Ghana

-Ghana is a country on the rise.

Stable government, growing economy, and a traveler's dream... from incredible beaches to jungle canopy treks and epic wildlife.

For us, Ghana also has a top-caliber art scene, with a young generation of artists tackling big issues, all done with an eye to their past and a focus on their future, a future arrived at on Ghanaian terms.

[ Man singing in native dialect ] -I'm Ian Grant, and I have spent the last three decades using my background in history and art history, exploring cultures all around the world.

[ Man singing in native dialect ] -In this series, I'll take you to places I've never been to before... ♪♪ ...experiencing local life through the lens of the world's artists, artisans, and keepers of culture.

This is "Culture Quest."

♪♪ -Gustavus Adolphus College equips students to lead purposeful lives and act on the great challenges of our time.

Gustavus -- make your life count.

-Over a billion people live with preventable blindness.

See International partners with volunteer doctors to provide sight-restoring surgeries in underserved communities around the world.

-This organization is united in one mission -- to restore sight to the blind.

-They purify the air I breathe and the water I drink... keep me and the planet cool... and give me a career I love.

Trees -- when we take care of them, they take care of us.

-We all seem different in our own ways because different reflects who you are, who you want to be.

The Northern Territory -- different in every sense.

[ Birds crying ] -So, we just got into Elmina, and we're meeting up with my friend Nana Oforiatta Ayim, who started creating these mobile museums that now go all around Ghana getting the art in front of the people.

Elmina is home to the infamous Elmina Castle, a one-time stronghold for several colonial powers and, for centuries, a major port of the slave trade.

Well before the slavers arrived, it was a centuries-old fishing village with a strong history of its own.

This is where Nana is setting up the most recent edition of her mobile museum, a project that is reconnecting Ghanaians with their proud history.

-Hi!

-Nice to meet you in person at last.

-Nice to meet you.

Hi.

-How you doing?

-Good.

Good.

Yeah.

-Yeah.

Nana has a long list of accolades.

She studied Russian for a year in St. Petersburg, worked at the British Museum.

She's given TED Talks, written books, has had several fellowships and advisory positions at museums and universities all around the world, and she started this concept, The Mobile Museum.

-So, I wanted to get beyond this narrow thing of pre-colonial, colonial, post-colonial, that narrow kind of paradigm and timeframe.

You know, there's different contributions that different cultures make to the world.

And so you have, you know, Western thought and Western philosophy.

You have Eastern thought, Eastern philosophy.

But because of, like, a small chapter in our history, what our contribution to the world is -- seen as not as valued... we didn't, ourselves, see as valuable.

It's not just individually damaging to me as a human being of African descent to not know my own history.

It's damaging to us as a collective, you know?

It's damaging to us that we are not connected to our past, that we have this collective mentality that what comes from us in the past is wrong, you know?

It's us saying to ourselves that we're wrong and that other culture values are more important and better than our own.

I'm sure you've heard of the Golden Stool of the Ashanti, right?

-No.

-Okay.

The Golden Stool of the Ashanti, for example, is the soul of the Ashanti people.

-When a person goes through the ritual of becoming king of the Ashanti, he's lowered three times over the stool and is transformed.

-He loses his name, and he takes on a new name, and he becomes not who he was before, but he becomes an incumbent of the stool.

And the stool allows him to inhabit the spirit of every ruler that's come before him.

When the British came, they knew that, and so they tried to steal the stool.

They knew that if they had that stool, they're breaking the spirit of the people.

So, a lot of the time, when these objects are taken and they are restored to, like, perfect condition, they're put into glass cases, they're put into temperature-controlled rooms.

I'll give you a counter to that.

When we do the Odwira festival in my hometown, the Okyenhene will wear a cloth that's 400 years old, a batakari war smock, the same war smock that you will see at the British Museum.

-Okay.

-The same war smock.

We'll have the Atumpan drums, the same type of drum that you'll have in the British Museum.

These objects are not dead.

They're brought out, and they are -- They're brought to life.

I don't want to throw away the idea of a museum altogether because I think, you know, it has value, as well.

I love museums.

-Yeah.

-I love wandering the corridors of museums.

-Yeah.

-And so I was thinking, you know, rather than these kind of intimidating pillars, you know, edifices that you think of when you think of a museum, what's a structure that could be democratic?

