Barby Asante: On-doing Undoing

About

Both works explore the legacies of coloniality, through performative actions that include reflecting on family histories, relationships to place, museum and archival practices and propositions for the future. 

Underlying this work, Asante engages in a personal exploration of Sankofa, a principle that is part of the Ghanaian Àdìńkrá communication symbology. As part of Akan cosmology, Sankofa is symbolised by a bird standing with its feet facing forward and its head turned backwards, paying attention to an egg carefully balanced on its back. Commonly understood as “go back and get it” Asante wishes to deepen the understanding of Sankofa to imagine what it has to offer as an African diaspora memory practice, beyond the conventional idea of returning to or recovering a history in order to imagine oneself as part of the world. Instead, Asante is interested in Sankofa as a Wayfinder, which not only offers a way to explore and excavate historical facts but also as a way to think about self-determination, intergenerational healing from trauma and imagining other ways of living and being. 

Declaration of Independence and The Queen and the Black-Eyed Squint are expressions of how Asante imagines her relationship with Sankofa. Both works explore the often hidden histories and experiences of womxn of colour as they navigate what Ghanaian Pan-Africanist feminist writer and poet Ama Ata Aidoo described in her 1992 poem As Always a Painful Declaration of Independence, as “the clear world of/ take/ and take/ and take.”

Private View 
Thursday 11 November 2022, 18:00–21:00. Find tickets and more information here.

Declaration of Independence – performance
Saturday 12 November 2022, 19:00–20:00. Find tickets and more information here.

Exhibition opening times: Fri 11, Wed 16, Thu 17, Fri 18 November, 12:00–19:00
During exhibition days, please enter through the University of Westminster reception, 35 Marylebone Road, NW1 5LS.