How Diverse Is African Art? A 54-Volume Encyclopedia Will Try for an Answer
Nana Boateng, a writer and poet editing the literature section of the Ghana volume, said: “At one point I was trying to compare Ghanaian poetic forms, so I went on the internet and there was just nothing. So though I know about these poets and writers, they are not online. So to have an encyclopedia that will be a reference point for generations is exciting. We are giving ourselves the opportunity to learn from what has already happened and build on it.”
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The Kiosk Museum at the Chale Wote festival 2016 in the Jamestown district of Accra, Ghana.
Credit
Ofoe Amegavie, via ANO
The project, which received a $40,000 grant from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2015, will also exist as physical exhibitions. The first one opened this month at the ANO gallery in central Accra, coinciding with the 60th anniversary of Ghana’s independence. It includes historical photographs of the country’s formation and videos and objects that were collected in Accra last summer, when the Cultural Encyclopedia opened a kiosk that Ms. Oforiatta-Ayim called a moving museum.
“It is such an important thing,” said David Adjaye, the British-Ghanaian architect who designed the new National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, and wrote a book about his experiences traveling throughout Africa, “because actually East Africans don’t know about West Africans’ culture, and West Africans don’t know about North Africans’ culture, and North Africans don’t know about Southern Africans’ culture — and I am being simplistic here — but it is very hard. So this writing and forming of identity of the continent is really important.”
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Ms. Oforiatta-Ayim did research for Mr. Adjaye on the 2010 “Visionary Africa” exhibition at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. She and two other researchers traced 12 African countries’ production centers from past to present.
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“So we looked at how art was produced and exhibited now — like museums and galleries — and how art was produced, for example, in 19th-century Yorubaland,” she said, referring to a cultural region of the Yoruba people in West Africa. “It set off this ‘Oh, this is doable,’” she added. “Having a research team, working with them over a year, that was where the idea was physically born because I worked on a project that made it possible.”
In 2011, she traveled by car with the Invisible Borders project — African photographers who head to different spots across the continent each year — to collect materials and connect with artists, curators and cultural producers.
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“So I would just film, interview, take pictures and just gather information at every point,” said Ms. Oforiatta-Ayim, who has worked for the United Nations in New York and the British Museum in London. “That was also how I knew it was possible to travel the continent, and I know that in each country there are ways of collecting this information. At the end of the trip I thought, O.K., this is now about building a team and doing this on a bigger scale.”
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“Homowo Boy Staff Bearer” by the photographer and artist Nii Obodai Provencal, shown in the Kiosk Museum, 2015.Credit
Nii Obodai Provencal, via ANO
She decided it made the most sense to start with Ghana. Ms. Oforiatta-Ayim invited Ghanaian experts in fields like music, theater, filmmaking and literature to a 10-day workshop in St.-Louis, Senegal, the oldest colonial settlement in French West Africa.
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“It was an amazing time,” said Anita Afonu, a documentarian whose “Perished Diamonds” (2013) examined the history of filmmaking in Ghana. “And it was very eye-opening, meeting other Ghanaian artists, and discussing ideas and the way forward.”
Ms. Oforiatta-Ayim recognizes that the overall project will not be finished for many years. It will probably take two more years to complete the Ghana volume, which will soon include interactive maps of cultural institutions across the country. Then other countries can begin to add to the encyclopedia.
“So if other countries are going to take it on, then we are going to have a manual like, ‘This is how we collect things, this is what we did wrong and this is what we did right,’” she said. “There is no reason that, once we have the manual, there can’t be five countries at the same time working. So what I am doing is building teams in different countries.”
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The encyclopedia is being coordinated under the auspices of ANO, an arts institution Ms. Oforiatta-Ayim set up in 2002 that has put together projects for events including the Liverpool Biennial and Dak’Art in Senegal. ANO has not had a physical space until now, and there — at least for the next two years — will correspond with the moving museum as it collects artifacts across the 10 regions of Ghana. So, for example, in April, when the pop-up kiosk is in Cape Coast, the theater director and performance artist Elizabeth Sutherland, whose family hails from there, will perform at ANO.
“To have a space that is online, accessible to a lot of people, and existing as a publication is really important for academic but also popular culture and reference,” said Ms. Sutherland, who is a granddaughter of the Ghanaian writer Efua Sutherland.
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The Nigerian musician Keziah Jones, helping set up connections to his country’s arts scene, agreed: “What makes up the culture itself? And that is why it is open-ended and it is widespread in music, arts, language, dance. Every possible aspect is used and usable. It’s trying to tell your own stories and taking hold of your narrative.”
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