Curator and author Nana Oforiatta Ayim takes us through her city Accra, Ghana, presenting an artist who uses all kinds of tech to express himself. He goes by the name of “Afroscope” and is making international waves.
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00:00So, you're just about to meet Afroscope,
00:03who I chose for the Ghana Pavilion for the Venice Biennale.
00:07I'm excited for you to meet him and to see his work.
00:10I'm Nana Ofriyat Ayim.
00:12I'm a writer, art historian, and curator.
00:15Every second year, Venice hosts the Biennale,
00:18which is like the Olympics of the art world.
00:20In 2022, the Biennale featured artists from 58 countries.
00:24Hi.
00:30I called the exhibition at the Ghana Pavilion,
00:34Black Star, the Museum as Freedom.
00:39Afroscope's installation featured a robotic arm
00:42that he had trained to create drawings in his artistic style.
00:45I chose his work for the Ghana Pavilion
00:48because of how he uses technology
00:50to explore freedom of expression and of being.
00:54Afroscope's work is futuristic,
00:56but also inward and backward looking.
00:59Drawing on our historical knowledge systems and philosophies
01:03to create future worlds.
01:07He lives in Tema, a community about an hour outside of Accra.
01:14My name is Nana Opoku.
01:16I create art under the pseudonym Afroscope.
01:19A lot of my work is intuitive,
01:21very experimental, and very spontaneous.
01:26I started off with drawing
01:28and graduated to ink drawings on paper.
01:31Afroscope now spends most of his time
01:34creating in the digital sphere.
01:39There's so much knowledge systems, mythologies, cosmologies,
01:43that for various reasons,
01:46we aren't taught in school,
01:47they've been wiped out,
01:48they've been whitewashed.
01:50And doing that research,
01:51a bit of archaeological digging
01:53to find out what are the things
01:54that our forebears and forefathers left for us.
01:58And so I find ways to now communicate
02:00what I'm learning with to others.
02:02Afroscope has started creating
02:03with tools like virtual reality.
02:06These are some of his 3D VR images,
02:08which you can see in full expression
02:10with these kinds of headsets.
02:12Which option you want to select?
02:25There's also this concept I'm fascinated by,
02:27which is oneness.
02:29The genesis of all this
02:31was in the illustrations that I do,
02:33that I have called or I dub Asche.
02:36Asche is a Yoruba term
02:38for that ethereal or invisible life force
02:42that connects everything
02:44and that makes everything alive.
02:46So at Venice,
02:47I'm trying to tell a story
02:50that talks about this journey from Asche
02:52talks about this journey from Asche to now.
02:56I did 1,024 of these drawings
02:59that I've scanned
03:00and run through a machine learning algorithm.
03:04So I'm trying to create an experience
03:06that touches on these things
03:07and asks questions about
03:08whether or not computers
03:10can also be seen as artists.
03:12Can you say a computer
03:14has spiritual intelligence?
03:23Art can help us see things
03:24that are not immediately apparent.
03:27Putting together an exhibition
03:28can feel like alchemy,
03:30like creating something
03:31where the whole is greater
03:33than the sum of its parts.
03:38So I love this work,
03:39this building of narratives.
03:41So whenever I do an exhibition,
03:44even I'm astounded at the end of it.
03:47Like this exhibition,
03:48I'm so excited about it.
03:49I'm like,
03:50Like this exhibition, for example,
03:53when I looked at this book,
03:54it says
03:55Ghana's historic first pavilion
03:56at the Venice Biennale of 2019.
03:59When I curated Ghana's first ever pavilion
04:02for the Venice Biennale in 2019,
04:04Ghana Freedom,
04:06it referred to our first president,
04:08Kwame Nkrumah,
04:09famously saying,
04:11Ghana, our beloved country,
04:13is free forever.
04:15And how that freedom
04:16has or hasn't developed for us
04:18through the eyes and work
04:19of our greatest artists.
04:24I became an art historian
04:25and started to curate
04:27because I wanted to help frame
04:29some of the rich
04:30and multi-layered culture
04:31that we have in this country.