Larry Achiampong: Relic Traveller

About

For Larry Achiampong’s first major solo exhibition in the Americas, the PHI Foundation presents Relic Traveller, a large-scale, multidisciplinary project ongoing since 2017. Taking the form of a series of immersive installations specially conceived for the Foundation’s spaces and for the city of Montréal, this exhibition is composed of sculpture, images, film, sound, and a public art component.

Through his futuristic alter ego, Achiampong is an archivist, collecting connections to his roots and gathering together the voices of collective memory to rethink colonialism, postcolonialism, Africanism, and Pan-Africanism. These reflections generate a unique vocabulary that problematizes and resists current discourses and trends. What, and who, is marking and shaping history, and who is allowed to leave a trace? Achiampong’s experience of diaspora, the importance of family and genealogical roots, and the significance of preservation and imagination all contribute to his project of creating a universe for everyone. Relic Traveller builds on themes of lost testimony, fallen empire, and displacement, marking and questioning what is remembered and what will remain. A constantly evolving project, Relic Traveller speaks to the artist’s personal journey, which is presented as an archive and as documentation of his vision of the future.