British Pavillion Artist John Akomfrah Uses Water and Sound to Synthesize Big Ideas
The Ghana-born, 66-year-old artist once self-identified as an outsider. Now he’s on the inside—and he’s trying to invite everyone else in too.
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The Ghana-born, 66-year-old artist once self-identified as an outsider. Now he’s on the inside—and he’s trying to invite everyone else in too.
As he prepares to represent Britain at the Venice Biennale, Akomfrah talks about fleeing Ghana aged nine, the Rwanda fiasco, and creating images that shift the dial
This exhibition, “A Space of Empathy,” featured three of his works—The Unfinished Conversation, 2012; Vertigo Sea, 2015; and Becoming Wind, 2023—accompanied by a reading room with books reflecting the libraries of the artist and the curator, Julia Grosse.
John Akomfrah's highly-anticipated commission for the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale promises to be a poignant exploration of memory...
From a pregnant woman tossed from a slave ship to reworkings of Titian and Da Vinci featuring black faces, this show aims to redress the RA’s biased version of art history – but it could all have been more daring