Video capturing Ibrahim Mahama’s sublime draping of the former Galeria Kaufhof building in Osnabrück’s city centre. The site-specific installation, made of decommissioned jute sacks, strip-woven and handmade fabric from the northern regions of Ghana as well as traditional garments known as “Fugu” or “Batakari”, is part of the exhibition and research project “TRANSFER(S)” and takes place within the framework of 375 years of the Peace of Westphalia. The installation is on view until October 1st, 2023.
The second component of TRANSFER(S) takes place in Tamale (Ghana) and complements Mahama’s spatial intervention in Osnabrück with a discursive programme at @sccatamale in Ghana. During the period from November 28-2nd December, 2023 there will be panel discussions, seminars and performances produced in collaboration with academics, curators, historians and artists who will further unravel the historical-political strands that condition “TRANSFER(S)”.
Youtube: SCCA Tamale
Behind-the-scenes montage of the production process for TRANSFER(S) by artist Ibrahim Mahama, co-curated by Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh and Bettina Klein.
TRANSFER(S) is a site-oriented research and exhibition project by Ibrahim Mahama at the former Galeria Kaufhof building in Osnabrück (DE), and discursive programme in Tamale (GH), commissioned by Kunsthalle Osnabrück.
The site-specific exhibition in Osnabrück runs through 1st October 2023 at the former Galeria Kaufhof – building Wittekindstraße 23 49074 Osnabrück, Germany.
Youtube: SCCA Tamale
Introduction to exhibition project by artist Ibrahim Mahama and co-curators Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh & Bettina Klein.
Youtube: blaxTARLINES KUMASI
Isaac Gyasi's participatory weaving project and durational exhibition.
Isaac Gyasi is a weaving artist who has over 20 years of professional experience in textile design and practice, imparting knowledge of traditional Ghanaian weaving (Kente, Kete, Fugu), tapestry weaving, and broadloom weaving to students from KNUST and elsewhere. His outstanding contributions to design education and promotion, inventions and enhanced functionalities in weaving and fabric colouration are well recognised among many students. He has been weaving with straw, palm fronds, bamboo, and plantain fibres as well as dye colouration. His weaving practice aims at tracing and innovative synergizing the local technologies in the historical antecedents of traditional weaving and the contemporary weaving technologies. He does this by weaving and creating traditional designs that reconnect with the lost and unidentified Ghanaian cultural heritage as well as the unique hallmarks of ‘authentic' design complexities, patience, and resilience.
Youtube: blaxTARLINES KUMASI
Panel Discussion about TRANSFER(S) in the context of the “Bist du Bereit” anniversary exhibition programme of the Kunsthalle Osnabrück.
Panelists: Ibrahim Mahama, Anna Jehle + Juliane Schickedanz Moderator: Bettina Klein & Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh.
Anna Jehle + Juliane Schickedanz Since 2020, Anna Jehle and Juliane Schickedanz are co-directing Kunsthalle Osnabrück, one of the most important platforms for contemporary art in northern Germany, located in a former monastery and adjunct church. Curatorially, they work with annual themes such as “Disappointment” (2020), “Accessibility” (2021) or “Romanticism” (2022). Based on a structural interest and in the sense of a learning institution, the annual themes aim to tackle thematic complexes in a sustainable and more comprehensive approach through new artistic productions by internationally renowned artists. The Kunsthalle Osnabrück's programmes, which are conceptualised as processual and interdisciplinary, address socio-politically relevant issues and place an explicit focus on the inclusion of social processes that understand these issues as an integral part of cultural production. With its experimental and sensually tangible exhibitions and art mediation projects, the Kunsthalle has become a place for discourse and of conviviality that aims to transcend social boundaries.
Youtube: blaxTARLINES KUMASI
Performance by Bernard Akoi-Jackson.
