Ten years ago, in January of 2008, I made my way over to Ghana. For four months I conducted anthropological fieldwork in the art galleries, exhibition openings, hotel lobbies, artist’s workshops and streets of Accra. All of these locations and the people I met there ended up being worked into a thesis, titled ‘Art and Sankofa: How Ghanaian cultural politics affect the contemporary visual arts’. In it, I aimed to find out how art galleries in Accra fit into the larger context of the Ghanaian art scene.
My focus was on the official galleries in Accra (so no ad-hoc pavement setups) and examined their function as a filter, by their selection of artists and works, through which they give direction within the local art world.
One of the larger themes – and inspiration for the title – of the thesis is Sankofa, a mythical bird from the Akan tradition. The bird’s neck is craning backwards, symbolising the act of learning from our past. In order to move forward, we need to know our past. Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of independent Ghana, heavily emphasised culture and the arts to help find, and possibly create a Ghanaian identity. You have to remember that many African states are territories carved out by Europeans, with borders drawn right through different communities and cultures. Virtually random groups of peoples were thrown together, whilst others were split up. Ghana, as the first African country to claim independence from the British in the fifties, had to use their past to create a new cohesive single nation. Nkrumah wanted Ghanaian artists to visualise their new nation, using Sankofa.
That was in the late fifties, yet when I arrived in Accra in the noughts it seemed nothing much had changed. In every gallery, there were still boatloads full of cliché images: red and yellow sunsets, women carrying pots on their heads, rural villages with cooking pots and even those wooden busses that were retired a decade prior. Why were artists still producing images of scenes of a landscape that was no longer there? Was Nkrumah’s plea still the focus for the art scene?
The answer, I argued, can largely be found in the customer base of these art galleries: expats and tourists. Though I believe this has likely changed since, in 2008 there was hardly a local consumer base to speak of. Most galleries therefore catered for outsiders – mostly (white) westerners – who look to buy items that match their impression of Africa. Think sunsets, women with baskets on their heads and rural villages with naked children. These clichés match the stereotypical image of what ‘Africa’ might be like, but they no longer mirror the reality outside.
Contemporary theories on the role of art galleries are mostly written from a western perspective and about a western art world. It, therefore, proved difficult to apply these theories to the Ghanaian context. Local galleries appeared less innovative as western theories imply, possibly because the financial freedom for them to take such risks simply isn’t there. Nkrumah’s legacy is still seen in the selection process, picking works which portray a stylised Ghanaian or African identity aimed at in the fifties. These produced clichés which proved popular with tourists, the largest segment of art buyers, led galleries to stick to these clichés. One example of this were the wooden busses often featured in paintings: these busses that went out of use a decade earlier! Why were these still showing up in new pictures and picked out by galleries?
Local artists who wanted to become part of the international avant-garde had difficulties passing the gallery selection process and had to somehow jump the local level to reach an international audience. Artists seemed to go through a constant struggle: do follow the orders from galleries to keep re-hashing the same ‘African art’ to get a more secure income or do you strive to be innovative and take the difficult and financially insecure gamble by trying to connect to an international market? For most artists, that’s hardly a realistic question at all.
My research concluded that the international art market and the Ghanaian art market mostly functioned separate from each other, selecting and producing different types of art. Few Ghanaian artists were involved in both art scenes since these markets demanded different types of art.
My thesis is from ten years ago, so the world has changed – including the art markets I discussed. Though I know little of what the local scene is now like, I hope that the home-grown audience has indeed since grown. Internationally, though, a quick Google brings up exciting shortlists like 10 of Ghana’s Best Contemporary Artists on The Culture Trip and I’ve recognised plenty of names in exhibitions here in The Netherlands. Next step is for these works to be found in exhibitions and galleries which do not frame them as African or Ghanaian alone. Looking back is good and all, but Sankofa should also be about heading to an exciting future!
Brain & Guts 