Art & Culture

Past an A-Board that reads ‘Accra Redefined’ and up the wooden stairs of an old, somewhat ramshackle 1915 building in Usshertown, two buildings down from the Fort, is a space that is quietly changing lives. At the top of the stairs, the cooling breeze blows through the many wide open windows around the one-roomed gallery. Through the rear window, the Gulf of Guinea, blue and sparkling, darkens to azure on the horizon. Fishing boats bob in the water, a reminder of the industry that still powers the oldest part of Accra. Inside, an exhibition researched by historian Nat Amarteifio, charts the 450-year history of Jamestown: the slave forts, the heady late 1800s alive with department stores and music clubs, the decline of the area starting in the 1920s as the port moved east, the war, independence, and the challenges of 21st century West Africa… it’s a compelling story and one lived out by the residents today in Jamestown.  So what exactly is ArchiAfrika Design & Architecture Gallery? Its genesis was a dream, a philosophy, an idea of how design and architecture, if intelligently implemented, can make a real and lasting impression on the world, on a city, on a neighbourhood. Its chief patron and the driving force is architect Joe Addo who has worked across the world, including a 16-year spell in Los Angeles.  “I got involved with the advocacy of architecture; how we use architecture to get involved with the local community. There was very little discourse about this and I wanted

Ama Asantewa Diaka is the CEO of fashion brand, Alikoto Clothing, and greeting card company, Yobbings. She also heads up Love Rock, an NGO aiming to assist youth in becoming active members of their communities. However, it’s her spoken word poetry she’s most well known for. Going by the stage name Poetra Asantewa, she has performed at numerous national and international events in Accra, and is featured in Sandra Krampelhuber’s film “Accra Power”, which was screened at this year’s Chale Wote Street Art Festival.   Tash Morgan-Etty caught up with Poetra after the screening to find out more about her thoughts on the film, and how Accra influences her work. You were featured in “Accra Power” where the filmmaker used you as one of the film’s narrators. How did you get involved, and how do you feel about the outcome of the film? When Sandra came to Ghana last year she approached me and showed me her work “100% Dakar”, which documents artists in Dakar and their work. She said that when she got here she thought it would be a good idea to have a theme like “power” or “Dumsor”, and that was a strange coincidence because the theme for our performance last year was “power”. So, it kind of fused perfectly with what she wanted to do. I asked her about the artists in the film, because I wanted to be sure there was going to be a gender balance in the film. She said that there was a boxer, a dancer, etc. I was quite pleased that. And, so, we did a couple of shoots. I saw the final product

Is now the perfect time to invest in Ghanaian art? 

All writers have their specialities. Dr Kwei Quartey deals in mysteries, and perhaps the biggest one of all is how a medical practitioner finds the time to write best-selling crime fiction. The Ghana-born California resident, a full-time doctor, has just released the third in his series of Inspector Darko Dawson mystery novels. Titled Murder At Cape Three Points, it sees the detective delving into a controversial but topical area: something the blurb describes as the “greed and corruption of Ghana’s brand new oil industry”.  If you’ve not yet come across Inspector Darko Dawson, here’s a brief introduction. He’s a CID detective in Accra. He has a weakness for marijuana, an anger management problem and a son with a congenital heart defect. He also has a mean eye for crime-solving. In short, he’s the kind of complex central character that every successful detective novel needs. So much so, in fact, that the first Darko Dawson novel, Wife of the Gods, made the Los Angeles Times bestseller list. The second and third in the series have both drawn positive reviews too.  And despite the super-human time management involved in juggling crime-writing and medicine (he gets up very early, apparently), it appears there’s actually a natural symbiosis between the two disciplines. “Oh, sure,” Quartey says, speaking to Time Out Accra from his home in Pasadena. “The detection that you’re doing in medicine is very similar to the work a police detective would do. When you have a patient come

An inside look at Accra's iconic fantasy coffin art - as practised by the Kane Kwei Carpentry Workshop