The ANO Institute of Arts and Knowledge in Accra celebrates its 20th Anniversary and announces a series of exhibitions and programming for 2022. Nana Offoriata Ayim, Director and Founder of ANO and Director at Large of Ghana’s Museums and Cultural Heritage, rethinks and reshapes the imperialist model of Western museums and investigates the changing cultural landscape.
Untitled. Rita Mawuena Benissan. Photo: Michael Dawka. 2022.
May 12, 2022 (Accra, Ghana) — Accra-based ANO Institute of Arts and Knowledge, specialized in reframing Pan-African and Diasporic archives, institutions and narratives, unveils its program for 2022. Over the past two decades, ANO has been rethinking and reshaping the existing museum model with the mission to challenge different ways of presenting and bringing Ghanaian and African art to the center of global art and culture landscape.
ANO’s 2022 programming will see a series of global exhibitions and projects unfold. Reflecting the organization’s commitment to reshaping the Western museum concept, the program presents a new perspective of the role of the museum, redefining the perception, comprehension and engagement with art and African culture.
ANO celebrates its twentieth anniversary in 2022 with the construction of a new space in Accra, made entirely out of local, sustainable materials, — raffia palm from the Western Region, by 84-year- old designer Ophelia Akiwumi. After two decades of building narratives in the arts, ANO is transitioning into future building, engaging more actively with the environment and education. Its projects which launch towards the end of the year will include models for new kinds of museums, ways of historicising, expression and conservation.
Marking its anniversary, they have announced a series of exhibitions globally, including The Ghana Pavilion at the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (April 23 – November 27, 2022) and a project at the Dak’Art Biennale of Contemporary African Art (May 19 – June 21, 2022).
Installation view of The Ghana Pavilion. Black Star – The Museum as Freedom at La Biennale di Venezia. Photo: David Levene. © David Levene.
Ghana Pavilion, La Biennale di Venezia
Black Star – The Museum as Freedom | 23 April – 27 November, 2022
Following its highly acclaimed inaugural participation at the 2019 Biennale Arte, Ghana will present the exhibition Black Star — The Museum as Freedom. Titled after the Black Star that symbolises Ghana through its flag, and most important monument; connecting Africa with its diasporas through Marcus Garvey’s Black Star Line and his Back-to-Africa movement. Revived now in Ghana as Beyond the Return; as well as for Pan-Africanism and anti-colonialism with the symbol described as the Lodestar of African Freedom. The 2022 Ghana pavilion examines new constellations of this freedom across time, technology and borders. Curated by Nana Offoriata Ayim and designed by architect DK Osseo Asare the exhibition features large-scale installations by Na Chainkua Reindorf, Afroscope and Diego Araúja.
Dak’Art, Biennale of Contemporary African Art
Nkabom — The Museum as Community | May 19 – June 21, 2022
Curated by Nana Oforiatta Ayim, Nkabom — The Museum as Community ponders the various ways contemporary artists have interacted with the notion of Nkabom (coming together) as a community and collective. Investigating our co-existence with the earth, ritual gatherings and the environment, the exhibition features three artists who unify the idea of community and connection. Kuukua Eshun explores the reconnection of women of African descent with the earth in her film Born of the Earth; Rita Mawuena Benisson, remodels the Afayhe’s local festival spaces; and Kwasi Darko, whose work addresses contemporary issues showcasing the involvement of people in public urban spaces in Ghana.
Kukuua Eshun, Born of the Earth (an experimental film), 2022. © Kuukua Eshun. Courtesy of ANO Institute of Arts and Knowledge.
Reopening of the Ghana National Museum
In addition to this year’s program, The Institute’s Director is curating the reopening of the National Museum in June 2022 after seven years of closure, with the mission of creating a museum truer to the communities that make up Ghana.
