Nubuke Foundation has begun showing Efo Sela’s ‘Children of the Universe’ at its gallery in East Legon, Accra from yesterday, November 28 and will conclude on March 29, 2025.
The body of works is a sequel to the works ‘Zadokeli’, started by Sela during the global health crisis. Zadokeli means the eclipse in Ewe, a Ghanaian language.
Looking out into a world filled with doomsday prophecies, escalating deaths, fear and uncertainty about his own mortality, Sela confronts and embraces darkness, dark matter, dark thoughts as the new reality. “…A memory board that holds latent ideas, epiphanies, reveries, social histories and embodies a calming sublime force.”
Throughout this journey, Sela gives voice to his unconscious self, creating works that speak to time-honoured traditions, forms and meanings. These works unknowingly mirror and reflect a similar journey embarked upon, with poetry, by Dr. Mawuli Adzei – Sela’s father, at the same time.
Observing the world from this space of darkness, Sela becomes a cosmonaut, gaining an expansive view of burgeoning prospects. In Children of the Universe, his hopes for the world are symbolised by embryonic forms suspended in a womb or cradle, or perhaps by a nameless, formless entity that nurtures multiple forms and births endless possibilities simultaneously.
Deliberately devoid of a rich colour palette, Sela compels us into a dialogue that extends beyond what confronts us and is visible, the tension between light and darkness and reaches into the realm of possibilities.
Unrestricted by any prescribed norms, Sela’s works borrow and adopt forms from his African heritage, including design, adornment and sculpture.
Efo Sela is an artist with degrees in Communication Design and African Art and Culture from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, Ghana. He received his PhD in African Studies from the University of Ghana, Legon and is currently a lecturer at University of Media, Arts and Communication (formerly NAFTI) in Accra.
He is an internationally active scholar in the field of post-colonial provenance research, restitution and transcultural collaboration and multi-modal research while contributing to curatorial and art/research projects.
His recent co-edited volume is Fifteen Colonial Theft: A Guide to Looted African Heritage in Museums (Pluto Press, 2024). He is the founder of Grin Studios Limited, an art consultancy that connects creatives, cultural producers and researchers, specialising in museum studies, art exhibitions, design pedagogy and art-based research.
Nubuke Foundation is a private visual art and cultural institution based in Accra, Ghana. Founded in 2006, it serves as a nexus for arts and culture across the country while supporting the artistic practice of emerging and established Ghanaian artists. The foundation’s programming includes exhibitions, art talks, seminars, workshops and spaces for drama, poetry, music and film collaborations.
Nubuke Foundation is a member of the Arts Collaboratory Network. Arts Collaboratory (AC) is a network of 25 diverse arts organisations in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Europe. AC is a trans-local ecosystem focusing on art practices and processes of social change and working with communities within and beyond the arts.
