Owusu-Ankomah: "A true artist must bear witness to the truth": Interview by Antonella Pisilli, 13 April 2011

Recorded in April 2011, this conversation with the Ghanaian painter Owusu-Ankomah moves from the Adinkra symbols of his ancestors to the crop circles that shaped his Microcron cycle, taking in Michelangelo, the Emporio Armani RED collaboration and a pointed reassessment of how contemporary African art was first brought to the Western market.

The interview is reproduced in full from the original transcript. The artist's remarks reflect his position in 2011 and are published as recorded.

How does your work arise?

My work at the moment develops out of concern, out of thoughts about our existence, questions about our past, present and future.

Where do we come from? What are we doing here? Where are we going? Does death really exist? What is our purpose in this life? Who are we? Are we on the right track in our development as a people, or are we going over the precipice as a species, should we continue to ravage and misuse the earth, ignoring all warnings that fossil fuels and atomic energy are destroying the earth's biosphere and endangering our evolution?

I suppose these great, fundamental questions are answerable, so I research, seeking answers. And when I have found them, I integrate and embed them in my work. And so it happens that a finished painting vibrates with the energy of truth.

I've noticed the presence of a strong influence made of symbols belonging to various cultures that comes through in your work. What do they tell? Are there hidden allegories or metaphors?

I have good news. Symbols have a distinctive meaning. When I use symbols in my work, they serve as a vessel of positivity, in their meaning and in their message. Even symbols that carry a connotation of negativity are given new, positive energy.

When I use symbols from other cultures, I use them to tell the story of our oneness: that we are one people, "Humanity," on planet Earth. That the total number of minds in the universe is one. On the plane of the absolute, the centre point of consciousness is the unbounded field of mind. There is one Great Being shining through the eyes of all people.

That is the good news: we never die. We have forever been and will forever be. Our present existence is a transitional stopover on our journey towards the perfection of our souls. We, the present humans on Earth, are about to make a quantum leap in our evolutionary development as a species, and we are here to usher in a new golden age of technological development, advancement and abundance. We have nothing to fear. Scarcity, as we have always known it, does not really exist; it is a lie. Creation and reality are full of abundance.

These ideas, visions and allegories (altruistic, compassionate and more) I have integrated, compressed and converged into one absolute symbol which illustrates a universe of universes, the eternal, infinite cosmological reality I call the Microcron.

You're fascinated by the Renaissance. Who are your favourite artists?

Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Michelangelo are my favourites. But Michelangelo, for me, is the epiphany of the Renaissance. Was he not called "The Divine"? His works are a demonstration of physical and spiritual power. He expressed himself in parallel across painting, sculpture, architecture and poetry, enlivening all these disciplines with the fire of his strength and his breathtaking, overwhelming ideal. I was fascinated by him since childhood, and I still admire him immensely.

In 1999, the famous collector Jean Pigozzi, together with curator André Magnin, introduced contemporary African art to the international market. Which African artists do you find most interesting, and closest to your own artistic and cultural background?

Let me make a correction here. Pigozzi and Magnin¹ did not "discover" contemporary African art and bring it to the international market. Sipping the foam off a glass of beer does not mean you have drunk the beer. Contemporary African art has yet to be discovered in its full power and diversity, and presented not only to the international art market but to the world as a whole.

These people, and others like them, started out collecting art that was likely to be compared to the so-called "primitive," naive and street art found in Africa. My impression at the time (and I confronted Magnin himself on this in Dakar in 1996) was that they did not want to engage with the educated, intellectual, visionary artists of the continent. Art goes beyond the capacity of a collectable object. Art encompasses the collective consciousness of a people, and more.

For my part, I'm glad they didn't see it differently back then. And if they see it now at all, they should hurry to close the gap, which I doubt they can, a gap with the potential to grow ever wider.

