Kwame Akoto-Bamfo
Kwame Akoto-Bamfo is a Ghanaian multidisciplinary artist and educator who is also known for his racial equality as well as cultural activism. He is founder of the Nkyinkyim Museum in Nuhalenya Ada as well as the creator and sculptor of Nkyinkyim Installation in Ghana, Legacy Museum and National Monument for Peace and Justice, Montgomery- Alabama, USA. He is also the creator of Nkyinkyim Za: Creative Communal Labour Festival, Ancestor Veneration Ceremony and Freedom Parade Festivals.
In 2021, his Blank Slate Monument toured throughout the U.S., from Louisville, Times Square New York and the King Center in Atlanta, among other stops. Kwames works typically archive historical African living experience while protesting the legacies of African enslavement and colonialism. With a history of exhibiting in public spaces rather than art galleries, the powerful orator and scholar seeks to take his art into the heart of the community, disseminating his message to an audience beyond art patrons.
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Notable Works
Awards
2015
Influential Artist of the Year
Keuenyehia Art Prize
2019
Influential Artist of the Year
GUBA Awards
Documentaries
Set in Ghana and in Montgomery, Alabama, The Lost Ancestors is the story of an African artist whose work reckons with the enduring legacy of slavery in Africa among Africans today.
Ghanaian sculptor and activist Kwame Akoto-Bamfo grew up near the ocean in Ghana—ground zero of the slave trade. He’d heard stories from his elders about the terror they experienced as children knowing that their ancestors had disappeared. Now, he is at the forefront of a generation of young African artists rethinking and reclaiming the history of the African people subordinated by colonialism.
For 400 years, approximately 12 million Africans were transported from their homes across the Atlantic to the Americas as slaves and forced to work in mines and plantations. Kwame Akoto-Bamfo, a Ghanaian artist, has spent 6 years sculpting about 1,300 heads that depict the dehumanizing trade manipulation and exploitation which happened from the 16th to 19th century.
These heads, a part of his Nkyinkyim installation, pay homage to the ancestors who fell victim to the transatlantic slave trade and portray their ordeal several years ago. No two heads look the same. Some heads portray the particular state the slaves were in when they were captured, with them looking unto the instrument of their destruction. Other heads represent those who were prisoners of war. He chose to use heads for his portraits because it also pays homage to the ancient Akan practice of creating memorial heads – nsodie (to put something unto something) – for royalties when they pass away. In 2017, the heads were displayed at the Cape Coast castle for his exhibition, “In Memoriam: Portraits of the Middle Passage, In Situ,” and have recently found a home in an open field next to his Osramba studio in Nuhalenya, Ada.
The Art of Healing, a feature documentary that tells the story of transatlantic trade from the Ghanaian perspective, has premiered.
The documentary, which was inspired by the works of Ghanaian sculptor Kwame Akoto-Bamfo, premiered at Silverbird Cinemas in Accra last Sunday, with some attendees from the diaspora and some top personalities gracing the occasion.
The feature documentary themed: “Finding Freedom from the Descendant Pain of Slavery” is a production of V1 Film Studios with Mr. Amar Deep Singh Hari as the Executive Producer and was directed by Yaw Pare and Darius Matheson.
The documentary captures scenes of Akoto-Bamfo’s Nkyinkyim museum, which showcases various artistic monuments, including the 1500 concrete life-size heads and 3000 terracotta miniature sculpted heads.
