By John Owoo

(Berlin – Germany)

German-Ghanaian dancer Isabel Kwarteng-Acheampong thrilled a nearly full audience at Ufer Studios last week with a performance that combines movement language inspired by a dialogue between tradition and modern urgency. 

In a remarkable performance on the final day of Kuyum Tanzplattform 2025, she showcased gestures rooted in Ashanti dance styles, breaking into sharp, fragmented movements that seemed to express frustration with discrimination. 

These shifts are not random outbursts but carefully measured responses — a negotiation between restraint and release, as if the body itself is learning how to turn rage into resilience. In the stillness, a lone drummer layers the show with refreshing rhythms from Ashanti’s talking drums. 

Moments of stillness punctuate the performance, creating silence heavy with anticipation — a counterpoint to the bursts of rhythm and flow. This oscillation between calm and turbulence reflects the central theme: navigating the contradictions of living as a Black queer person in a society that constantly questions one’s existence.

What resonates most is not a story resolution, but the feeling of endurance. By embracing her Ashanti roots while also recognizing her German identity, she refuses to let one erase the other. Instead, she builds a bridge between them, showing that hybridity itself can be a powerful act of self-preservation.

The performance leaves the audience with the feeling of having experienced an intimate ritual — not closure, but an invitation to embrace complexity. In doing so, Kwarteng-Acheampong transforms personal struggle into collective reflection, emphasizing that resistance can be as much about care and continuity as it is about confrontation.

Kuyum Tanzplattform 2025 is being sponsored by Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt, Hochschulübergreifendes Zentrum Tanz Berlin, Ufer Studios, Theatre Haus Berlin, Kulturplakatierung Dinamix, Rausgegangen and Tip Berlin.

By John Owoo

(Berlin – Germany)

“Yêrêwolo,” a mesmerizing duet performed by dancers whose bodies have been masterfully shaped by their skilled craft, acted as both a choreographic exploration and a political statement at the ongoing Kuyum Tanzplattform at the Ufer Studios in Berlin.  

Choreographed by Ahmed Soura, who also performed as a dancer, the piece, which draws inspiration from the ideologies of the former and current Burkinabe revolutionary leaders Thomas Sankara and Ibrahim Traoré, explores how systems of oppression and dependency continue to influence modern society.

With music by Compassion Image and Gambo Roch Dja and a minimal scenography made of sacks, the performance imagines pathways of resistance—a rebellious community that aims to harness its own internal resources, break free from external domination, and claim sovereignty.

Although the artists moved in unison, they displayed different movements as they crisscrossed the stage while calling for autonomy and collective self-determination. Indeed, they pushed themselves into heightened awareness, turning their bodies into sites of labor and liberation while excavating layers of memory, struggle, and transformation.

Conceptualized by Felix Dompreh, movements fluctuated between defiance and grounded resilience, embodying both the weight of history and the potential for emancipation. The dancers’ bodies, marked by intensity and endurance, show how physical practice itself can serve as an act of rebellion.

In another performance, Camille Badirou took the audience through a solo piece that explored memory, trauma, and resilience while showing the body as an archive and instrument of resistance. Indeed, it confronts the wounds and silences left by slavery and colonialism, refusing to let them remain buried beneath the weight of history.

Titled “Na Kalonia,” the choreography demonstrates a physical focus that feels both deeply rooted and uncontainable. In fact, gestures shift between grounded weight and expressive movement, not only remembering history but reimagining it and providing strength for the present.

It celebrates cultural identity and the courage to embrace it fully, reminding us that memory—collective, embodied, and ancestral—can be a tool of empowerment. With its relentless energy, the piece not only preserves history but also reimagines it, offering strength for today.

Kuyum Tanzplattform 2025 is being sponsored by Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt, Hochschulübergreifendes Zentrum Tanz Berlin, Ufer Studios, Theatre Haus Berlin, Kulturplakatierung Dinamix, Rausgegangen and Tip Berlin.

By John Owoo

(Berlin – Germany)

“L-Movement,” a piece choreographed by Yayi Nestor Gahe, charmed an excited audience at the Ufer Studios with its powerful reflection on laughter—not just as a passing feeling but as a force that shapes our humanity. 

