Accra, a new dawn for the art

Far from the bustle, bumper-to-bumper bus or cab riding, and the unforgiving traffic jam of Accra, Ghana’s capital city, artists are finding comfort in Nubuke, an art institution located in the city’s East Legon neighbourhood.  

Nested in a field of greens, Nubuke’s new extended two-storey building overlooks its original compound house premises, in the opposite direction. The storey building is a concrete structure and is partially raised on four rotated bored piles walls. The two buildings are separated by a central garden which has an Indian almond tree as its focus. The entire edifice is walled with bricks, decorated with a mural pattern that reminds you of traditional textile patterns like those of kente and fugu.  

For Odile Tevie, the co-founder and director of the Nubuke Foundation, the site was perfect for showing art work.  

‘At the end of 2008, we found this place. We started thinking that it was quite important to have a physical space in Accra and have regular programming.  And just also to put shape around our vision,’ she says.  

 ‘Light comes in from different parts of the building. We just closed up certain spaces to make it seamless to walk in and show work. By 2009, we had done the remodelling and opened the space up.’  

The new Nubuke building encapsulates the work that the foundation has set out to do. It gives flexibility for a talk, a screening or an exhibition to happen almost anywhere.  

‘For me, Nubuke is like an oasis in the city of Accra. We wanted to maintain the natural environment. The architects [ Baerbel Mueller and Juergen Strohmayer] were keen to get the two buildings to continue to embrace the tree, which is a focal point of all the work that we have done.  They wanted to maintain that.

She explains further: ‘Also, the plantation here. We have the green space there. And light coming in…and ventilation. All that was just a very simple design, really. We can have a screening inside or under the building. Even under the tree’.  

In Accra, the energy of the creative scene is infectious. You hear artists often throw out words like vibe and vim.  The city, in the last decade or so, has emerged as a global art centre with little or no public support. Neither did it emerge with an ecosystem that is associated with other art centres like Paris or New York.   

There are a few galleries and almost all of them are commercial. Artists lack institutional support and are often left to their own fate after years of training. Until recently, many of the artists were exclusively showing in high end hotels, embassies and homes of diplomats.  

After Ghana gained independence in 1957, the country’s first president Kwame Nkrumah had the vision of creating an African personality using art and culture. He recruited the best of Ghana’s first generation of modernist artists for nationalist assignments, a sub-genre that has become known as Nkrumahist art.    

The commissioned artists did murals and site-specific sculpts which expressed nationalist ideals. Under Nkrumah’s patronage, a national museum was established with the intention to ‘encourage the development of a historical sense among the people of Ghana.’   

But after Nkrumah’s overthrow, the art fell into disfavour. The national museum and other public facilities that held art were no more in use.  Public funding was cut. The art industry became an orphan.  

While traveling the world with her then husband Tutu Agyare, Tevie noticed that art and cultures of the other countries were highly accessible to the public. That was contrary to what she had observed in Ghana.  

In London where she resided, she had set up her own art gallery, Black Swan. So, the couple started having conversations on how they could make art accessible to the Ghanaian public.   

‘Before Nubuke became a tangible thing, it was an idea brewing in the minds of myself and my ex-husband. We used to talk a lot about Ghana. We love the country. We lived outside Ghana. Comparing  

Ghana to the countries that we visited, there was much about the people. The history and the culture were so vivid, and available, and accessible.’  

‘But in Ghana, we found that if you did not know the country, it was extremely difficult to tease out so much in the country. But we knew that there was so much here.’ 

Back in Accra, they found a willing partner in Kofi Setordji, an international artist who is based in Accra and was running Arthaus, a global residency for practising artists.  

‘At a point, we all decided that we shared the same passion, really. We felt that it was better to be able to work with somebody rather than working in isolation. It is a view that I still hold.’   

The three worked to establish Nubuke Foundation in 2006.  Nubuke in the Ewe language means ‘the breaking of a new dawn’.  Its purpose has been to promote, record and preserve art produced in Ghana. 

‘The early years of any organisation are very important. It determines whether you are going to sink or swim. We needed to swim. That’s how come we are here. If we don’t put in the work, we can’t reap it.’  

But that has come with its own set of struggles in terms of funding.  Even after returning to democratic rule in 1992, public funding for the art has not been forthcoming even though there has been a respite.  

 During his 2019 State of the Nation address to the parliament of Ghana, the president Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo announced a US$40 million World Bank grant for the tourism and creative arts sectors. Modalities for assessing the funds are, however, yet to be made available.  

 ‘It is the passion. I do not think that we could have remained standing if it was not for the passion. A lot of our efforts have gone into securing the foundation that we thought we needed. Sustainability is very key.’ 

‘For me it is not about going out there for money. It is about how we can generate our own money. If you are serious about an institution, you need to find your own sort of funding.’  

From its beginning, the ethos of Nubuke has been one of a collaboratory approach. By incubating other art start up organisations, the space becomes available to a broad range of  

audiences. For a long time, Ehalakasa, a poetry slam organisation, was based at Nubuke. So did Accra Theatre Workshop and Nkabom Literary art festival.    

‘We build communities by doing a little barter with others. For me also, it is programming. People come and watch the rehearsals. People come and frolic in the garden. The place comes alive.’ 

‘It is about engaging people regularly. People are coming into this space. Students are coming into this space. Like the works that you have seen here and there. Like you say ‘’Come and meet the artist’’. The artist wants to talk to you about the work, understand it and see whether you can do same’.  

As you enter the Nubuke compound house from its side, you will come to see a mural done by Bernard Akoi-Jackson. It is titled ‘Celebrating the new dawn’. It is a colourful constellation of geometric patterns and symbols. It was inspired by the murals done by the women in Sirigu in the Upper East region of Ghana.  

Nubuke favours the exchanges between traditional modes of artmaking and the contemporary epoch. For arts organisations that use the Nubuke space, they in return engage school pupils in the neighbouring communities. In Wa, Tevie and Setordji engage women collectives with the aim of promoting artisanal practice in clay pottery and textile weaving.  

‘Our community engagement starts here as well. We do a lot of work in the neighbouring communities. We have a reading club so that is a really good way of bringing the children to interact with the space. In reading, they will look at the exhibitions or maybe write their own stories.’ 

‘We were doing our research into the artforms in the various regions. Weaving was one of the artforms that we were looking at. In Wa particularly, what we found was that the community was  

very engaged, very curious and they were very open. We asked them if they were interested in helping us in using their knowledge to improve the artform of today.’  

Tevie contends that Ghanaian art history is a young one, just a little over 60 years. As such, it is important to show everyone no matter the epoch. The important questions to ask are: Who is doing what? Who has the potential?  

When Nubuke first opened its space, it hosted the artist Galle Winston Kofi Dawson. As part of the first batch of degree-trained artists from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Dawson has worked with many materials and techniques spanning almost half a century, and is a keen chronicler of Accra’s evolution as a city. Alongside showing established artists, the foundation has a programme that supports young and emerging artists.  

In 2012, the foundation put the private collection of Florence Benson on public view. It included the paintings by pioneer Ghanaian modernists including A. O. Bartimeus, Amon Kotei, and E. O. Dartey. By showing the collection, Nubuke chronicled the history of art in Ghana.  

With the almost completion of Nubuke’s extended storey building, Tevie recounts the fondness that greeted the foundation’s first project, the publication of a photo book. She says that she sees that again. Like the dawning of a new day.  

words. Kwabena Agyare Yeboah 
photos. Dennis Nipah

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