Bernard Akoi-Jackson (PhD) is a contemporary Ghanaian artist writer, curator and educator who lives and works from Tema/Accra/Kumasi or any site that loosely falls within his post-studio praxis. His general artistic practice and research trajectory revolve around his notion of ‘disturbed methodologies’, comprising a critique of post- and de-coloniality; an investigation of quotidian interactions and gestures through movement and object-oriented situations; and an engagement of linguistic quirks via textual inventions, revisions and wit. Akoi-Jackson is drawn to the politics of such vestiges of colonialist encounter as overtly bureaucratic rituals that lead to procedural stalemate in society. His multi-disciplinary, audience-implicating installations and performative pseudo-rituals, have featured in exhibitions across the world.
Youtube: blaxTARLINES KUMASI
Live music performance by Koliko collective.
Koliko (collective) constitutes a loose collective of practitioners who share an interest in music and are based in Kumasi, Ghana. For the group music is a tool for entertainment and for the soul which ought to be available to everybody, irrespective of age, class, gender or racial background. Koliko’s music functions as a medium through which to express these egalitarian ideals. Inspired by the legendary Dr. Daniel Amponsah populary known as AGYA KOO NIMO, Afrobeat band Osibisa, founded in the late 1960s, and Kwame Yeboah’s “Ohia Bɛ Yɛ Ya” band, the group’s cosmopolitan sound appropriates from local highlife music (Adadamu, Burger highlife, etc), Jazz, Soul, Calypso, et al.
Youtube: blaxTARLINES KUMASI
'Exchanging Our Country Marks*: Emancipated Futures in Solidarity' Lecture by Prof. Akosua Adomako Ampofo.
*The title borrows from Michael Gomez book titled, Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South (1998)
Q&A moderated by Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh
Prof. Akosua Adomako Ampofo is Professor of African and Gender Studies at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana. Her areas of interest include African Knowledge systems (and ‘decolonizing’ knowledge and praxis); Higher education; Race and Identity Politics; Gender relations; Masculinities; and Popular Culture. She describes herself as an activist scholar, and her work is informed by her faith, questions of identity and power, and a commitment to social justice. In 2022 she co-produced the documentary When Women Speak with Kate Skinner (and directed by Aseye Tamakloe) as part of the project “Archive of Activism: Gender and Public History in Postcolonial Ghana”. Adomako Ampofo is the founding vice-president and immediate past President of the African Studies Association of Africa, and a Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is currently the Wangari Maathai Visiting Professor at the University of Kassel.
Youtube: blaxTARLINES KUMASI
Panel: Dr. Thorsten Heese and Prof. Klaus Weber, moderated by Bettina Klein
Klaus Weber: 'African and American Dimensions of German Proto-Industries (17th-19th C.): The Examples of Westphalia and Silesia'
Thorsten Heese: 'Let’s talk about “Osnabrück”!: Decolonizing European Master Narratives by Teaching Glocal History'
Prof. Klaus Weber is a historian and Professor of European and Social History at the Europa Universität Viadrina (Frankfurt on the River Oder). In 2001 he submitted a Ph.D thesis at Universität Hamburg on German merchants in the 18th century Atlantic trade. Weber’s research interests also explore labour and welfare regimes in modern Europe and the Atlantic world and the global connections of central Europe’s early modern proto-industries. His text Linen, Silver, Slaves, and Coffee: A Spatial Approach to Central Europe’s Entanglements with the Atlantic Economy! (2015) is one of the main reference texts of this project.
Thorsten Heese studied History, Political Science and Art History in Osnabrück (Germany) and Hull (Great Britain). In 2002, he obtained his Ph.D. at the Martin-Luther-University of Halle and Wittenberg. He is Co-Director and Curator for Local and Cultural History at the Museumsquartier of Osnabrück. He also is temporary lecturer for Museological Didactics and Museum Education at the University of Osnabrück. His scientific publications and editions deal with museology, history didactics as well as the history of colonialism, migration and National Socialism. His last publication offers “Glocal History” as an exhibition concept and perspective to decolonize historical museums and exhibitions.
