In October 2018, La Maison was proud to host a third exhibition by the Beyond Collective, founded in 2013 to highlight creative talent in Accra, Ghana.
Alongside new talent, several of the founding collective members contributed to Make Be as an opportunity to focus on the resourcefulness of living in a place that can bring magic and mayhem in the switch of a second.
Curator Rania Odaymat commented: "The most significant obstacles we face as creatives are personal, while the biggest battles we wage are intimate. In contemplation of this, it made sense to turn our lens, brushes, pens and craft inwards for reflection."
Artists and Works Shown
One of the country’s best loved artists, Nana Anoff, delighted with Flight #7, a 8.5m high vintage Challenger 600 aeroplane. The self-taught artist illustrates empowerment and premonitions of progress and, development in Ghana and this plane serves as a symbol of progression and movement. With it, Nana interrogates ‘how do you push forward and excel?’ and asks ‘are we where we want to be?’
Rania Odaymat’s Self-Ish is a mixed media installation comprising of seven components. Using iPhone photography and phone editing apps as her primary medium, each ‘cell artwork’ is a ‘mirror reflection’, or translation of self into the predominant language of our times:‘cell speak’.
Randa Jebeile’s Picking Up the Pieces is the debut art project by the mosaic artist and graphic designer interrogating ‘what makes us who we become?’. Each panel is a tangent of her personal journey. It is searingly honest, yet playful as it comments on the duality of human nature.
Poetra Asantewa’s House Portrait is an autobiographical installation featuring an estate of 30 houses, beautifully highlighting significant moments in her life through poetry.
Collaborative project between Francis Kokoroko & Rania Odaymat produced Remember Me, a collection of photographs made with 12 women at the Nsawam Prison. What was more impactful than the pictures was the process. Francis reflects: ‘I knew I couldn’t give them anything apart from pushing their creativity and imagination’.
Nii Obodai’s Objective Persona is an experimental enquiry into the function and process of developing instant passport photographs. By playing with the conventional use of passport photographs as an internationally accept- ed format for self-identity, Nii extracts his self-portraits from the negative throwaway of the instant film.
Eric Gyamfi's photographic diary, A Certain Bed, reveals his experience of leaving home. Using a composite of black and white self-portraits, post-it notes, journals and collaged images, he documents a tumultuous year of uncertainty, floating and restlessness.
Francis Kokoroko’s Yesu Kristo emerged from Francis’ introspection of his faith. Forged from long-running thoughts, the photographer has created a re-edit of Christ to comment on the performance of Christianity as a marker of identity.
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