00:00So, you're just about to meet Afroscope,
00:03who I chose for the Ghana Pavilion for the Venice Biennale.
00:07I'm excited for you to meet him and to see his work.
00:10I'm Nana Ofriyat Ayim.
00:12I'm a writer, art historian, and curator.
00:15Every second year, Venice hosts the Biennale,
00:18which is like the Olympics of the art world.
00:20In 2022, the Biennale featured artists from 58 countries.
00:24Hi.
00:30I called the exhibition at the Ghana Pavilion,
00:34Black Star, the Museum as Freedom.
00:39Afroscope's installation featured a robotic arm
00:42that he had trained to create drawings in his artistic style.
00:45I chose his work for the Ghana Pavilion
00:48because of how he uses technology
00:50to explore freedom of expression and of being.
00:54Afroscope's work is futuristic,
00:56but also inward and backward looking.
00:59Drawing on our historical knowledge systems and philosophies
01:03to create future worlds.
01:07He lives in Tema, a community about an hour outside of Accra.
01:14My name is Nana Opoku.
01:16I create art under the pseudonym Afroscope.
01:19A lot of my work is intuitive,
01:21very experimental, and very spontaneous.
01:26I started off with drawing
01:28and graduated to ink drawings on paper.
01:31Afroscope now spends most of his time
01:34creating in the digital sphere.
01:39There's so much knowledge systems, mythologies, cosmologies,
01:43that for various reasons,
01:46we aren't taught in school,
01:47they've been wiped out,
01:48they've been whitewashed.
01:50And doing that research,
01:51a bit of archaeological digging
01:53to find out what are the things
01:54that our forebears and forefathers left for us.
01:58And so I find ways to now communicate
02:00what I'm learning with to others.
02:02Afroscope has started creating
02:03with tools like virtual reality.
02:06These are some of his 3D VR images,
02:08which you can see in full expression
02:10with these kinds of headsets.
02:12Which option you want to select?
02:25There's also this concept I'm fascinated by,
02:27which is oneness.
02:29The genesis of all this
02:31was in the illustrations that I do,
02:33that I have called or I dub Asche.
02:36Asche is a Yoruba term
02:38for that ethereal or invisible life force
02:42that connects everything
02:44and that makes everything alive.
02:46So at Venice,
02:47I'm trying to tell a story
02:50that talks about this journey from Asche
02:52talks about this journey from Asche to now.
02:56I did 1,024 of these drawings
02:59that I've scanned
03:00and run through a machine learning algorithm.
03:04So I'm trying to create an experience
03:06that touches on these things
03:07and asks questions about
03:08whether or not computers
03:10can also be seen as artists.
03:12Can you say a computer
03:14has spiritual intelligence?
03:23Art can help us see things
03:24that are not immediately apparent.
03:27Putting together an exhibition
03:28can feel like alchemy,
03:30like creating something
03:31where the whole is greater
03:33than the sum of its parts.
03:38So I love this work,
03:39this building of narratives.
03:41So whenever I do an exhibition,
03:44even I'm astounded at the end of it.
03:47Like this exhibition,
03:48I'm so excited about it.
03:49I'm like,
03:50Like this exhibition, for example,
03:53when I looked at this book,
03:54it says
03:55Ghana's historic first pavilion
03:56at the Venice Biennale of 2019.
03:59When I curated Ghana's first ever pavilion
04:02for the Venice Biennale in 2019,
04:04Ghana Freedom,
04:06it referred to our first president,
04:08Kwame Nkrumah,
04:09famously saying,
04:11Ghana, our beloved country,
04:13is free forever.
04:15And how that freedom
04:16has or hasn't developed for us
04:18through the eyes and work
04:19of our greatest artists.
04:24I became an art historian
04:25and started to curate
04:27because I wanted to help frame
04:29some of the rich
04:30and multi-layered culture
04:31that we have in this country.
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