghana Pavilion’s title. Named after E.T. Mensah’s song created on the eve of independence, Ghana Freedom plainly recalls a bygone era, suggesting the exhibition looks to engage with postcolonial themes and subvert colonial narratives. Indeed, subversion is one path towards satisfying the Biennale’s appetite for spectacle. It is unspoken, but one walking through the Biennale in the 21st century would attest to the palpability of the expectation to shock. If such expectation exists for contemporary pavilions, it is certainly an expectation for Ghana’s debut. As the first African nation to gain independence from colonial rule, it would appear that Ghana ‘has a history that is inextricably bound up with colonialism’–much like the Venice Biennale, which has played host to national pavilions who see the event as ‘an unapologetic opportunity for polishing a tarnished image’ often tainted by an imperialist past.7 Some pavilions responded well to the charge; the Chile pavilion Altered Views curated by Agustín Pérez Rubio, for instance. Designed by artist Voluspa Jarpa, the exhibition is divided into three parts: The Hegemonic Museum, The Subaltern Portrait Gallery, and The Emancipatory Opera. As Rubio has remarked in the exhibition leaflet, each part is a necessary stage of ‘a process in which the gaze is decolonized.’8 The Chilean offering exemplifies the revisionist curatorial strategy which looks back to (and often subverts) historical narratives to consider the implicit inequities they reflect.9 Although the Chile pavilion achieved success in addressing colonial history, a Ghana pavilion imbued with the same spirit of subversion might not have the same impact. The reason for this is best articulated by the following quote from David Adjaye in conversation with the Guardian’s chief culture writer: ‘Their feeling was, said Adjaye, that “Ghana’s cultural production is bigger than the punch it has internationally. That’s what we said in our presentation to the government – that Ghana’s cultural capital in the world is not being celebrated. And they supported us willingly.” (emphasis mine)
This lack of cultural capital would undermine the Ghana pavilion’s ability to assume an explicitly subversive curatorial stance like Chile’s. This is because the set of circumstances which have caused a divergence between the sum of the impact of Ghanaian cultural products, and appraisals of Ghana’s cultural production are, fundamentally, functions of a transition from colonised to independent nation which in many African nations was left incomplete.
At the point of independence, various African nations embarked on nation-building projects, with Ghana leading the way. Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of the republic, saw control over the creation of a national culture as central to consolidating his political power.10 This was especially important for Ghana, whose people consist of various ethnic groups, many of which were in conflict before they were clumsily amalgamated under British imperial rule. That Nkrumah was known as Osagyefo (loosely ‘saviour’ or ‘victor’) is evidence of his strategies to subsume all regional authorities under a national whole.11 Although Ghana’s cultural development was touted as a shared process involving all of the new nation’s citizens, the Nkrumah administration clearly favoured the lineage and regalia of the Asante people, choosing to adopt many of their cultural products for national self-images. This was certainly in Nkrumah’s political interest, as adopting Asante royal insignia undermined the power of the Asante kings, who represented the most powerful ethnic group in Ghana, and had long advocated for self-governance. However, Nkrumah’s cultural construction proved counterproductive to long-term national aims. With the deposition of Nkrumah and the national conflict which thereafter ensued, his narrow cultural canon–the Golden Stools, Kente Cloth and Adkinkra Symbols–became construed within global cultural memory as the sum of Ghana’s production. As Ghana’s people live on, as its artists continue to engage with the phenomena of global contemporaneity, their produce is alienated from their identity as Ghanaian. Through the eyes of global cultural memory, it cannot be authentically rooted in any known heritage. In this sense, perhaps the colonial connotations of Ghana Freedom are crucial to the exhibition’s success, as the invocation of the colonial era forces a reminder of imperial strategies of indoctrination, which (at least in the realm of art) constitute a direct claim to a partially western heritage. In his review of the Ghana Pavilion, artist Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh implies Ghana Freedom presents Ghanaian art as defined by the ‘imposition of the beaux-arts tradition which became ingrained through colonial instruction in the Gold Coast’.12 If so then Ghana Freedom might also be defined by the pedagogical strategies designed to emancipate Ghana’s local tradition from this colonial imposition, the likes of which took place at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) under Dr. Karî’kachä Seid’ou, or at the Black Audio Film Collective under John Akomfrah and others. These pedagogical strategies were successful in ensuring the aforementioned institutions and their representative artists are unshackled by their colonial past and remain at the cutting edge of contemporary. However, for reasons already articulated, these strategies have done little to address appraisals of Ghana’s cultural capital. Neither should they be expected to address the national self-image; especially in contemporary cosmopolitan circumstances, where nationalist agendas seem anachronistic to the present nature of art.