What's a structure that could be egalitarian, that people wouldn't be intimidated by?

So, I thought why not a museum in a kiosk?

You see a kiosk on every street corner.

Kiosk is a hairdresser.

It's a barber shop.

It's a, um -- Everything.

So, one of the things of the mobile museum is also going into every region and asking people in the region, "What is your cultural heritage?

What has been passed down over time?

What is of value to you?

What are the histories that you want to pass on?"

And so that, by the end of this tour that we're doing, we will have, like, you know, this abstract kaleidoscopic portrait of the country... -Right.

-...which is still just a beginning, you know?

Like, it'll be hopefully full in its own way, but it will still be only a beginning.

-And now it's up to the capital city of Accra.

This is Kwame Aidoo.

He writes for the online magazine Culture Trip about all things Ghanaian, with a special focus on art and culture.

He's also a published poet, has won awards in Europe for his children's books.

He has a community library for the children in his neighborhood.

He has a pop-up retail shop.

And he is a hip-hop artist with three albums out.

-[ Singing in native dialect ] -Much of the focus of his music is all about environmental and political issues.

We get to hang out with him and his friend Drum Nation, one of the top sound engineers in Ghana.

-If you know highlife, it's our contemporary music, which is based on the polyrhythms of traditional music... -Oh, okay.

Yeah, got you.

-...which was popularized by E.T.

Mensah from the 1950s and then taken over by Ebo Taylor and Alhaji K. Frimpong, those who had decades of amazing music.

We pick from that music and then that whole radical approach.

We sample those records, and then we put in some poetic approach to it.

-Yeah.

-Our inclinations to hip-hop.

-[ Singing in native dialect ] ♪♪ -I was actually in the studio when he brought this folder full of highlife music in.

-Oh, yeah.

-He was like, "Yo, bro.

Check this out.

-Uh-huh.

-Let's do something with this."

I just take a song.

I drop it.

I listen to it back, forth, back, forth, for like five times.

-Yeah.

-I pick the best parts, and I just create a beat out of it.

In five minutes, right?

-Yes.

-In the five to ten minutes, the beat is done, and he just hops behind the mic and... -And knocks it out?

-Yes.

-Do you really?

-Yes.

-In one -- one quick -- -Yes.

-Just go.

-[ Laughs ] -[ Singing in native dialect ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -Both of you, you seem to have enough -- that combination of confidence and self-critical...ness.

So you're not -- you're not satis-- you're not satisfied, so you keep pushing, you keep pushing, but you're confident in the idea that you can get there, right?

-True.

-Because you need both.

-Yeah.

-To me, the idea of getting there is actually -- Sometimes it's upside down.

There's something called Sankofa, which means go back and take.

Like, that whole idea of we need to leave here and then be big somewhere.

-Oh, yeah.

-It's actually sometimes backwards.

That whole idea of "getting to the top" may be a Westernized approach on success, but "go back and take" is knowing yourself, that whole thing with identity.

When you know yourself and then you realize that we didn't come from poverty, but poverty is a whole idea which was sold to us.

Then you realize that you are already rich.

But our destination may not be the Westernized approach of development, but it could be the African -- the return to the roots.

-You know, besides yourself, a few of the other artists.

They're all -- All of you guys are involved with using recycled, reclaimed, repurposed stuff.

-Yes.

Yeah.

-Which I'm still -- I mean, it's such a -- such a method here.

-We use it in our art to speak to our pain, to speak to our dilapidation, to speak to our decay.

But also it turns out to be something beautiful.

There's one track of mine where I'm speaking to plastic waste, and you can see me submerged in a whole river of plastic.

[ Singing in native dialect ] ♪♪ Like, just being swallowed up in all this junk.

So it's a global issue.

It's not just Ghana.

But then, in our own small way, to speak about this 'cause we know how the Internet also works, to carry the message across.

We know our art may not change the world, but it may change individuals or impart some knowledge into individuals to look at waste differently.

[ Indistinct conversations ] -Kwame takes us to the fishing village of Jamestown, tucked below the ocean bluffs of Accra, to experience firsthand the effect waste is having on traditional life here.

And you see all the plastic and stuff just embedded into the ground and the sand, and this is so much of what the artists that we're meeting with are talking about and using in their art.