Through flowing, pulsating, and often unexpected movements, the dancers express laughter’s roots in the body, turning it from sound into visible energy. The result is a unique movement language that connects the primal and the modern.

Undeniably, the performance, which formed part of Kuyum Tanzplattform 2025, highlights laughter’s duality: its power to bring people together across boundaries and its tendency to be suppressed by social norms. This tension was expertly expressed through the dancers’ shifts between free/expansive gestures and moments of restraint, almost as if laughter itself was being suppressed. 

Instead of giving a literal meaning, “L-Movement” became a vivid metaphor—truly a tribute to laughter’s power to connect, disrupt, and heal. By combining physical exploration with emotional depth, the piece goes beyond entertainment to become an invitation: to feel, to remember, and to laugh again without limits.

Without a doubt, the piece reminds us that laughter comes before language and remains a universal way of communicating. The choreography reflected the carefree laughter of children while also encouraging audiences to rediscover that wild, unrestrained energy within themselves.

Instead of a literal interpretation, the piece becomes a living metaphor—a tribute to laughter’s power to connect, disrupt, and heal. By blending bodily exploration with emotional depth, “L-Movement” goes beyond entertainment to serve as an invitation: to feel, to remember, and to laugh again without boundaries.

“Underneath Climate Cracks – The Dying African Philosophy”, a piece choreographed and performed by Michael Kaddu, is rooted in memory and tradition. The artist reimagines rainmaking rituals as both a cultural inheritance and a contemporary ecological reflection.

The audience watched in awe as the piece unfolded with Kaddu’s heartfelt memory of his mother’s role as a rainmaker. The piece creates an intensely personal yet universally relatable tone. It is not only about the loss of ritual but also about the vulnerability of traditions that once connected humans and nature.

Indeed, the performance redefines ritual as ecological wisdom rather than superstition. At a time when rainmaking practices are fading, the work emphasizes their importance as a record of environmental knowledge. Through movement and song, the performers not only honor a disappearing tradition but also demonstrate its relevance for modern discussions on sustainability and climate.

By connecting ritual, memory, and ecology, the performance offers more than just a reverence to the rainmakers of the past. It encourages audiences to consider how embodied knowledge—expressed through dance, ritual, and community practice—can help us reconnect with nature and rethink our relationship with the environment amid global change.

Kuyum Tanzplattform 2025 is being sponsored by Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt, Hochschulübergreifendes Zentrum Tanz Berlin, Ufer Studios, Theatre Haus Berlin, Kulturplakatierung Dinamix, Rausgegangen and Tip Berlin.

Pix – thabu thindi

By John Owoo

(Berlin – Germany)

The 2025 edition of Kuyum Tanzplattform opened on Wednesday at the Ufer Studios in Berlin with a magnetic performance by Julienne Doko and Kyrie Oda that unfolds as an intimate dialogue between language and movement, probing the fragile yet resilient strands that bind human identity.

As music flowed from loudspeakers and a musician, they stood apart on the dimly lit stage, their bodies illuminated by shifting pools of light that echoed the ebb and flow of their exchanges. Indeed, the sparse atmosphere comprising a bare stage with minimal props enabled the audience to focus on the textures of movement and voice.

Undeniably, the performance resists linear storytelling, offering instead a tapestry of gestures, silences, and spoken fragments. Diverse arm movements, mostly freezing at their backs, linger like an unspoken question—indeed, a spiraling turn that collapses into stillness alongside words that erupt only to dissolve back into breath. 

Choreographed by both dancers, each action on stage feels charged, embodying both personal memory and collective heritage. The duet makes visible the invisible threads of identity, showing how culture, language, and history move through the body, enabling the audience to decipher the similarities and differences.

Indeed, sound design enhances this effect — subtle rhythms, fragments of speech, and moments of silence punctuate the choreography, highlighting the porous boundary between expression and silence, memory and forgetting – while urging us to reflect on how we define ourselves in relation to others. 

In a profoundly moving performance titled “10 Years of Becoming”, Samwel Japhet chronicles his transformative journey from the streets of several Tanzanian cities to a place of self-discovery and belonging.

The performance skillfully intertwines movement and storytelling, capturing the complex layers of Japhet’s past—the hardship of homelessness, experiences of abuse, and the emotional turbulence of youth. Each gesture and choreographed sequence seems to carry the weight of memory, yet also radiates resilience, hope, and the human capacity to overcome adversity.

