The symposium can be followed live via the SCCA Tamale Instagram channel.
From 8 July to 1 October, artist Ibrahim Mahama covered the former Galeria Kaufhof building in Osnabrück city centre with fabric. The wrapping consisted of various materials: striped fabrics, garments collected in Ghana, known as batakaris, and jute sacks. The building wrapping was the first part of the research and exhibition project TRANSFER(S).
The second part of TRANSFER(S) will take place from 28 November to 1 December. The second part is a symposium [symposium is another word for a meeting or conference]. The symposium is entitled TRANSFER(S): From Osnabrück to Tamale. It takes place at the Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art (SCCA) and other institutions in Tamale, Ghana. [Institution is another word for facility. A museum is an institution. Or a concert hall].
There are various events at the symposium: Talks, lectures, workshops, exhibitions, performances [instead of performance you can also say stage art or action art] and live music. Scientists, weavers, musicians, artists and curators will be there to talk about TRANSFER(S).
TRANSFER(S) examines the many trade routes between Central Europe and West Africa, past and present. For a long time, Osnabrück was one of the most important regions in Westphalia where fabrics were produced. Among other things, Osnabrück was known for linen fabric. The fabric was produced in Osnabrück for a very long time. Among other things, this linen was used to make clothing for forced labourers on the plantations of the West Indies. [A plantation is a large farm with many fields. Things like rice, tobacco and tea are grown on plantations]. The linen fabric was also used as a means of exchange for prisoners from the coastal regions of Africa. We will talk about this in the symposium.
We ask: What are the consequences of this colonial trade in fabrics in the past and today? What influence did it have on education, religion, economy and culture in the coastal regions of Africa? [Colonialism means: Many countries in Europe used to think that their inhabitants were worth more than the inhabitants of other countries. For example, in countries on the continent of Africa. That’s why they have the right to conquer these countries, to oppress and murder the people. They have determined the politics in these countries. And they stole many things from these countries. Art, for example. Spices. Raw materials. Or drugs. The European countries believed: All this is their right. They could make the people in the colonies work for them as slaves. They have power over them].
At the symposium, we will also talk about the Peace of Westphalia. The Peace of Westphalia was signed 375 years ago in the city of Münster and Osnabrück. The Peace of Westphalia ended the 30-year war with two peace treaties. TRANSFER(S) took place to mark this anniversary. In the symposium, we ask: What does the Peace of Westphalia have to do with colonialism? Did the Peace of Westphalia bring peace to all people? Also beyond Europe?
You can find more information about TRANSFER(S) on the growing project website HERE. The results of the symposium will be summarised there.
You can take part in the talk by Prof. Klaus Weber and Dr Thorsten Heese on 30 November at 14:30 (CET) via the platform Zoom HERE.
Meeting ID: 880 1493 3895
Passcode: 363572
TRANSFER(S) is co-curated by Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh and Bettina Klein.
Lokale Partner: SCCA Tamale, Red Clay und Nkrumah Voli-Ni (alle drei Institutionen wurden von Ibrahim Mahama gegründet) und blaxTARLINES KUMASI.
Partaking scientists, weavers, musicians, artists and curators are:
is Professor of African and Gender Studies at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana. Her areas of interest include African knowledge systems (“decolonising” knowledge and practice), higher education, identity politics, gender relations, masculinity and popular culture. She describes herself as an activist scholar. Her work is characterised by her commitment to social justice. She is currently the Wangari Maathai Visiting Professor at the University of Kassel.
(PhD) is an artist, author, curator and educator. He lives and works in Tema/Accra/Kumasi in Ghana. In his multidisciplinary participatory installations and performative pseudo-rituals, Bernard Akoi-Jackson explores everyday interactions and gestures as remnants of colonial encounters, such as bureaucratic rituals, through movement and object-orientated situations, as well as a humorous inversion of language.
is a researcher, editor and curator based in Dakar and Berlin. She is the founder and artistic director of Archive, a non-profit organisation based in Berlin, Dakar and Milan. She is the publishing director of Archive Books and editor-in-chief of Archive Journal. Chiara Figone is Professor of Publishing and Art Publications at the Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti - NABA, Milan.
is a weaving artist in the field of textile design and practice. He is a lecturer at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology ( KNUST ) and other universities and teaches students traditional Ghanaian weaving, tapestry weaving and broadloom weaving. Isaac Gyasi combines traditional Ghanaian weaving (Kente, Kete, Fugu) and its local technologies with contemporary weaving technologies. In this way, he transfers lost and unknown Ghanaian cultural heritage into contemporary forms.
is co-director and curator for local and cultural history at the Museumsquartier Osnabrück. He is also a lecturer in museological didactics and museum education at the University of Osnabrück. His academic publications and editions deal with museology, historical didactics and the history of colonialism, migration and National Socialism. His latest publication proposes Glocal History as an exhibition concept and perspective for the decolonisation of historical museums and exhibitions.