We are entering an age of awakened consciousness, in which humanity will be enlightened and informed across all disciplines: a time when the wishes and desires of the people cannot be ignored, when sarcasm and irony will not be tolerated, an age in which positivity is paramount, a time when the message of hope for the redemption and exaltation of the human spirit is cherished.

These are the times when people will choose and cherish inspiring art. So, should any collector think they can present the people with whatever art they please in the coming decades, that individual should think twice and shift their priorities in their art-collecting strategy.

Contemporary African art is widely considered by Western critics to be stereotyped. The African artist is not seen as the owner of his own identity, but is instead classified by the place he comes from, keeping African art "anonymous," as Olu Oguibe has claimed, isolating the artist outside contemporary boundaries. Do you think anything has changed in the last few years?

Of course something has changed, and is still changing. Where is Africa, and where is Europe? The human mind is its imagination, and imagination cannot be demarcated, it has no bounds. The African artist, with his vivid imagination, threatens to outdo his Western counterpart in producing authentic works of art. She or he is more experimental (if we are talking about a good artist), mixing transcontinental elements of information with the pre-colonial ancestral cultural heritage of his people, achieving a high aesthetic authenticity, thus possessing the capacity to retrieve the artistic elements of figuration and abstraction from which modern European art profited so vastly. In this way, the African artist reclaims his identity.

You've lived in Germany for many years and are considered a "Diaspora" African artist (I know well you won't fit that picture) but to what degree do your African roots reflect in your work?

Firstly, I've slowly come to feel that the word "Diaspora" no longer fits artists working outside Africa. I can speak for myself: living in Europe has made me more conscious of my African roots than if I had stayed in Ghana. Where is Europe, and where is Africa? We live in times when cultural exchange happens at a rapid pace, when the sharing of ideas day to day enables artists separated by continents and oceans to work together on various projects. Where is Africa, and where is Europe, are we not in one world?

Some artists living in Africa are far more versed in Western art history, classical modern art and contemporary Western art than most art critics and art historians I have come across. One such artist is Rikki Wemega-Kwawu, an artist, writer and lecturer any major university in the West would be proud to have as a professor.

Supposedly, diasporan artists look to their motherland, Africa, for inspiration. I have always looked to the art of my ancestors for inspiration, in particular the Adinkra symbols, incorporating them with crop circles, which has given me an encounter with higher intelligences: the perception of the language of universal communication, transference of thought and universal consciousness.

How did your collaboration with Giorgio Armani begin?

When Giorgio Armani was invited by Bono and Bobby Shriver to join forces through (PRODUCT)RED, which was set up to engage the private sector in the fight against AIDS in Africa by channelling funds from the sale of RED products directly to the Global Fund, he set out to design his first collection of Emporio Armani RED products and wanted to create a tangible, personal connection with Africa. So he searched, and discovered that there was no better way than to incorporate my work, which he felt captured the rich history, culture and strength of the great continent of Africa.

So he invited me to Milan, where we met for the first time. The next time I went to Milan, I had a file full of newly designed symbols, which he liked, all except one, which resembled the symbol of a sect. A few months later, production began. The rest is history.

What advice would you give a young, talented African artist who wants to succeed internationally?

Let me rephrase that: not succeed, but truly succeed. To truly succeed as an artist is to have authentic substance and a sustainable message that will stand the test of time, because success is not measured only within your lifetime, but for posterity.

A true artist must bear witness to the truth, a truth that helps humanity in its development as a species. An artist must be a healthy, constructive critic of global society, so as to direct and guide it in the right way it should go. His or her art must be enlightening and uplifting. It must impact the collective consciousness of society, giving people solace and hope.

This, for me, is a true artist who has succeeded in achieving his or her goal: the goal of leaving footprints on the sands of time, winning the victory, however small, for humanity.

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¹ In the original transcript the name appears as "Magne." This refers to André Magnin, the curator mentioned earlier in the interview. ↩

Interview conducted by Antonella Pisilli. First recorded 13 April 2011.