Mondays at Beinecke: Kwame Akoto-Bamfo

Zoom webinar registration: https://bit.ly/3sjURYz
A presentation of survivor’s semiotics with acclaimed artist Kwame Akoto-Bamfo, founding father of the Nkyinkyim Museum in Nuhalenya Ada, Ghana (https://ancestorprojectgh.com). He notes, “The phrase ‘Nkyinkyim’ is each an adinkra image and a proverb. It immediately pertains to the travels made by our ancestors and in addition their journeys from the place they migrated from. It additionally refers back to the bodily form of the artwork set up which goes to be in twists and turns.”
Akoto-Bamfo’s Nkyinkyim Set up stands on the entrance of the Nationwide Memorial for Peace and Justice (https://nyti.ms/2xHxn51) in Montgomery, Alabama, opened in 2018 by the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), the primary memorial devoted to the legacy of enslaved black folks, folks terrorized by lynching, African Individuals humiliated by racial segregation and Jim Crow, and folks of coloration burdened with up to date presumptions of guilt and police violence. In 2021, Akoto-Bamfo’s Clean Slate Monument (https://blankslatemonument.com) toured all through the U.S., from Louisville, to the the King Middle in Atlanta, amongst different stops.
Akoto-Bamfo received the 2015 Kuenyehia Artwork Prize, Ghana’s prime prize for up to date artwork. He’s a graduate of KNUST in Kumasi, Ghana. He final visited and spoke at Beinecke Library on Martin Luther King Day 2020, one in all our final main on-site occasions earlier than the pandemic. We’re honored by his return, just about, to affix us in 2022 from Ghana and delighted to have the ability to attain an excellent bigger viewers on-line this yr. Extra on Akoto-Bamfo and his work:
*Monument Lab, 2021: “Constructing Restorative Justice Throughout the African Diaspora” https://bit.ly/3yI1hlf
*EJI, 2019: “Nkyinkyim Sculpture on the Nationwide Memorial for Peace and Justice https://bit.ly/3GWIsxH
*BBC, 2019: “You See the Face of Our Ancestors” https://bbc.in/3yGrW1O
*The Root, 2018: “Lynching Memorial: Ghanaian Artist Hopes Sculpture Captures Shared Ache Between African Individuals and the Motherland” https://bit.ly/3p8N9OH