After Lois Arde-Acquah and Theresa Ankomah were invited to participate in the Nubuke Foundation‘s YGA Artist Development Program in 2020. The program was recently revisited to focus on promoting the artists’ practice as well as career development and business awareness with experts.
The « Look at WE » exhibition is the culmination of this semi-annual program; « Look at WE » is a beautiful and passionate learning excursion where Theresa Ankomah and Lois Arde-Acquah present a body of work made exclusively for this exhibition at the Gallery Nubuke Foundation in Accra through August 15, 2021.
Visitors will be confronted with artist Lois Arde-Acquah‘s performance at the opening, as she puts herself under pressure, boredom, difficulty and stress. Her work offers many avenues of conversation for visitors who end up leaving on this weak exercise with the artist stretching herself to the limits of self-discipline. Visitors may leave with more questions than answers.
Lois Arde-Acquah‘s leaves, representations and structures are emotionally implanted losses of difficult and tedious efforts undergone, denoting the overflow of her repressed and unexpressed emotions. Beginning with small actions, she continues her practically excited developments, until the combined impact is to create swaths and mounds of material exposed to powers that can be measured as a violent storm.
As for Theresa Ankomah‘s works, they are the result of an excursion of interest and investigation around the complexities established in the practice of weaving – how to bring complexities into being, how to uncover inserted implications, just by the simple interaction of interlocking strands, fibers, etc.
Kenaf baskets are rescued from the onion importers of Ghana’s discount markets. Theresa Ankomah‘s response with these materials and their biological systems are an investigative journey into issues of sexual orientation, international relations, exchange pressures, strategic maneuvers… She explores all of these threads, partnering with artists while striving to be auspicious and bring significance to her own practice.
She sees associations between herself and the people who control Kenaf‘s fibers with their hands – bending, pulling, stroking, forming basket slings. Her work expands and extrapolates the handiness of these ordinary items while acknowledging the ephemeral idea of the materials. Both contemporary artists challenge their practice by starting from a position of weakness and searching for meaning while aiming to share, notice, engage, question, challenge and travel with visitors.