[ Indistinct conversations ] We're heading out to ocean on one of these traditional Ghanaian boats, getting a taste of this local, hard, hard lifestyle, a lifestyle that's kind of under threat with overfishing and climate change.

And you can see plastic bags floating around in the water all over the place.

[ Boat motor whirring ] -[ Speaking indistinctly ] -So, they put the net out, made the full circle, and now they're tightening it up to bring in all the fish that are trapped in the middle.

Then they haul it all up, back onto the boat.

It's a hell of a lot of work.

[ Fishermen singing in native dialect ] [ Singing continues ] [ Singing continues ] Didn't realize I got some of this stuff going on.

Hands get wet, and that hemp rope, and it's just -- First time doing this, it just sliced open my fingers.

But you gotta keep going, right?

You gotta get in the fishing nets.

[ Fishermen singing ] And, of course, the issue of waste doesn't stop at the shore.

-Like, right here, you can see we are catching black polyethylene bags and all that.

So you realize there's -- Even away from the shore, there's the same problem of plastic waste that is threatening.

-But in the face of dwindling fish and pollution, yet they still come out with hope to catch.

-With hope to catch a handful of fish.

Yeah.

[ Singing continues ] [ Tool whirring ] -This is Nana Anoff, and he's a self-taught welder and sculptor.

All of his work is made out of salvaged materials, the medium itself becoming the overarching message in all of his pieces -- addressing the problems of waste.

He has exhibited all around the world and has won awards for his work, tackling the issues of social justice, labor, and women's rights.

Where do you find stuff?

Do you go to, like, junkyards?

-Yes, I go to junkyards.

And now most -- Accra has a very vibrant metal and aluminum collecting.

-Oh, it does?

-Yes.

The young guys on trolleys, you see them pull them.

-Oh.

-So, they beat me to it.

So I have a few arrangements with some of them.

When they find something interesting, they bring it to me, and then I can give them -- Either we do barter.

I give them something in weight or I pay them for it.

-Yeah.

Yeah.

-Yeah.

The fish, I call it "Breaking Free."

And water forms like 70% of the Earth.

And so what we are doing to the ocean, it's -- You kill 70, you've killed yourself.

-So, you know we just came from -- -The sea.

-Which is why I'm wet from here down.

So, we were out with these fishermen on their boat and putting out the line.

-And you're catching plastic bags.

-We're catching plastic, yeah.

But yet they still go out and fish.

-They have no choice.

-Yeah.

Well, sorry.

We -- I sidetracked us.

But this, stay on it 'cause I -- This is awesome.

I love the typewriter, all these different elements.

-And most of the time, I like, you know, when I have that true -- to show freedom.

-An elephant?

-I call them "Matriarch."

Most of my work is to highlight the African woman.

They have little, but they are able to achieve much.

So, I was thinking that elephants trust the women, and so they are trusted with the history, the trails, where the water -- in severe drought, which water holes are going to be -- produce water.

They lead the pack, and they sustain the pack.

So, I was thinking that most probably -- You know, the women in Africa do all the work.

We should trust our mothers who -- to take up the reins of governance.

That's my political piece, which the men are not going to be happy with.

-Who cares?

Who cares?

-[ Laughing ] So, anyway...

So, this is a sad story of some of the women in some of our prison cells with the most flimsy of injustice and have been thrown away the keys have been locked.

-Oh, like they get thrown in jail and that's the end.

-Yes.

Yes.

So, I call this the "Condemned Cell."

People with potential, people with a whole lot to give.

-Mm-hmm.

-But they've been locked up.

-They get locked in here.

-And keys thrown away.

This is something that will bring you joy.

Some music.

-It is a little Bob Marley.

-Yeah, it is.

-Yes!

All right!

-So, somebody on a string instrument, playing music.

-How long you been doing this?

-Maybe 12, 13 years.

But I've been as an artist for like 20 years.

-What'd you do before sculp-- Oh, you were a painter.

-Yeah, watercolor paintings.

Like seven, eight years, yeah.

I wanted a sign for people to come in, and I couldn't afford, so I said let me make one.

Back then -- -Oh, like, the sign that we saw across the street there is one of your sculptures.

-Yes, and then afterwards, the people were coming in and then walk right out.

They said, "We came in to see sculptures, not paintings."

So, after three or four people had walked out, I said, "Wait a second.

I need to -- I need to start doing something or change my sign."