Considering the explicit intention to look beyond its colonial history, and the irrefutability of Ghana’s relationship to colonialism, Ayim’s choice of Ghana Freedom is understood as a tactic which allows exploration of contemporary themes yet entices audiences which expect Ghana’s debut to subvert the Biennale’s history of imperialism. Indeed, curatorial clickbait is a defining characteristic of these Interesting Times, where such tactics employed by Ayim for a higher nationalist purpose are implemented for capitalistic gain in a phenomenon best described by Richard Spear as The Blockbuster Exhibiton.13 Along with the acknowledgement of Ghana’s indelible ties to colonialism, the title highlights the creative dynamism and freedom Ghanaians have exercised in the midst of and beyond colonial rule.
E.T. Mensah, the musician after whose song the Ghana Pavilion takes its title, exemplifies the global impact of Ghana’s cultural production in the music realm. His status as The King of Highlife music, a genre which unapologetically blended western jazz influences with indigenous music to international acclaim, is another reminder of the fact that at least in some cultural sense, Ghana has attained an equivalence of production with its contemporaries.14 The British born, (and later Ghanaian-based) musician John Collins wrote on E.T. Mensah’s life and work, frequently highlighting his widespread fame and admiration. One particular point of interest is his anecdote about Louis Armstrong’s visit to Accra. E.T. Mensah increasingly became involved in the trip ‘since E.T. was the top West African trumpeter’.15 What was more intriguing was the decision by Columbia (Armstrong’s sponsors for the trip) to have Armstrong visit Accra in the first place, given the original purpose of their support was for a trip to Europe.16 The fact that Columbia casually added a stop in Accra to Louis Armstrong’s tour of Europe is proof that Ghana’s cultural capital was once felt in spades by the global creative community.
For Adjaye, for Ayim, for the Commissioning government of Ghana then, the central aim of this exhibition is to resolve this dissonance between internal and global appraisal of Ghana’s pavilion. The intention is once again best articulated by Adjaye in his interview for the exhibition catalogue as the assertion of ‘equivalence’17
Ghana Freedom is an irrefutable assertion of equivalence. The stature of its artists and the quality of its execution, the platform of the Art Biennale–the sense of permanence it can give to ephemeral curatorial compositions–ensures the Biennale will remain in cultural memory as a moment of convergence. With Ghana Freedom’s focus on lineage, Ayim, Adjaye, Enwezor, and the Six artists (note the parallels with the Big Six of the United Gold Coast convention who spearheaded the transition to independence) made a clear first leap towards recovering Ghana’s acclaimed cultural heritage, and in doing so liberated its artists’ production from limiting connotations and critical reception of work as presenting untethered narratives of contemporaneity.
What remains to be seen is the impact and legacy of Ghana Freedom, on the national, continental, and global level. The exhibition’s organisers have announced their intention to bring the exhibition to the National Museum of Ghana, ensuring it remains accessible to local audiences. This appears to have seen little progress.17 Additionally, we are yet to see artists’ response to this lineage, whether it champions artistic heritage which is compatible to local interests, and the success of the work created with knowledge of the existence of this exhibition. Previous exhibitions of African art which have attained such notoriety, such as FESMAN, FESPECT, and the South Meets West exhibition which took place twenty years ago in the national museum, at least in the long-run, have not been able to reverse misappraisals of cultural capital. In this instance then, it necessarily follows that Ghana Freedom’s legacy is largely dependent on the development of a vibrant local art scene, for this we have some metrics of progress. Looking back to 2016, this caption taken from ANO’s Instagram account expresses this sentiment of local cultural advancement.
