August marks a period of global remembrance of the Middle Passage. The vicious Atlantic Slavery spawned a traumatic slave-syndrome sickness that has been in transmission in various forms for over 500 years across the global Afrikan community. What is to be remembered about this dark period when the many Afrikan souls it claimed are yet to be appeased? Fundamentally, what is to be remembered when the descendants of these souls are not only carriers of the life-threatening traumatic slave-syndrome sickness, but are indeed refined slaves in an apparently non-Afrikan world?
Fourteen years ago, Ghanaian revolutionary sculptor, Kwame Akoto-Bamfo performed an unprecedented act of appeasement at Elmina Castle. In tandem with the 17th-century Akan tradition of Nsodie, a pertinent funeral rite involving clay busts or terra cotta heads displayed at the resting place of the dead, Kwame created over 1,300 effigies. Though made from cement not clay, these heads – victims of Atlantic Slavery, reflected sorrow, fear, and anger, rather than the typical smiling and cheerful expressions of Nsodie. The artist named the exhibition Nkyinkyim Installation. Nkyinkyim means “twisting” in Akan. The artist used this concept to paint the complexities of life’s journey. Through his work, Kwame made an appeasement case for the over five million Afrikans who perished during Atlantic Slavery, many of whom were kidnapped, raped, stripped of their humanity, and forced into slavery.
Kwame’s Nsodie were tearfully expressive at first encounter. Elmina Castle was a cemetery (still a cemetery) this very day and I can recall that the atmosphere was melancholic. These heads provide a rich contestation of the lingering significance of Afrikan cosmological belief system regarding the nexus between ancestral worship, social justice, and arts, despite the current Europeanized and Arabianized shape of the continent. Kwame Akoto-Bamfo reminds all living Afrikans of the unfinished business of Atlantic Slavery. There must be an appeasement, as the continent, prior to Indo-European and Arabic influences, recognized the pertinence of ancestral worship. However, atonement is an expensive commodity that no section of the global Afrikan community can afford until the second leg of the unfinished business of Atlantic Slavery is achieved – Reparations.
Temitope Maberu-Fagunwa
Pan-Afrikan Consciousness Renaissance (PACOR)
Lagos, Nigeria.
Pacor2015@gmail.com
