Wallpaper* contributing editor Ekow Eshun considers time, identity and cultural memory in Ghana

Sankofa – the Ghanaian concept of revisiting the past in order to move forwards – is considered in a new exhibition, ‘In and Out of Time’, held at Gallery 1957 in Accra, Ghana, that weaves together different mediums, in a questioning of the traditional linear concept of progress. 

Curator and Wallpaper* contributing editor Ekow Eshun worked with both established and emerging artists for the exhibition. ‘Very simply with a group exhibition, I’m always looking to connect with artists I’m excited and inspired by,’ he says. ‘In the case of this exhibition that means artists whose work offers imaginative perspectives on time, cultural memory and African diasporic identity.’

‘In and Out of Time’, Gallery 1957, Accra

He continues, ‘So the criterion is less to do with artists being established or emerging, or to do with geography, say –  artists in the show are based in Africa, Europe and America.  It comes down, perhaps, to a shared desire to trouble notions of time as singular and linear, and to conjure instead, more capacious ways to read past, present and future as interrelated territories.’

Artists engage with the Sankofa concept in eclectic ways, from Malala Andrialavidrazana’s photographs to Shiraz Bayjoo’s interpretation of archival sources and Godfried Donkor’s multidisciplinary exploration of social links across Africa, Europe and the Caribbean. 

‘The concept of Sankofa – to return to the past in order to move forward – is an important cultural reference,’ Eshun adds. ‘It’s a notion that’s deeply embedded in Ghanaian society – this idea of learning from the past, and using that knowledge to make changes in the present and future. And it’s a useful illustration of how we might read time as unfixed, non-linear, as a narrative that doesn’t simply move in one direction. 

‘This is especially relevant for people of African origin, for whom the past perpetually haunts the present. Here we can think of legacies of the Middle Passage and colonisation. And how, in the Western imagination, Africa and its people frequently represent the primitive and the backward while the West stands for civilisation and progress. Against this backdrop, and through a variety of mediums, including painting, photography, collage and moving image, artists create works that collapse time and summon the Black body as a site of ongoing possibility where past, present, collective memory and speculative futures merge as one.’

Eshun was inspired by Michelle Wright’s book, The Physics of Blackness, translating her rethinking of time as a linear concept into his curation. ‘Wright imagines time as a circle with many arrows pointing outward toward “the greatest number of Blacknesses that are possible and viable“. It’s a beautiful metaphor for how we might understand identity as flourishing rather than fixed, multiple rather than singular.’

‘In and Out of Time’, runs 16 September until 12 December 2023, Gallery 1957, Accra

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