-Yeah.

[ Laughs ] -[ Laughs ] -This is Serge Attukwei Clottey.

He started out as a painter like his father but followed his instincts and quickly branched off into several different directions -- painting, performance art, and what he's best known for, using old plastic jerrycans and turning them into brightly colored tapestries.

Much of his work focuses on migration and the effect it has on people as seen through objects, exploring the different roles an object takes on throughout a lifetime.

[ Indistinct conversations ] Serge.

-Hello.

-Nice to meet you in person.

-Nice to meet you.

Welcome.

-How do I get over to you?

Can I walk?

-Yeah, feel free to walk.

-You're walking on your art?

-It's easy, you know.

-I know it's easy.

The walking part isn't the problem.

It feels wrong, man.

-Yeah, it's part of the process.

-It's nice to meet you, man.

-Nice to meet you.

Yeah, good to meet you.

-Absolutely.

Thanks for doing this.

-Yeah, a pleasure.

-Yeah.

This is great.

-Yeah.

This is the studio space, and it's actually a family compound.

-It's a family compound?

-Yeah, it's a family compound that I use as a studio space.

-Oh, okay.

-So, I moved here a couple of years ago because my dad lived here, my grandfather also lived here.

So,it's like a generational line where, you know, every generation got to experience the space.

And for me, it's very critical to my practice as an artist.

And all these were influenced by European settling on the coast, you know, the influence of power, of exchange, trade were influenced by European on the coast.

Through this process as an artist and looking at environment as well as the political system, you know, how objects change in form and value after it's been displaced.

-Right.

-Yeah.

Yeah.

-Well, which ends up being -- I mean, that's right at the heart of what I'm finding this episode is all about -- what happens to the discarded thing.

-Exactly.

-And how does it get reinvented instead of just left?

-Right.

This particular pattern is reference to the fishing nets because fishing is part of our tradition as a Ga tribe.

Together with my assistants, you know, we are interested in expanding this narrative through the patterns in which we create.

So, we scout for objects.

We look around.

We travel around.

And we have people that we trade with.

So, people bring broken gallons, and we buy from them, you know?

So that also helps the community.

-Yeah.

-People use them for chairs.

People use them for beds, you know, put them together and lie on them.

You know, it's --- -Oh, you do mean beds.

So they'll go, like, collect a bunch of them just to make a platform or something.

-Yeah, yeah.

You know, one -- You can also sit on one.

You know, some homeless, when they have visitors, they just offer them a gallon and they sit on it.

-Oh, really?

-Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, it's very interesting how people relate to their objects.

-Where are the jerrycans made?

-They come from different parts of the world.

-Really?

-Originally, they were used to transport cooking oil.

-They come from Europe filled, and then they go out into various areas around the country.

-Yeah.

Exactly.

-And they're used for all these other things... -Right.

Yeah.

-...and then find their way into your hands.

-Yeah, in my hands.

-Yeah.

-And then I manipulate a little bit, you know?

-A little bit, yeah.

-A little bit.

-Just a little bit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

-Just a little bit.

-There's another big element to this art, and it's the labor, the hands, the work that's going into it.

If you look at this, I mean, it's boiling-hot here.

I'm soaked, and I'm just standing here talking to a camera.

They're working on this day in, day out, working with an angle grinder.

Stuff's flying in your face and sticking in your sweat.

And then they're tying, you know, this copper wire piece by piece, twine it all together.

And it's the whole community.

They're all from this little La neighborhood.

So they get their hands in this.

They're part of major pieces of art that then go out and are in installations all around the world.

-And with this work, I give them the freedom to express -- -That was my next question.

-Yeah.

-So, they -- It's these guys that get to choose, "Hey, I'm gonna use this side instead of the other side."

-Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's more like a collaboration, you know, with my guys.

Not just doing exactly what I want, but also, you know, they've spent time with the work.

They understand the materials.

And then so I allow them to also express themselves.

-Everyone has their own kind of thumbprint.

-Yeah, so we'll have, like, different hands working on one piece, so, it's just, you know -- The patterns, the technique varies, you know?

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

-I love that idea of it being made by the community and being able to be appreciated by the community.

-Right.

Absolutely.

And we do a lot of public installations around the community.

We install the work on buildings and all that because we want the work to be more visible to the people in the community because they are part of the process.