His use of space, tempo, and bodily expression draws the audience into a narrative that is as much about individual healing as it is about collective experience. There is a palpable sense of intimacy, allowing viewers to witness not just the evolution of a dancer, but the evolution of a human being reclaiming his story. The performance honors the past while celebrating the triumphs that have shaped him into the person he is today.

Beyond its autobiographical core, the piece equally serves as a testament to those who have endured social marginalization, yet found ways to navigate adversity, forge new paths, and create meaning in their lives. It is a work that resonates deeply, inspiring reflection on resilience, empathy, and the transformative power of art.

Kuyum Tanzplattform 2025 is being sponsored by Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt, Hochschulübergreifendes Zentrum Tanz Berlin, Ufer Studios, Theatre Haus Berlin, Kulturplakatierung Dinamix, Rausgegangen and Tip Berlin.

Pix – thabo thindi

By John Owoo

(Berlin – Germany)

The five-day Berlin Art Week – a citywide festival of fairs, exhibitions, and performances, which ended on Sunday, September 14 — attracted over 140,000 visitors from diverse countries, thereby shifting the emphasis from culture to economics and commerce.

Although detailed sales figures remain largely unavailable, the scale of attendance underscores the event’s significant reach. The week featured over 100 exhibition openings and more than 300 events, drawing visitors from within Germany and abroad.

Participants and observers see the Art Week as a significant economic driver of the contemporary art market in Germany. It offers a marketplace for sales, gallery exposure, collector connections, and international visibility. These, in turn, generate long-term economic benefits: sales, commissions, and reputational expansions.

Beyond direct art‐market revenues, the festival week boosts the broader local economy – hotels, restaurants, cafes, transportation, retail, and tourism. Indeed, Berlin gains not just from spending by visitors to fairs and exhibitions, but also from longer stays, cultural tourism, and international interest. 

Artsworks on display revealed some of the most experimental, cross-disciplinary work in over twenty-five project spaces, and special initiatives that featured unusual formats, community-run or nomadic studios, and curatorial experiments. “Gallery Night” and “Featured Night” extended openings across the city, enabling audiences to follow paths through urban streets filled with art.

Undeniably, Open Houses, Discovering Collections, and group shows addressed urgent social themes — home, belonging, migration, place, and resistance — giving the festival not just aesthetic scope but also political and social significance through issues that resonate in Europe and all parts of the globe.

Berlin Art Week 2025 showcased a mix of established names and emerging voices. Focal points include Petrit Halilaj at Hamburger Bahnhof; Cornelia Parker, Erik Schmidt, Phoebe Collings-James, and Cihad Caner at Kindl; Issy Wood at Schinkel Pavillon; Jordan Strafer at Fluentum; and Jiyoung Yoon at daadgalerie.

Despite its success, Berlin Art Week faces challenges. Funding cuts in cultural budgets, especially support for independent and project spaces, threaten the infrastructure that enables much of its innovative programming. Ensuring affordability for artists, galleries, and audiences, maintaining venues, and preserving diversity of voices are ongoing concerns in the face of rising costs.

Nevertheless, it reaffirmed the city’s status as a centre for contemporary art that both shapes and reflects global cultural currents. Its scale, diversity of formats, and mix of commercially successful and socially engaged art made it more than a festival — it was an ecosystem in action. As the art world watches, Berlin continues to offer a model for how art, commerce, and public life can intersect in a powerful and inspiring way.

All photos are from the Berlin Art Fair – Tempelhof

By John Owoo

(In Accra – Ghana)

Ghanaian artist Nana Bruce is back at Gallery 1957 with a new body of work that extends his deeply personal exploration of self-love and the often turbulent path toward it.

Through figures suspended in moments of emotional transition and shadows acting as second selves, Bruce constructs a contemplative space—one free from judgement or instruction, yet charged with opportunities for private reflection and unflinching honesty.

His figures are bright, inviting, and familiar, enabling their shadows to speak with their authority. They are weighty, insistent, and impossible to ignore. Indeed, he steps directly into a space of tension, where outward appearance and inner truth converge, clash, and reshape one another.

Bruce invites viewers into this charged zone not simply as observers, but as participants in their introspection—encouraging them to embark on the uncertain, yet profoundly rewarding, work of learning to love oneself.

