🔗 Share this article

Following over fifty issues exploring the worldwide Black diaspora, this signifies a last piece. The tenure proved profoundly gratifying, with great appreciation offered to every one of the engaged audience.

Inside the Accra Festival

Experiencing the showcases, artworks and acts of the festival, observers witness how superior art sustains and constructs a country’s heritage and character. The highlight was certainly Clottey's stunning a profound exploration of ritual and time, which displayed his groundbreaking afrogallonism in full view: a concept that reimagines yellow jerrycans into illusory works of art, tapestries of yellow, brass and gold. The show was created as a tribute to the resilience of the historic district, a historical neighbourhood of Accra.

Jamestown – largely inhabited by the Ga people, a community of fishermen – is additionally where a great number of formerly enslaved people returned from South America and settled in the 1830s. Called the Tabom community, they carried with them Brazilian language and culture.

All across Jamestown, you can see a mix of architecture. There’s Fort Vicentia, featuring its distinct European-style masonry and curved entrances. Also present is the famous beacon, erected in the 19th century and later sporting its signature banded exterior.

Customs of Mourning

Furthermore striking about Jamestown is the ever-present presence of obituary announcements. Everywhere you turn, be it covering buildings or on big billboards, you’ll see funeral details and terms of mourning. In Jamestown, similar to the rest of Ghana, memorial services are large-scale social gatherings.

In this spectacular show, every aspect of the sensory and spiritual landscape of Jamestown are present – particularly in the engaging beach-themed installation. In this space, you’re soothed by the audio of ocean surf with granules underfoot, while shelters, nets and images of boats pay homage to its spirited, generational fishing community. Yet standing in this venue, the mind turns to the piles of textile waste that mar the beauty and serenity of the area.

In Addition to the Main Event

The festival program included additional highlights. Within an raw space at the University of Ghana, creator Reginald Sylvester II exhibited On the Other Side of Languish, an incredibly moving, stripped-back show that included sculptures and paintings made in collaboration with metalworkers.

Also featured was the Yaa Asantewaa Art prize for female Ghanaian artists. It included the first solo show of a prior laureate, whose work utilizes historical documents to craft a artistic representation of life in post-independence Ghana. The event also crowned a new champion, whose multidisciplinary work is particularly concerned with the weaving practices of women in a specific region.

A Permanent Legacy

Although the diaspora has more and more been attracted back to west Africa in the colder season, a growing cohort are contemplating journeying for the cultural season to engage with the area's cultural season. From Accra Cultural Week and similar gatherings, what is evident are creative communities that are not simply nascent or “upcoming” but have built up an complete world that is permanent.

Finally, the visit offers a image of Accra that serves as a manifesto for conservation and the keeping alive of tradition. It is a compelling homage to adaptability in all its manifestations.