KWAME AKOTO-BAMFO

Kwame Akoto-Bamfo (b. 1983) is a Ghanaian multidisciplinary artist based in Nuhale, Ada. He earned his BFA in Painting and Sculpture at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. He also received his MFA in sculpture from the same University. Kwame has consulted for reputable organizations, academic institutions and various government officials. He lectured briefly at Radford University before pursuing his creative career full-time. Through sculpting, and multimedia studio practices he produces life-size sculptures, animation, illustrations and digital designs to educate his audience on the ills of colonialism, the negative impact of slavery and systemic racism in contemporary times. He takes inspiration from Akan symbols, sculptures and design elements as part of the visual language he employs in transmitting ancestral knowledge and preserving African heritage. As a creative interlocutor, his main goal is to facilitate mass education, healing and empowerment of Africans of the African race. His work is critical in bridging the gap between Africans on the continent and Africans in the diaspora. Kwame’s creative practice draws on African historical references to initiate serious dialogues around the African experience in pre-colonial and contemporary times. Kwame’s creative practice is mainly dedicated to promoting and preserving African heritage. He is well known for the Nkyinkyim installation and ancestor project. Nkyinkyim installation is an evolving museum which currently comprises over 3,500 sculptures spreading across 3 continents (Africa, Europe and America). An extension of Nkyinkyim forms part of the permanent Slave Monument installation at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. His interactive Blank Slate Monument has publicly toured major cities in America.

Currently stationed in a 100-acre prairie located in Nuhale, Ada, Nkyinkyim Installation is gradually expanding into the outdoor Museum collaborative efforts and communal creative building to produce 11,111 sculptures. The expansive installation consists of over 3,500 concrete and terracotta ancestral heads with facial expressions branded by the scorching iron of colonialism and horrors of African enslavement. Nkyinkyim Museum hopes to reconstruct, narrate and preserve Africa’s history and rich cultural heritage through research, creativity and community revitalization. With a history of exhibiting in public spaces rather than White cube galleries, Kwame’s creative practice is grounded in research to generate the most effective audience engagement.  Through such African-centred initiatives, Kwame is able to create a holistic experience that firmly reinforces collaborative, therapeutic and participatory approaches to art in indigenous African communities. His practice is ongoing activism, a lesson, an antidote, a realignment of a world disrupted and dismantled by moments in history that we should all seek to interrogate and reconstruct. Kwame has won prestigious awards including the Kuenyehia Prize for Contemporary Art (2015) and GUBA Award (2019) for the Most Influential Artist of the Year. In 2019 he launched Nkyinkyim-za, an art festival hosted at Nkyinkyim Museum in Ada, to promote African tradition and to also encourage creative collaborations and artist participation in Nkyinkyim installation.

Exhibition History