is an artist and holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. In her multidisciplinary practice, she interweaves body, race, sexuality with fictional histories of objects with hybrid life forms. The result is a tentacular deconstruction of the female body, including her own, which becomes a site from which many conversations can be had. She won the coveted First Merit Award in the Barclays L’atelier Art Competition in South Africa and was awarded the Yaa Asantewaa Art Prize in 2022.
is an art historian, independent curator and author based in Berlin. She holds an M.A. in Art History and French Literature (Freie Universität Berlin). From 2013 to 2018 she was head of the Visual Arts section of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin programme. She was curator at the Centre Européen d’Actions Artistiques Contemporaines in Strasbourg, France (2009-2012) and lecturer at the weißensee kunsthochschule berlin (2011-2012). She has curated numerous exhibitions and projects in public space.
is a loose collective of musicians from Kumasi, Ghana. For Koliko, music is an egalitarian means of entertainment and for the soul that should be accessible to all, regardless of age, class, gender or background. Inspired by Afrobeat bands such as Osibisa and Ohia Bɛ Yɛ Ya by Kwame Yeboah, Koliko’s cosmopolitan sound draws on local highlife music, jazz, soul and calypso.
is an artist living and working in Accra, Kumasi and Tamale in Ghana. His politically driven practice explores themes such as the contradictions of economic globalisation, labour relations and the creation of inclusive, sustainable infrastructure in conditions of hopelessness. His work has been shown in numerous international exhibitions, including the 35th Bienal de São Paulo (2023), the Sharjah Biennial 15 (2023) and the 56th and 58th Biennale di Venezia (2015, 2019). Mahama is Artistic Director of the 35th Biennale of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana (2023-2024). He is the founder of SCCA Tamale, Red Clay and Nkrumah Volini - sister institutions that organise cultural, technical-scientific and artistic programmes in Tamale, Ghana.
is a curator and critic based in Kumasi, Ghana. He is a key member of the blaxTARLINES coalition. Ohene-Ayeh works in the fields of pedagogy, criticism, curating and art. He teaches at the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi. He is co-curator of TRANSFER(S) (2023), the 35th edition of the Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts with the Exit Frame Collective (2023-2024) and the 12th Biennale of African Photography (2019-2020), among others.
A collaborative work by Ghana-based artist Zohra Opoku and The Revival, a non-profit sustainable design organisation that educates and raises awareness with upcycled global textile waste. For Zohra Opoku, this collaboration is an extension of a series that seeks to uncover connections at the intersection of trade and textiles. Zohra Opoku’s ongoing series explores the tense relationship between second-hand imports to sub-Saharan Africa, the modern African textile industry and traditional African clothing. Together they present an immersive installation in which old patchwork-style textiles are shown in a traditionally inspired procession.
are co-directors of the Kunsthalle Osnabrück, one of the most important platforms for contemporary art in northern Germany, since 2020. As curators, they work with annual themes that aim to address thematic complexes in a sustainable and comprehensive way through new artistic productions by internationally renowned artists. The Kunsthalle Osnabrück’s process-based and interdisciplinary programmes address socio-politically relevant issues and place an explicit focus on the inclusion of social processes. With its experimental and sensory exhibitions, the Kunsthalle has become a place for discourse and conviviality.
is a curator, historian and head of public programming at the Museum am Rothenbaum - Kulturen und Künste der Welt (MARKK) in Hamburg. He is responsible for the experimental project space Zwischenraum - A Space Between and the project MARKK in Motion (2018-2023), which is part of the initiative of the Ethnological Collections of the German Federal Cultural Foundation. He has curated numerous interventions and public programmes. His interests range from urban history and public infrastructures to the intertwining of museum, archive and remembrance politics with contemporary art.
is an artist, intellectual, poet, mathematician and educator. He is Ghana’s key figure in non-proprietary art and co-founder of blaxTARLINES KUMASI. Prof. kąrî’kạchä seid’ōu is a key figure in the context of non-proprietary art in Ghana and co-founder of blaxTARLINES KUMASI. He is a mentor to a growing number of artists, curators and writers and has inspired an artistic revolution in Ghana with his practice. The theme of the 35th Ljubljana Biennale is closely aligned with his artistic and political ideas.
is a historian and Professor of European and Social History at the European University Viadrina (Frankfurt an der Oder). He completed his doctorate with a thesis on German merchants in the Atlantic trade of the 18th century. Weber’s research interests also include the labour and welfare regimes in modern Europe and the Atlantic world as well as the global connections of the early modern proto-industries of Central Europe. His text Linen, Silver, Slaves, and Coffee: A Spatial Approach to Central Europe’s Entanglements with the Atlantic Economy (2015) is one of the most important reference texts for this project.
