Nana Oforiatta Ayim | |
|---|---|
.jpg) August 2015,Chale Wote Street Art Festival | |
| Born | Nana Ofosuaa Oforiatta Ayim Ghana |
| Other names | Nana Oforiatta-Ayim |
| Citizenship | Ghanaian |
| Education | University of Bristol; SOAS University of London |
| Occupation(s) | Writer, art historian, filmmaker |
| Notable work | The God Child |
| Website | www |
Nana Oforiatta Ayim is aGhanaian writer, art historian and filmmaker.
Nana Ofosuaa Oforiatta Ayim was raised in Germany, England, and her ancestral homeland in Ghana. She studied Russian and Politics at theUniversity of Bristol and went on to work in the Department of Political Affairs at theUnited Nations in New York.[1] She completed her master's degree in African Art History atSOAS University of London.[2]
Oforiatta Ayim comes from a political family in Ghana, theOfori-Attas, whose power spans both the traditional and the modern. Her maternal grandfather was Nana SirOfori Atta I, the renowned king of Akyem Abuakwa who was hailed as theLouis XIV of Africa,[3] and her great-uncle wasJ. B. Danquah, the scholar and politician who gave Ghana its name and started the political party that brought about Independence.[4]
Her first novelThe God Child was published byBloomsbury Publishing in the UK in 2019, the US in 2020 and byPenguin Random House in Germany in 2021.[5][6] WriterAyesha Harruna Attah describes the book as an "expansive and contemplative debut, themes of art, history, literature, film, and legacy intermingle with Maya's coming-of-age.[7] In theNew York Times,Tope Folarin writes: "This is a story that is obsessed with stories; indeed, 'The God Child' could be described as a series of sharply drawn short fictions, each consequential on its own, each only glancingly connected to the others… As I read this book, with all its leaps in time and space, I sometimes had the sense that there was another narrative running just beneath the surface of the text, some alternate story that the characters I was reading about simultaneously inhabited… Kojo and Maya's migrations eventually lead them back to Ghana, where they hope to find material they need to complete their story, years in the making. A story that, like this one, will illuminate Ghana's history; a story that will coax something whole from the broken parts of their lives."[8] InThe Guardian,Sarah Ladipo Manyika writes: "To date, there are only a few works of fiction that explore the African experience within continental Europe and just a handful address the Afro-German experience, so Ayim's book is important in helping to fill this gap. As we hear Maya pondering Goethe's idea of Weltliteratur and reflecting on just how lacking world literature actually is, books such asThe God Child have the potential to enrich it and, inBerger's words, bring new ways of seeing."[9]
While researching for her master's degree in African Art History, she realised all the terms and concepts used to describe Ghanaian artistic expression were Western ones. Her research for indigenous concepts led her to theAyan, a form of telling history in Ghana; and theAfahye, a historical exhibition orGesamtkunstwerk model.[10] She began incorporating them in her writing on cultural narratives, histories, and institutions in Africa.[11] She speaks regularly on new models of knowledge and of museums, and devised a course on this for theArchitectural Association School of Architecture.[12][13][14][15][16][17][18]
In an interview with theFinancial Times,[19] Ayim said: "It sometimes feels like everything happens in the diaspora. That's important and it's part of who we are. But now we need to focus on evolving work within our continent." She is the founder of the ANO Institute of Arts & Knowledge in Accra,[20] and has said that "like a lot of people involved in creative work in Ghana and other parts of Africa, it feels like it's not just enough for us to produce, but that we have to provide the context and the paradigms for that production."[21]
To this end, she created a pan-African Cultural Encyclopaedia.[22][23][24][25][26]The New York Times reviewer writes: "The encyclopaedia will consist of an open-source internet platform for documenting past, present and future African arts and culture (starting with Ghana) and eventually will be published in 54 volumes, one for each country. An ambitious undertaking, the Cultural Encyclopaedia aims to change perceptions of the continent and help alleviate the frustration of African cultural producers concerned that their rich histories have been lost or forgotten over the decades because they lack good archives."[27]
Ayim has also created a new type ofmobile museum.[1][28][29][30] InThe Guardian, Charlotte Jansen writes: "Ayim said she started to reflect on the museum model in Africa while working at the British Museum. Struck by how differently African objects were encountered in display cabinets in the UK with how they were actively used in festivals back home, she began to think about how material culture could be preserved and presented in a way that was more in keeping with local traditions."[31] Ayim is using the research gathered through the mobile museum to help create a new kind of museum model for theGovernment of Ghana that, she writes inThe Art Newspaper, "honours and takes into account the many spirits of our communities, our environment, and our objects, both at home and those to be returned. A structure that will allow for narratives and exchange with, and across, other parts of the world, on equal terms".[32]
After developing the narratives for, and curating the first institutional shows of, several Ghanaian artists, includingJames Barnor,[33][34]Felicia Ansah Abban[35][36] andIbrahim Mahama,[21][37] she curated the much acclaimedGhana Freedom exhibition as Ghana's first ever Pavilion at the 2019Venice Biennale.[38] The pavilion was among the Biennale's most anticipated,[39] and multiple journalists named the pavilion as a "triumph" and highlight of the Biennale, particularly in tribute to its cultural underpinnings both in the country and the diaspora.[40][41][42]The Art Newspaper wrote that "a palpable sense of pride" permeated the pavilion.[43]Charlotte Higgins ofThe Guardian wrote that the pavilion marked a subtle shift in balance as African national pavilions begin to contest the historic dominance of European pavilions at the Biennale, a history intertwined with colonialism.[44]
Nana Oforiatta Ayim became a filmmaker after working with economist Thi Minh Ngo and filmmakerChris Marker on a new translation of his 1954 filmStatues Also Die.[45] Her films are a cross of fiction, travel essay, and documentary and have been shown at museums globally. These includeNowhere Else But Here atThe New Museum,[46]Tied and True at theTate Modern,[47][48][49]Jubilee at the Kunsthall Stavanger,[50][51] andAgbako at theLos Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).[52][53]
Oforiatta Ayim is the recipient of the 2015 Art & Technology Award from LACMA[54] and of the 2016 AIR Award, which "seeks to honour and celebrate extraordinary African artists who are committed to producing provocative, innovative and socially-engaging work".[55] She was named one of theApollo "40 under 40", as "one of the most talented and inspirational young people who are driving forward the art world today",[56] aQuartz Africa Innovator, for "finding new approaches and principles to tackle many of the intractable challenges faced on the continent",[57] one of 50 African Trailblazers byThe Africa Report,[58] one of 12 African women making history in 2016 and one of 100 women "building infrastructure, both literally and metaphorically, for future generations in Africa and in the Diaspora" in 2020 byOkayAfrica.[59][60] She was a Global South Visiting Fellow at theUniversity of Oxford,[61] and is a member of the university's Advisory Council.[62] She received the Ghana Innovation Award in 2020[63] and the Woman of The Year Award in Ghana in 2021.[64] In 2022, she was awarded theDan David Prize.[65]
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