Youtube: blaxTARLINES KUMASI
Zohra Opoku and The Revival: An immersive installation unfolds, featuring patchwork-style vintage textiles from Kantamanto. In a traditional-inspired procession, Kayayei women gracefully transport the piece on wooden boards and aluminum bowls, resulting in a captivating final image—a suspended hut shape gracefully occupying the space.
Zohra Opoku and The Revival: A collaborative body of work by Ghana-based artists Zohra Opoku and The Revival (co-founded by Kwamena Boison & Yayra Agbofah) which is a community-led sustainable design non-profit entity educating and creating awareness with upcycled global textile waste. For Zohra Opoku, this collaboration will be a continuation/extension of her ‘WHO IS WEARING MY T-SHIRT' series, which was devoted to the work of unpacking interconnectedness, highlighted at the intersection of trade and textile. Zohra Opoku’s ongoing series explores the fraught relation between the second-hand Imports to Sub-Saharan Africa, the modern African textile industry and traditional African attire.
Youtube: blaxTARLINES KUMASI
Presentation and exhibition by artist Priscilla Kennedy.
Priscilla Kennedy (b. 13. 07. 1994) holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. Notably, she won the esteemed First Merit Award in the Barclays L'atelier Art competition in South Africa and was honoured as the recipient of the 2022 Yaa Asantewaa Art Prize. With a multidisciplinary approach, Priscilla Kennedy intricately weaves connections between body, race, sexuality, and fictional histories of objects with hybrid life forms. Her artistic practice encompasses diverse media, such as painting, tapestry, and light. These result in a tentacular deconstruction of the female body, including her own, as a multi-site for engaging conversation.
Youtube: blaxTARLINES KUMASI
21st Century Reflections on the Peace of Westphalia Lecture by Gabriel Schimmeroth.
Gabriel Schimmeroth is a curator, historian and head of public programming at the Museum am Rothenbaum – Kulturen und Künste der Welt (MARKK) in Hamburg, Germany. He is responsible for the experimental project space ‘Zwischenraum – A Space Between’ and the project ‘MARKK in Motion’ (2018-2023), which is part of the Initiative of Ethnological Collections of the German Federal Cultural Foundation. He was part of the interdisciplinary curatorial teams of the exhibitions Fleisch [Flesh/Meat] (2018) at Altes Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Hey Hamburg, do you know Duala Manga Bell? (2021) at MARKK, Archive of Experiences (2022) with Kelvin Haizel, part of the 8th Triennial of Photography Hamburg and curated numerous interventions and public programs. His main areas of interest reach from urban history and public infrastructures to the entanglements of museum, archive and memory politics with contemporary art.
Youtube: blaxTARLINES KUMASI
'The Visible, the Hidden, and the Absent in Ghana's Colonial History of Art Curricula'- Lecture by kąrî’kạchä seid’ōu
kąrî’kạchä seid’ōu is an artist-intellectual, poet, mathematician, and educator. He is Ghana’s key figure in non-proprietary art and a co-founder of blaxTARLINES KUMASI. He has mentored a growing number of artists, curators and writers. His practice has inspired an artistic revolution in Ghana. The theme of 35th Ljubljana Biennale resonates squarely with his artistic and political ideas.
Youtube: blaxTARLINES KUMASI
From textiles and domestic objects to aircraft and a living museum installation, internationally acclaimed artist Ibrahim Mahama is known for his monumental installations in Ghana and beyond. His collections explore the significance of historical memory through everyday objects and his Red Clay Studio is a treasure trove of relics and artefacts. It’s a place where visitors explore their history, start new conversations about the past and imagine their futures – a studio of archives.
From textiles and domestic objects to aircraft and a living museum installation, internationally acclaimed artist Ibrahim Mahama is known for his monumental installations in Ghana and beyond. His collections explore the significance of historical memory through everyday objects and his Red Clay Studio is a treasure trove of relics and artefacts. It’s a place where visitors explore their history, start new conversations about the past and imagine their futures – a studio of archives.Youtube: Al Jazeera English