2016 was also a time of broad optimism in the arts. Visionary teaching by the likes of Kari, Castro & Buma at KNUST had brought into being artists who dared to create beyond existing boundaries. Institutions like Nubuke, FCA & ANO were providing platforms for exchange both locally & internationally. The Chale Wote Festival & Talk Parties were creating arenas for creatives to come together & connect with wider audiences. What a few years earlier had still felt dispersed was now forming into something that felt like the beginnings of a movement.18
If this movement is national in origin and global in reach, Ghana Freedom has at least induced a global willingness to support Ghana’s artists. Reviews of the Ghana pavilion show it was received as a resounding success. Artnet News (whose press article, released before the Biennale opened, set the expectation for the exhibition to establish Ghana as a ‘cultural powerhouse’) lauded it as a ‘knockout pavilion.’19 CNN ranked Ghana Freedom amongst the best of the Biennale, ‘As a whole, the pavilion offers a tactile, coherent expression of Ghana's past, present and future — one that acknowledges the country's experience with colonialism but is not defined by it.’20 One article by Caroline Roux of the Financial Times was a particularly perceptive review of the Biennale, managing to capture the importance of moving beyond colonial narratives.21
The New York Times Arts critic Jason Farago thought its ‘almost irresistible amount of artistic firepower’ made the Ghana pavilion, along with Lithuania (winner of the Golden Lion for Best National Participation) and France (the exhibition with the longest wait times), one of the ‘Must-See Pavilions’.22 His writing demonstrates an understanding of Ghana’s curatorial mission. ‘The pavilion succeeds best by mapping the rich historical inheritance shared by Ghana’s citizens and its diaspora.’23 Although his review was generally in praise of Ghana Freedom, he criticised the works as ‘not so revelatory’, given the familiarity with the invited artists.24
Indeed, the Six artists are not new to the art audience beyond Ghana, and novelty (or innovation) are palpable expectations for the 21st century Art Biennale. Here it is helpful to remember that Ghana Freedom’s curatorial focus was to claim on a national level the prestige already accorded to Ghanaian artists on an individual level. This focus necessitates selection of the artists most familiar to the western canon, and explains the placement of Mahama (in the view of the writer, the youngest and most exciting of the newest generation) and Anatsui (the most accomplished of the independence era Ghanaian artists) at the entrance and exit of the Ghana pavilion. As one makes the sinuous journey through Ghana Freedom, Ayim’s and Adjaye’s strategies are made manifest in the themes imparted on the viewer. With Mahama, the trajectory of Ghana’s present and future artistic endeavour; with Sosu, Yiadom-Boakye, Akomfrah, and Abban, Ghana’s lineage over sixty years of nationhood; and with Anatsui, a reminder the nation’s produce has remained equivalent to the best of western produce in the life and work of artists like the fore mentioned.
The exhibition is unique in its approach to global platforms like Venice. Similar examples–the Africa Pavilion, presented at the 2007 Venice Art Biennale, for instance–depend on the limited notions of national art heritage which already exist in cultural memory to present a narrative of contemporaneity. In African nations where foreign investment is central to economic success, it is important to promote a national self-image which, in every practical (i.e. economic, social, financial) sense conforms to global hegemonic standards. Often, as occurred with Nkrumah in Ghana, and as Kate Cowcher has observed with Angolan private sector interests in the Africa pavilion, the key symptom of conforming for Ghana’s cultural capital and its artists is the delocalised appropriation and participation in global cultural narratives, and the simultaneous assertion of African identity through the retention of antiquated (although, admittedly, still widely admired) tropes. This use of ‘nationalism as a tactic and globalism as an aspiration’ undermines the efficacy of artists’ social critique.25 By contrast, Ghana Freedom’s intention is to recoup cultural capital, and not to advance economic interests. This further attests to the success of Ghana’s pavilion; it can be characterised by its use of globalism as a tactic and nationalism as aspiration.
ENDNOTES1 Baudelaire cited in Alloway, The Venice Biennale. p.37. 2 Alloway, The Venice Biennale. p.30. 3 Venice Biennale, History. 4 Venice Biennale, From the Beginnings until the Second World War. 5 See Ayim’s acknowledgements in the Ghana Freedom catalogue. 6 Lawrence Alloway, The Venice Biennale. p.17. 7 Higgins, Ghana shakes up art’s ‘sea of whiteness’ with first Venice pavilion. 8 Rubio, Altered Views. 9 Reilly, Curatorial Activism. p.23. 10 Hess and Quarcoopome, Spectacular Nation. p.17. 11 Hess and Quarcoopome, Spectacular Nation. p.17. 12 Ohene-Ayeh, In Praise of ‘Ghana Freedom’. 13 Spear, Art History and the “Blockbuster” Exhibition. 14 Collins, The King of Highlife, p. 17. 15 Collins, The King of Highlife, p. 17. 16 Collins, The King of Highlife, p. 17.17 Ohene-Ayeh, In Praise of ‘Ghana Freedom’. 19 18 ANO Ghana, Instagram post. 19 Halperin, Ghana’s Buzzed-About Venice Biennale Pavilion Is a Clear First Step in the Country’s Bid to Become a Global Art Destination. 20 Webster, Best of the national pavilions. 21 Roux, Ghana arrives at the Venice Biennale, bringing new narratives with it. 22 Farago, The Don’t-Miss Shows and Pavilions at the Venice Biennale. 23 Farago, The Don’t-Miss Shows and Pavilions at the Venice Biennale. 24 Farago, The Don’t-Miss Shows and Pavilions at the Venice Biennale. 25 Cowcher, Luanda Onde Está. p.142.
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