A Tribute to Fortitude: Lessons to Glean from the Grandeur of Accra Cultural Week.

After in excess of 50 issues delving into the worldwide Black diaspora, this represents a last piece. The journey was incredibly rewarding, with sincere gratitude extended to all the dedicated audience.

Exploring Accra Cultural Week

Attending the displays, installations and acts of Accra Cultural Week, one sees how the finest art sustains and shapes a country’s heritage and identity. The highlight was undoubtedly Serge Attukwei Clottey’s remarkable [Dis]Appearing Rituals: An Open Lab of Now for Tomorrow, which put his innovative afrogallonism for all to see: a approach that reimagines water vessels into captivating creations, assemblages of golden hues. The exhibition was designed as a tribute to the strength of Jamestown, a historical quarter of Accra.

Jamestown – mainly home to the Ga ethnic group, a seafaring people – is additionally where a great number of freed slaves came back from Brazil and made their home in the 1830s. Called the Tabom people, they brought Portuguese language and culture.

Throughout Jamestown, you can see a mix of architecture. Standing is a historic building, with its distinct colonial-era masonry and door arches. Another landmark is the iconic Jamestown Lighthouse, constructed in the 1871 and subsequently given its recognizable striped exterior.

Customs of Mourning

Also remarkable about Jamestown is the ever-present sight of obituary announcements. On every corner, be it covering walls or on big billboards, there are service information and expressions of farewell. In Jamestown, as throughout Ghana, final rites are major communal events.

In this impressive exhibition, every aspect of the sights, sounds and religious textures of Jamestown are evoked – notably in the engaging shoreline work. Here, visitors are calmed by the audio of the sea with beach material at your feet, while shelters, nets and depictions of vessels celebrate its vibrant, generational maritime community. But standing in this exhibition space, one cannot help but think of the piles of textile waste that mar the beauty and serenity of the area.

In Addition to the Centrepiece

Accra Cultural Week also features a great deal more. Within an incomplete building at the campus, creator Reginald Sylvester II showcased On the Other Side of Languish, an emotionally powerful, minimalist exhibition that displayed three-dimensional works and paintings made in partnership with welders.

Also featured was the prestigious art award for female Ghanaian artists. It featured the inaugural exhibition of a prior laureate, whose work draws on personal family archives to produce a artistic representation of life in Ghana after independence. The event also crowned a latest champion, whose varied work is particularly focused on the craft techniques of women in the Volta region.

An Enduring Presence

While the overseas community has more and more been drawn back to the region in the winter months, an increasing number are considering journeying for the cultural season to engage with the area's artistic calendar. Between this festival and other major events, what you’ll find are creative communities that are not merely nascent or “upcoming” but have established an complete world that is permanent.

In the end, the experience provides a perception of Accra that resembles a manifesto for conservation and the keeping alive of culture. It is a compelling homage to perseverance in all its expressions.