@osramba_media 👏🏾 "10 years ago I was inspired after reading so many books, to try and make a difference by working on the" true Story " of Africa. Africa before enslavement and colonization. The continent is after all, is older than the last 500 years of trauma that she is plagued by. My plan was to start" briefly " with this negative history and gradually shift the gaze towards more positive narratives. I never guessed that the " brevity " will last 10 years. I have been stuck on the very narrative that I sought to help change. Why? Because I found out that the atrocities of the enslaved has not been well represented. The legacies of the trade still exists and in 2010 (when I sculpted the first figures in terracotta) Haiti's debt to France for being enslaved was canceled after a devastating earthquake. They say "get over it" but we were still paying for it in the 2010's. I was as impatient with myself as people are with me now... I started @ancestorproject to educate and empower people using art and I created Nkyinkyim Installation to record our history and heritage, both 'positive and negative'. 10 years on, with a little less ego and messiah complex than I started with, I have learned to brave the critique and trigger the dialogue about African enslavement and the legacies of the Slave trade; racism, racial equality. I still cringe at some of posts shared by my friends and contributors on Facebook's Ancestor Project but the dialogue must happen. This story must be stripped of academic elitism and everyone must be heard even if they don't have PHDs. Even as I shift towards other narratives for Nkyinkyim Installation, my work with African enslavement has only begun. Special thanks to Bryan Stevenson and @eji_org for supporting my work. I can't cramp credit of 10 years in a single post, so thank you all. Medaase." Kwame Akoto-Bamfo Photo credit @keelsonstudio_ #SupportBlackArt #KwameAkotoBamfo #NkyinkyimInstallation #AncestorProject https://www.instagram.com/p/CD4Bd2BB1yN/?igshid=1fgobxgovvy3s
