Rita Mawuena Benissan, Kwasi Darko and Kuukua Eshun: Nkabom—The Museum as Community

Nkabom—The Museum as Community explores the idea of community and connection through the work of three artists and the notion of Nkabom (coming together). It will be on view to the public from May 20–June 21 at the Biennale of Dakar, 2022.

Kuukua Eshun explores the reconnection of women of African descent with the earth in her film Born of the Earth; Rita Mawuena Benisson’s large-scale and delicate interventions remodel the Afayhe, ceremonial spaces; and Kwasi Darko’s installations look deeply into the layers of public urban spaces.

The exhibition is curated by Nana Oforiatta Ayim, Director of ANO Institute of Arts & Knowledge in Accra and Director at Large of Ghana’s Museums and Cultural Heritage, who also created the mobile museums which will serve as gateways to the exhibition; and as a space of communion in the village of Popenguine, facilitated by the community there. These versions of the mobile museums have been built as modular, open source bamboo structures, fufuzela, by architect DK Osseo Asare. The mobile museum in Popenguine is produced in partnership with Wakhart, a cultural platform that provides spaces of communion for artists in Senegal. It houses works from artists Go Salam and Moussa of Delu6waat, reflecting on their connections with the sea and the communities around it, as well as their relation to the environment.

Nana Oforiatta Ayim states: “For each artist’s work, the curatorial space takes its cue from the places the artists reference: the colours associated with the earth which in Akan philosophy is feminine; the colours and textures of historical courtyard houses especially those linked with the ritual and sacred; the urban iconography and colours of street kiosks and places of transport and transition. Nkabom brings these public exhibition spaces into the museum, and then reaches out and takes the museum out again.”