Commenting on the 2022 program and ANO!s activities, Founder Nana Oforiatta Ayim states that:
"Since moving back to Ghana, ANO has been working on a series of interventions to question what kind of cultural institution might be right for our context. Over the last year, this has expressed itself in a series of exhibitions that reexamine the museum as home, as community, as a space of freedom, as well as ideas of sustainability and local resources and materials. It has also been working on a permanent structure where the alignment and ideas of home, community and freedom, and the use of local materials are expressed. Its twentieth anniversary sees the completion of the new ANO Studio built by 84 year old designer Ophelia Akiwumi, who has spent her career working with local, sustainable materials as well as historical forms and symbols. It also sees a shift in the focus of ANO deeper into the research and foundations of knowledge systems, as expressed in projects like the mobile museum and cultural encyclopaedia; and towards a more integrated model that encompasses not just the arts, but also the environment and education."
Left. Osu House. Headquarters of ANO Institute of Arts and Knowledge. Photo: NLC Ghana. Right. Portrait of Nana Oforiatta Ayim. Photo: Fifi Abban.
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NOTES TO EDITORS:
About Nana Oforiatta Ayim
Curator Nana Oforiatta Ayim is a Writer, Filmmaker, and Art Historian who lives and works in Accra, Ghana. She is Founder of the ANO Institute of Arts and Knowledge, through which she has pioneered a Pan-African Cultural Encyclopaedia, a Mobile Museums Project, and curated Ghana’s first pavilion at the 58th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. She published her first novel The God Child with Bloomsbury in 2019, and with Penguin in German in 2021. She has made award winning films for museums such as Tate Modern, LACMA and The New Museum, and lectures a course on History and Theory at the Architectural Association in London. She is the recipient of various awards and honours, having been named one of the Apollo ’40 under 40’; one of 50 African Trailblazers by The Africa Report; a Quartz Africa Innovator in 2017; one of 12 African women making history in2016 and one of 100 women of 2020 by Okayafrica. She received the 2015 the Art + Technology Award from LACMA; the 2016 AIR Award, which “seeks to honour and celebrate extraordinary African artists who are committed to producing provocative, innovative and socially-engaging work”; a 2018 Soros Arts Fellowship, was a 2018 Global South Visiting Fellow at Oxford University, was appointed to the Advisory Council of Oxford University’s Cultural Programme in 2020, was a Principal Investigator on the Action for Restitution to Africa programme, and is currently Special Advisor to the Ghanaian Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture on Museums and Cultural Heritage.
Fellowship, was a 2018 Global South Visiting Fellow at Oxford University, was appointed to the Advisory Council of Oxford University’s Cultural Programme in 2020, was a Principal Investigator on the Action for Restitution to Africa programme, and is currently Special Advisor to the Ghanaian Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture on Museums and Cultural Heritage.
About ANO Institute of Arts and Knowledge
ANO is an arts and knowledge institution based in Accra and working internationally. It was founded in 2002 by Ghanaian art historian, writer and filmmaker Nana Oforiatta-Ayim and has been involved in numerous collaborations, publications, films, exhibitions and events nationally and internationally, with institutions, institutions like LACMA, Los Angeles; KNUST, Kumasi; The aim with ANO has always been to bring Ghanaian art to the centre of, and at equal level of, global art on its own terms, with the curation of the first exhibitions of artists like Ibrahim Mahama, James Barnor, Felicia Abban and of the first Ghanaian Pavilion at international platforms like the Venice Biennale, and to continuously investigate what kinds of structures, institutions, archives and narratives might be right for the Ghanaian, African and Diasporic contexts. In Accra its spaces has provided exhibitions, residencies, fellowships, talks programmes; it has also published books, produced films and workshops, a mobile museum project, and large-scale research projects, likes its Pan-African Cultural Encyclopaedia. anoghana | @ano_ghana
About Ophelia Akiwumi
Ophelia Akiwumi was born in Ghana and trained at the Paris Academy of Fashion in London, where she worked with fashion houses and modelled for prominent photographers and magazines including Drum Magazine. She returned to Ghana in 1963 and turned to interior design in 1976 and created her design company Art Deco in 1993. She works with lesser used species of woods, such as Raffia, Bamboo and Yaya to avoid overfilling and scarcity, and incorporates Ghanaian classical
symbols and fabrics.