It was a great day last month when I visited two galleries in London. You know those days when everything seems to fall into place?
The meaning that the Ghanaian artist Owusu-Ankomah refers to in his new show Microcron-Kusum (Secret Signs Hidden Meanings) at the October Gallery is love.
The violet-blue canvases involve a male figure among Adinkra symbols – a deep-rooted part of the Akan people’s culture that have specific meanings but to outsiders are cloaked in mystery. The male appears to navigate his way through the shapes.
As soon as I walked into the gallery, I recognised the artist who appeared to be giving a tour. Of course I went to join them, but it turns out that his companions were the sculptor Sokari Douglas Camp (who I interviewed for Museums Journal probably 10 years ago) and her family.
Owusu-Ankomah took the time, on my request, for a tour. The message is love, he tells me. Those who fail to love, who embrace negativity will be left behind in the new age to come. That new age is inherent within us, and something we will have to create for ourselves as humanity, he says.
Just down the road at the Petrie Museum that evening was a talk on Flinders Petrie’s analysis of racial types of Memphis, ancient Egypt. Less love exuded here.
On offer was a critique of what has become accepted as Egyptology.
Using biological, archaeological and linguistic references we were given an alternative view of who the Egyptians were. In the mixed audience there was resistance from some of the white, particularly older, members of the audience.
For instance, said the speaker, why could the brown skin colour on tombs not represent an African?
Today, Africans have varying shades of skin colour so why do we assume that brown skin means Mediterranean or Arab and that black means Nubian?
Later, on my way home a chance meeting with the Islington Twins (Chuka and Dubem Okonkwo) closed my evening with an existential discussion that brought it full circle back to love.
The meaning that the Ghanaian artist Owusu-Ankomah refers to in his new show Microcron-Kusum (Secret Signs Hidden Meanings) at the October Gallery is love.
The violet-blue canvases involve a male figure among Adinkra symbols – a deep-rooted part of the Akan people’s culture that have specific meanings but to outsiders are cloaked in mystery. The male appears to navigate his way through the shapes.
As soon as I walked into the gallery, I recognised the artist who appeared to be giving a tour. Of course I went to join them, but it turns out that his companions were the sculptor Sokari Douglas Camp (who I interviewed for Museums Journal probably 10 years ago) and her family.
Owusu-Ankomah took the time, on my request, for a tour. The message is love, he tells me. Those who fail to love, who embrace negativity will be left behind in the new age to come. That new age is inherent within us, and something we will have to create for ourselves as humanity, he says.
Just down the road at the Petrie Museum that evening was a talk on Flinders Petrie’s analysis of racial types of Memphis, ancient Egypt. Less love exuded here.
On offer was a critique of what has become accepted as Egyptology.
Using biological, archaeological and linguistic references we were given an alternative view of who the Egyptians were. In the mixed audience there was resistance from some of the white, particularly older, members of the audience.
For instance, said the speaker, why could the brown skin colour on tombs not represent an African?
Today, Africans have varying shades of skin colour so why do we assume that brown skin means Mediterranean or Arab and that black means Nubian?
Later, on my way home a chance meeting with the Islington Twins (Chuka and Dubem Okonkwo) closed my evening with an existential discussion that brought it full circle back to love.
