Bentsifi’s Tattle
It was when she nudges me that I realise I am transfixed. I am starring at one of the paintings and I am transported to my childhood, to days when my cousins and I would search through garbage for items we would use to make makeshift toys.
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Essuman, the oldest among us, was very deft with his hands. He could turn whatever he touched into something of use. So old chale wotes and car tires, empty tins of milk or tomatoes, anything would be recycled.
We didn’t even know we were recycling in those days! Essuman was quite a rascal in the eyes of our parents who didn’t like that we hanged out with him. But the things I learnt from him!
So, I am standing here in the corridors of the offices of Oxford & Beaumont in the Physicians & Surgeons building near Liberation Circle in Accra where the exhibition of contemporary African art from the first decade of the Kuenyehia collection comes to a close.
I am standing in front of the work of J. E. Sodja titled ‘Knowledge and Wisdom’ in which he has used some of these old materials that has sent me back to my childhood when we played with these discarded things and turned them into our own mechanised cars and other moving objects.
I mean, Essuman would remove the engine from my brand new toy car or plane I may have just brought from my trip from England, and rather fit it in his makeshift toy modelled from empty tins of tomatoes and milk.
I am looking at the work and the title and I cannot help but think how the rubbish we collected from the garbage for our experiments and play, actually did impart to me, and am sure my other cousins and playmates, much knowledge and wisdom!
The work is in dark acrylic hues, with mixed materials glued on. For me, it is uncanny that it should even have this title. It is such a stark reminder for me, a reminder of pleasant yet difficult times when I battled with tidiness lectures from mummy and sister Lavinia and having to ransack nearby public garbage (I mean, proper borla) for these experiments and the experiences I went through.
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Somehow, all of it is what has moulded me and Sodja has captured it very aptly in this piece of work in the exhibition, An African Decade, which celebrates ten years of the return of one of the people I admire the most in this generation, our own young grand entrepreneur, lawyer and art collector Elikem Nutifafa Kuenyehia.
He has set up a private trust to establish and manage the Kuenyehia Trust that has established a prize to find, reward and support the most outstanding Ghanaian artists under 40.
With a mission to celebrate and showcase original contemporary Ghanaian art by emerging and mid-career Ghanaian artists, the objective of the ‘Kuenyehia Prize for Contemporary Ghanaian Art’ is to make a modest contribution to the Ghanaian art ecosystem by inspiring the next generation of Ghanaian artists to produce work that will attract both local and international audiences.
It will also draw attention to Ghanaian art and encourage increased patronage by the middle class and corporate Ghana.
Now accepting entries, there is Ghc25,000 at stake for a Ghanaian artist under 40 years whose work show progressiveness!
I missed the chance to pay my final respects to my friend Aunty Korantemaa’s father, Prof Alexander Adum Kwapong, whose death ‘signals the gradual phasing out the first generation of Ghanaian scholars and intellectuals who laid the foundation of university education in Ghana’, as my senior Kwasi Gyan Apenteng puts it.
Buried last weekend, the details of the life of this distinguished Ghanaian cannot be told enough as many of us younger generation hardly know much about his achievements.
After studying at Achimota College, he was awarded a scholarship to continue his studies in Classics at Cambridge University, graduating with first-class honours in 1951, became a lecturer and then full professor at the University of Ghana where he taught Greek, Latin and ancient history.
Over time, he was appointed to a number of senior posts with the University of Ghana, before becoming the university’s first Ghanaian Vice-Chancellor in 1966.
After serving in that capacity for 10 years, Professor Kwapong moved to the United Nations University in Tokyo and took up the post of Vice-Rector for Institutional Planning and Resource Development.
According to a tribute by the U.N University, Professor Kwapong “worked closely with the first rector, James H. Hester, to lay the foundations necessary for UNU as both a university and a part of the United Nations system, and to attract funding for the University.”
The great Prof served on numerous boards, including the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies and the International Council for Educational Development. Retiring from academic work did not mean the end of his public service.
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He became the chairman of the Council of State from 2001 to 2005 where he played his role as one of the government’s principal advisors.
In an interview on his achievements, Dr Kwapong remarked that, “the minimum qualification to be a good leader is not intellectual capacity but the capability to work with people, the modesty to understand one’s own limitations and to do one’s homework”. May his soul rest in paradise.
I celebrate this week, yet another Ghanaian artiste, the very voluptuous Lydia Forson. Her latest work is ‘A Letter From Adam’ - a contemporary story about love, loss and hope. The pack of actors in the field include Wale Ojo, Naa Ashorkor Mensah-Doku, Akorfa Edjeani, Albert Jackson, Jeff Kumordzie, Louie Lartey and Fred Kanebi, with P. Sam Kessie directing this new flick that is set in the busy city of Accra.
It opens tonight, September19 at the Silverbird Cinema in Accra and I look forward to seeing you there.
Source: THE MIRROR
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