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After in excess of fifty installments exploring the global Black diaspora, this signifies a last piece. The experience was deeply fulfilling, with great thanks extended to all the dedicated audience.

Exploring Accra Cultural Week

Visiting the showcases, presentations and acts of Accra Cultural Week, it becomes clear how the finest art feeds and constructs a country’s heritage and character. The centrepiece was without doubt Serge Attukwei Clottey’s stunning a profound exploration of ritual and time, which displayed his groundbreaking afrogallonism in full view: a philosophy that reimagines water vessels into illusory creations, tapestries of metallic tones. The display was created as a testament to the strength of Jamestown, a venerable area of Accra.

This area – largely home to the Ga community, a seafaring people – is additionally where many freed slaves returned from Brazil and made their home in the 1830s. Referred to as the Tabom people, they carried with them Portuguese tongue and traditions.

All across Jamestown, you can see a blend of architecture. There’s a historic building, boasting its unique Portuguese construction and door arches. One can also see the prominent Jamestown Lighthouse, erected in the 1800s and eventually given its signature banded appearance.

A Culture of Remembrance

Furthermore striking about Jamestown is the pervasive sight of obituary announcements. Everywhere you turn, be it plastered over alleyways or on sizable hoardings, one finds service information and terms of loss. In Jamestown, as throughout Ghana, funerals are significant community celebrations.

In Clottey’s impressive installation, every aspect of the sensory and spiritual landscape of Jamestown are captured – especially in the enveloping Jamestown nshonaa piece. In this space, you’re soothed by the sound of the sea with sand underfoot, while beach huts, nets and images of canoes celebrate its dynamic, generational seafaring tradition. However being present in this venue, one cannot help but think of the heaps of textile waste that compromise the beauty and peace of the shoreline.

In Addition to the Centrepiece

Accra Cultural Week also features additional highlights. Within an incomplete building at the University of Ghana, artist Reginald Sylvester II presented On the Other Side of Languish, an emotionally powerful, minimalist exhibition that featured sculptures and artworks made in collaboration with metalworkers.

And then there is the Yaa Asantewaa Art prize for women artists of Ghanaian origin. It featured the first solo show of a prior winner, whose work references historical documents to craft a visual impression of life in post-independence Ghana. The event also honored a current winner, whose diverse work is intensely invested in the craft techniques of women in the Volta region.

A Permanent Impact

While the global African community has grown been pulled back to the region in the western winter, a growing cohort are contemplating journeying for the cultural season to engage with the area's festival period. From Accra Cultural Week and similar gatherings, what is evident are art scenes that are not merely new or “upcoming” but have built up an complete universe that is here to stay.

Finally, the journey leaves one with a vision of Accra that resembles a manifesto for ecological stewardship and the keeping alive of tradition. It is a compelling testament to perseverance in all its expressions.