So whenever I have a show abroad, I try as much as possible to install the work outside for a couple of days or a couple of hours where kids come, people come by to visit, take photos and all that, you know, so they become part of the work.

-And his work is getting out all around the world, from Asia to Europe to the United States.

He has a piece in the Facebook headquarters, right?

-Headquarters, yeah.

-A huge piece hanging on, like, a bit atrium wall or something.

-Yeah, like, three stories.

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

Yeah.

-That's a big deal.

To me, it seems like a big deal.

-It is.

It is.

-We head over to a little bar that Serge owns with a few of his friends to continue our discussion.

I always think of art as, you know, having its first two main layers as -- The first one is its visual impact, right?

I mean, you've got to look at it and find it interesting.

But then the second one is the message or what it's trying to inspire.

-Exactly.

Right.

Yeah.

-And you, at least to us, and clearly to a lot of other people, you have both, right?

-Yeah.

-It's visually interesting, and then it has that message with it.

But, frankly, your art has a whole bunch of layers beneath that.

But there are struggles that come with being an artist at Serge's level, and that gets us right back to identity.

-You know, African artist, African art, you know, all these things really box African art in a different way.

You know, art is supposed to be global.

And the fact that artists come from Africa doesn't make that whatever the artists create is African art, you know?

-Yeah.

A residency at Rice University's Moody Center for the Performing Arts in Texas helped push his work onto that global stage, bringing his ideas of migration to the United States, a country with its own struggles in that area.

It also moved him into working in a completely new medium.

-My residency with the Rice University gave me a very strong, decisive idea about migration.

For me, the chairs represent power.

And...they are broken.

They represent unstable power.

So every chair has a character of history and power.

And then I use shoes, as well, because shoes -- To be able to experience someone's life, you have to step in the person's shoes, you know?

So I use shoes as a symbol of migration.

I did a collaboration with some students from the Rice.

They were dressed in very nice, fancy clothes, with a glass of wine.

-The students?

-The students, yeah.

So they were also within the space, you know, walking around.

But I was just cleaning, you know, with suspenders.

-Oh.

Yeah.

And the mop.

Cleaning and sweating.

I was trying to create a conversation about how migrants contribute a lot to all those destinations.

Yeah, so, for me, it's one of the major performances that I find very important because, you know, my first time actually installing such work.

I think that it was good.

Growing up, I thought art was just fun, you know?

I paint and -- But I realized that it's more of a responsibility.

I have so much to do, so much to talk about.

-Yeah.

-How do I execute that visually for people to understand?

-Yeah.

-That is my hustle as an artist, is to be able to make people understand.

Art, for me, is very haunting.

I think about art 24 hours, even in my sleep.

With friends, hanging out with friends, I'm still thinking.

-Still thinking about art.

-Yeah.

-Anywhere, I'm still -- -You can't shut that thing off.

-No.

-Yeah.

-No.

It's -- So, sometimes it scares me, you know, but I believe that it's -- It's just what it is.

I can't -- I can't stop it.

-Yeah, how are you gonna stop the river, right?

-Right.

Yeah.

-Is it exciting?

I mean, I know it's a lot of work, but it's -- -It's exciting, but it's also scary, you know?

But I think that I just have to be focused as much as I can and make sure I don't get carried away by -- You know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

-I know what you mean.

-Yeah, I'm -- I have to be myself.

[Group singing in native dialect] -Art has to have some sort of visceral effect on the viewer.

Without that initial hook, they just walk on by, stop listening, stop watching.

But what's also important to most artists is, what are you gonna do with that person's attention once you've drawn them in?

The artists here in Ghana take full advantage of that rare moment in time when they have the viewer's undivided attention on their work, tackling big issues, issues that not only affect Ghana, but people around the world.

[Singing continues] ♪♪ -Gustavus Adolphus College equips students to lead purposeful lives and act on the great challenges of our time.

Gustavus -- make your life count.

-Over a billion people live with preventable blindness.

See International partners with volunteer doctors to provide sight-restoring surgeries in underserved communities around the world.

-This organization is united in one mission -- to restore sight to the blind.

-They purify the air I breathe and the water I drink... keep me and the planet cool... and give me a career I love.

Trees -- when we take care of them, they take care of us.

-We all seem different in our own ways because different reflects who you are, who you want to be.

The Northern Territory -- different in every sense.