ANO Ghana

Afua Nkansah-Asamoah is a curatorial researcher and cultural producer.

Afua has written an essay titled “How to Create a Comprehensive Inventory of Collections & Artefacts of Ghanaian Origin Abroad” as part of the Presidential Committee’s report Ghana’s Museums and Cultural Heritage: A New Chapter in 2020 and is excited to continue that work by helping to design an inventory framework for ƐDAN.

Richard Adetokunbo Aina is a multidisciplinary designer and researcher.

Richard's developed skills from studying theoretical and practice-based architecture have informed the way in which he has contributed to the formulation of ANO's online digital content.

Rebecca Oluwatoyin Thompson is a writer and educator studying
the nexus between spirituality and art at Harvard Divinity School.

As a researcher for ƐDAN, Rebecca acts as a liaison between the ANO Institute and other international museums who have collections of Ghanaian objects in their possession.

in the cover picture at 84 years old built our beautiful space out of sustainable raffia palm from the western region🌴 Since our first event in 2002, we have always tried to bring together art, music, food, architecture, ideas, into total experiences & we are lucky to work with creatives who innovate so beautifully with what is indigenous to us. Thank you to for the food. Thank you for the music. & thank you everyone we were able to host for our first evening at our new space for the spirit, communion & connection that underlines the work

At ANO it’s always been important to us to create spaces in between, of conversation, community, creativity, joy & belonging. We’ve tried to this from our beginnings with Salon Afrique designed by at the in 2005 through the Sunsum Sessions in Accra in 2017. It was lovely to be able to host so many old & new friends for the restitution convening in Accra. Here’s to many more gatherings that fuel communion, ideas, joy, complicity alongside our work & purpose

Happy Farmers Day! 👩🏿‍🌾 Thank you to all the farmers in Ghana🇬🇭 making sure we’re fed every day.
As ANO moves more towards the intersections of art, ecology & indigenous knowledge systems after 20 years, come & be part of our initiative in Aburi that combines permaculture, indigenous agriculture & knowledge including food practices & plant medicine, as well as research & education .ghana

“Here we are, the world in crisis, riddled in disease and war and damage, our particular narrative now expanded across the globe. This Ghana Pavilion riddled with challenges and obstacles and yet, still the need to express ourselves, our visions, to be counted, to be among. Why was it so important for us to be here? Because we have been sidelined, marginalised, and spoken for for so long? At least here we get to define ourselves and our place in the world, or at least a few of us can, those who have understood these codes of belonging, within this rarified world of expression.

Our first pavilion, Ghana Freedom, was full with how we defined ourselves in our moment of freedom, of how far we had come since, and of how much we had fallen short of, those early freedom dreams. The artists and architect, masters in their craft and expression, the advisor an eminence grise, the curation steeped in Akan ontology of dualities and layers, infused with our very own spatial vernacular.” –Nana Oforiatta Ayim ()

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 curatedGhana’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 theArchitectural Association in London.
A recipient of various awards and honours across the world, she was appointed to the Advisory Council of Oxford University’sCultural 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, Artsand Culture on Museums and Cultural Heritage.

“Here we are, the world in crisis, riddled in disease and war and damage, our particular narrative now expanded across the globe. This Ghana Pavilion riddled with challenges and obstacles and yet, still the need to express ourselves, our visions, to be counted, to be among. Why was it so important for us to be here? Because we have been sidelined, marginalised, and spoken for for so long? At least here we get to define ourselves and our place in the world, or at least a few of us can, those who have understood these codes of belonging, within this rarified world of expression.

Our first pavilion, Ghana Freedom, was full with how we defined ourselves in our moment of freedom, of how far we had come since, and of how much we had fallen short of, those early freedom dreams. The artists and architect, masters in their craft and expression, the advisor an eminence grise, the curation steeped in Akan ontology of dualities and layers, infused with our very own spatial vernacular.”
–Nana Oforiatta Ayim ()

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 curatedGhana’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 theArchitectural Association in London.
A recipient of various awards and honours across the world, she was appointed to the Advisory Council of Oxford University’sCultural 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, Artsand Culture on Museums and Cultural Heritage.

Like music and food, the idea of the structural installation in Venice created by architect DK Osseo-Asare () in what he calls the "fufuzela" – originating from "fufu", a Ghanaian dish, is something that everybody has access to – because they're open-source; they're modular; anyone can put them together.

DK Osseo-Asare () is the co-founding principal of Low Design Office (LOWDO) (), a trans-Atlantic architecture and integrated design studio based in Ghana and Texas. He co-founded the Ashesi Design Lab as Chief Maker and is Assistant Professor of Architecture and Engineering Design at Penn State University (), where he runs the Humanitarian Materials Lab (HuMatLab)and serves as Associate Director of Penn State’s Alliance for Education, Science, Engineering and Design with Africa (AESEDA).

Diego Araúja (diegoarauja)’s work for the , was "A Congress of Salt", in which the Atlantic Ocean that served to separate those taken from the shores of West Africa to its diasporas, now acts as a unifier, the birthplace of a new creole. Unfortunately it could not be shown in its full iteration because of financial constraints.

