One Man Does Not Rule a Nation
September 6–December 12, 2025
September 6, 2025–October 6, 2025
Foundation for Contemporary Art, Accra, Ghana
September 13, 2025–December 12, 2025
Red Clay Studio, Tamale, Ghana
The official slogan of the Kwame Nkrumah was: "Forward ever, backward never." However, in order to move forward, one must first go back to history and local heritage, especially if it has been forgotten in official narratives. One such story, almost lost both in Poland and Ghana, is the close cooperation between the two countries in the early 1960s. Its strongest visual symbol is the Sword Monument: a memorial, designed by Polish artist Alina Ślesińska, in the shape of a sword topped with Nkrumah’s head. Ślesińska worked on the sculpture for a year and a half in Ghana’s capital, Accra, and nearby Winneba, where it was unveiled in May 1965. However, just a few months later, during a military coup that overthrew the government, her statue was completely destroyed. Its shape originally referenced the traditions of the local Efutu and Ashanti peoples, as well as the leader’s role as the “sword against colonialism” and the West imperialism. The obelisk was placed in front of Nkrumah’s Ideological Institute, where national elites as well as fighters and guerrillas from African countries still struggling for independence were educated. Specialists from the socialist bloc and left-wing scholars from Western countries taught there. The unveiling ceremony coincided with the international conference of the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organisation - the first to be attended by a delegation from the Polish committee of that organisation.
Alina Ślesińska gained fame during the political and cultural “thaw” after Stalin’s death in the 1950s, when her sculptures and later her innovative “proposals for architecture” were exhibited in Warsaw, Paris, and London. However, after having returned from Ghana and held a retrospective exhibition at the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, her star began to fade, and after 1970, the artist fell into obscurity.
The shape of the installation One Man Does Not Rule a Nation refers to the concrete foundation of the Sword Monument, preserved in Winneba, and recreates this demolished object in 3D printing. The exhibition is composed of various archival materials and new recordings made by the curators. It is not only a reconstruction of the Polish People’s Republic’s (PRL’s) relationship with a decolonizing Africa. It also reminds us of a visionary artist and idealistic politician. It creates a broad geopolitical and economic context for the Sword Monument. The monument can be interpreted in many ways, for example as a symbol of the era of Afro-optimism - a time of great hopes, tied both in the South and North to the freedom and rapid development of Africa. The hopes that were dashed by global neocolonial policies. It can be also read as a symbol of Nkrumah’s lost heritage of Ghana, and his Pan-Africanism legacy. The Sword Monument can also be an encouragement for further emancipation of women in society and in contemporary art. From a Polish perspective it is also an important reminder of socialist solidarity with decolonizing Africa. The creators of the project One Man Does Not Rule a Nation look to the past to make an effort to imagine a more justice-oriented global cooperation in the future.
The title of the installation comes from kente cloth in gold, red, and blue, originally created in 1958 for the wedding of Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, and Egyptian Fathia Rizk. After his overthrow in 1966, the same arrangement of symbols was interpreted as “Obaakofo mmu man”—“One man does not rule a nation.” As today many Ghanaian artists, intellectuals, and politicians are increasingly returning to Nkrumah’s ideology, to his vision of pan-Africanism, anti-colonialism, and social equality, the meaning of both the pattern on the cloth and the Sword Monument is changing once again.
The parallel installations in FCA Ghana, Accra and in Red Clay studio in Tamale are extended versions of the work originally commissioned by the Ljubljana Biennale and the Riga Survival Kit Festival in 2023, then expanded in a show at TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art in Szczecin, Poland. In parallel, another version is presented in The Museum of African Art in Belgrade, recalling the solidarity of the Non-Aligned Movement era of Kwame Nkrumah, Jamal Nasser (Egypt), Jawaharlal Nehru (India) and Josip Broz Tito (leader of Yugoslavia), and other politicians from the South.
Finally, after so many stopovers, the Sword Monument is coming back to its roots.
Organizers
TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art in Szczecin
TRAFO is an international center for contemporary art, opened in 2013 and located in Szczecin, the capital of the Polish-German border region of Pomerania. TRAFO serves as a multifunctional meeting platform for artists and visitors. It introduces the audience to the tools of art by putting them in various contexts and transdisciplinary relationships. The institution acts as an “interpreter,” promoting and situating art within today’s highly complex cultural, socio-political, economic, and existential spheres. TRAFO is a post-institution, unbound by rigid rules in the rapidly changing world of art. It is a testing ground for art history - a space for experimentation and demonstration of the artistic process, production and testing of knowledge. Its program consists of exhibitions, research and residency programs, publishing activities, meetings, concerts, lectures. TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art in Szczecin is a public art institution organized by the City of Szczecin.
IAM / Culture.pl
Co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland.
The Adam Mickiewicz Institute (IAM) brings Polish culture to people around the world. As a state institution, we create lasting interest in Polish culture and art through strengthening the presence of Polish artists on the global stage. We initiate innovative projects, support international cooperation and cultural exchange. We promote the work of both established and emerging artists, showcasing the diversity and richness of our culture. We also run the Culture.pl portal, a comprehensive source of knowledge about Polish culture.
Culture.pl is the largest and most comprehensive source of knowledge about Polish culture, run by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute (IAM). We provide reliable information about the most important phenomena and trends in culture, as well as events organised in Poland and abroad. Here you will find profiles of artists, reviews, essays and expert analyses that portray the richness of Polish art. We publish in eight languages, bringing Poland’s contribution to global culture and humanistic heritage closer to an international audience.
Partners in Ghana
Red Clay is one of the sister stations of the institution SCCA Tamale—Red Clay—Nkrumah Volini in Tamale, Northern Region of Ghana. It’s a complex of studios with different kinds of spaces that function as an exhibition, a work space, an archive, a greenhouse and a permanent collection. Since its opening in 2020, the institution has offered free-of-charge public programmes to the general public and the surrounding communities to engage them in various experiments initiated by artists and curators. Red Clay is committed to sharing knowledge and resources with practitioners of different fields and students in order to shape the pedagogy of the next generation.
The Foundation for Contemporary Art—Ghana (FCA–Ghana) is an arts organization with a network of artists, a project space, and a resource centre committed to the critical development of contemporary art in Ghana. It positions itself as an open and evolving space for artistic and intellectual engagement—welcoming diverse methods, voices, and practices while attending to the broader social and political implications of art both locally and internationally. As a discursive and generative platform, FCA holds space for renegotiating how art is imagined, made, and shared.
Foundation for Contemporary Art
First Circular Cres, Accra, Ghana
Red Clay Studio
Tamale, Ghana