Diego Araúja (diegoarauja) is an artist born in Salvador-BA, Brazil, where he lives and works as an artist, director, and writer. He has directed the Creole Time process since 2015, considering the ongoing traumatic experience of Afro-Diasporic peoples and their descendants, He was director, playwright, and producer at Teatro Base from 2010 to 2017.
In 2017, Diego Araúja and artist Laís Machado founded ÀRÀKÁ Platform, a space of creation and connection between Afro-Atlantic artists. He conceived a choreographic performance for the videoinstallation "A Marvelous Entanglement" by artist Isaac Julien () in 2018, was invited to artist residencies at Atlantic Center For The Arts in 2018 and SAVVY Contemporary in 2020. In 2019, he was invited by the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs to represent Brazil for the 56th Theatertreffen. In 2020, he participated in the Iberoamerikanisches Theaterfestival with his work "QUASEILHAS". And in 2021 created an ephemeral architecture with the name“Lands Giving Birth Gold” connecting Brazil and Ghana through their respective work songs.

At the , Afroscope () takes the notion of oneness even further in his work Ashe, which explores the spirit that runs through all the elements, using technology as a translator of the flow of life, as exemplified by water.

Afroscope () is a speculative artist and designer for whom art-making is an attempt to deconstruct normative reality and challenge popular tropes by imagining transcendental visual narratives that comprise otherworldly beings, speculative dreamscapes and peculiar
forms. He straddles the worlds of myth, mystery and automatism in his work, and sees art as portals into a multiverse of realities.

He has exhibited widely in Ghana and Europe and was the winner of the 2017 Kuenyehia Prize () for Contemporary Ghanaian Art, Ghana’s foremost art award.

For her exhibition at the Venice Biennale, Na Chainkua Reindorf () takes masquerade and secret society traditions that historically were largely male, and creates her own mythology of Mawu Nyonu, a fictional secret society made of seven women, at one with the elements around them.

Na Chainkua Reindorf is a mixed media artist and mythmaker.
Her work, which ranges from large-scale tapestries to immersive sculptural installations, is an exploration of and an ode to the rich cultural history of West African textiles, focusing largely on the complexities and visual culture surrounding masquerades and ceremonial costumes.
She incorporates contemporary materials into her work, using these historical textiles and costumes as inspiration to investigate ongoing social topics centered on the politics of dress, identity and gender and their close relation to culture and tradition.

Na Chainkua has exhibited internationally in institutions across the United States, as well as in France, Nigeria and Ghana.

"Black Star"-obviously, it's in the middle of our flag; it's the name of our football team; but it was also the name of Marcus Garvey's shipping line.

So it has these national connotations, but then also these very pan-African connotations-this idea of unity across not just the continent, but also of the diaspora, and also of Ghana having its Year of Return [in 2019; it is now hosting a 10-year Beyond the Return campaign].

Ghana has always kind of been placed as this kind of lodestar, leading the way of what could be possible for Africans and Black people across the world. It's fascinating to me that there are so many African Americans coming back-people like Chance the Rapper seeing Ghana as this place of possibility.

I invited a Brazilian artist, Diego Araújo, to be part of the exhibition because I felt like, What does it actually mean, this return? What is the message or connection that we're trying to build? What can it really do for us in terms of healing these wounds of the past and creating new connections for the future?
And then, what can it mean in terms of our cultural institutions?

I think the first exhibition, "Ghana Freedom," was about looking at the past, and where do we situate our present in relation to the past? I paired older artists with younger ones - Felicia Abban with Lynette Yiadom-Boakye (), and Ibrahim Mahama () with El Anatsui (.art), and John Akomfrah with Selasi Awusi Sosu-so that it was very much about time.

With "Black Star: the Museum as Freedom," it's the idea of, How do we create freedom for ourselves now and in the future? And so the artists Na Chainkua Reindorf (), Afroscope (), and Diego Araúja () are really future-builders." –Nana Oforiatta Ayim (), Artnet () July 27, 2022.

€50,000 grant to carry out a 6-month photographic field report with the support of the Fondation Carmignac

Ghana - 13e édition du Prix Carmignac du photojournalisme The 13th edition of the Carmignac Photojournalism Award (Prix Carmignac du photojournalisme) will focus on Ghana and the ecological and social challenges the country faces.

On the last day of the , we look back on the exhibition, Nkabom — The Museum as Community, which explores the idea of community and connection through the work of three artists, & . The exhibition is part of a series interrogating the function of museums & was curated by with & as curatorial assistants & installing. All images shot by

Showing the master .absa’s film Twist à Popenguine tonight at 8pm in the Mobile Museum in collaboration w &

Our Mobile Museum has moved to Senegal! Come to our artists talk on art, the sea & the environment this afternoon in Popenguine w artists Go Salam & Moussa designed by & in collaboration w &

If you are in Dakar, come to our exhibition opening at 3pm at the Ifan Museum this afternoon as part of the official of contemporary African arts. Titled Nkabom — The Museum as Community, it explores the idea of community and connection through the work of three artists and the notion of Nkabom (coming together). explores the reconnection of women of African descent with the earth in her film Born of the Earth; 's large scale and delicate interventions remodel the Afayhe, ceremonial, spaces; and 's installations look deeply into the layers of public urban spaces. Curated by with the amazing team of & alongside artistic director & his team .karima & . Come if you can! ✨