That process is rarely a straight line. It unfolds in fragments—raw, fractured, shifting, but always holding the possibility of forward movement. His figures embody this unfolding: some poised at the brink of revelation, others adrift in denial, yet all navigating—however hesitantly—the layered terrain of the self.

Frequently adopting a bird’s-eye perspective, Bruce positions us above his subjects, making us witnesses. This elevated view creates distance, yet demands focus. We look down not with detachment, but with care—watching, as though observing someone (perhaps ourselves) in the tender act of self-repair.

Undeniably, the works interrupt and narrate. In one piece, a shadow reaches for love as the figure recoils; in another, it lifts its gaze beyond the present moment, suggesting clarity on the horizon—a self ready to rise, to risk, to grow. These shadows give form to what is suppressed, voice to what is feared, and gentle pressure toward what is true.

His figures are built from layers of unexpected colour—reds, blues, violets, browns, greens. What at first might seem like black skin reveals, upon closer study, a symphony of undertones. This approach recalls the principles of incarnato, where skin is conceived not as a flat surface but as a field of emotional and symbolic depth.

It is through this same logic of layering that the bare form emerges—not as spectacle, but as emotional unveiling. Here, nudity is not merely the absence of clothing, but the stripping away of persona, performance, and defence. Freed from costume and context, the body becomes a site of reconstruction—a space for vulnerability, clarity, and the possibility of beginning again.

Titled “In the Name of Love: Introspection”, the exhibition ends on Thursday, September 11, 2025. 

By John Owoo

Accra – Ghana

As part of the activities marking World Environment Day, an evocative exhibition brings together a group of artists who confront the growing crisis of environmental degradation through a bold reimagining of waste.

Using plastic debris, discarded electronic parts, nets, wood, and worn clothes as their medium, the participating artists do not merely recycle materials—they reclaim narratives, awaken conscience, and advocate for urgent ecological justice.

Currently ongoing at the Museum of Science and Technology in Accra, the exhibition features works by Dela Anya, Ananse Nipadua, Andrea Walter Ghia, and Beatrice Bee Arthur. The exhibition space buzzes with contradiction: beauty crafted from refuse, form emerging from formlessness. 

Curated by fashion designer and eco-feminist Arthur (who is also participating as an artist), the powerful juxtaposition between the elegance of composition and the often unsightly materials used—candy wrappers, circuit boards, single-use plastics, flipflops, and synthetic textiles—cannot be missed. 

Titled “Echoes of the Landfill,” these objects, often relegated to gutters, storm drains, landfills, rivers, and oceans, have found new life in sculptural forms, immersive installations, and assemblages that draw attention to humanity’s impact on the planet.

Some artists view waste as a metaphor. Torn clothing, stitched into patchwork canvases and wrapped around large sculptures, speaks to the frayed fabric of our environment, hinting at how consumption has outpaced care. 

Others adopt a more literal approach, building towers of e-waste that appear to teeter under the burden of technological excess. These pieces engage the viewer not only visually but also ethically, prompting us to confront what we discard and why.

The curatorial narrative effectively connects individual artworks to global environmental concerns, including issues such as climate change, pollution, overconsumption, and the fast fashion industry. 

However, it also highlights these issues, showcasing how communities in the Global South, often the final destination for the world’s waste, are developing innovative artistic strategies to raise awareness, protest exploitation, and propose alternative futures.

What emerges is not a lecture, but rather a call — urgent yet hopeful. By transforming waste into a statement, the artists refuse to view discarded materials as an end. Instead, they propose a cycle of transformation in which creativity serves as both a means of resistance and a means of restoration.

This exhibition highlights how art can act as a powerful ally in environmental activism. As we observe World Environment Day, it reminds us that sustainability encompasses not just policy and practice. Still, it’s also a matter of perception, and that viewing waste in a new light may be the first step toward treating our world more wisely.

The exhibition ends on Saturday, June 5, 2025.

By John Owoo

Accra – Ghana

In her latest exhibition, currently taking place at FCA Cantonments, Dei Centre, and FCA Ghana Studio 1 (all in Accra), Fatric Bewong immerses us in a world where environmental anxieties and familial bonds intersect through material and memory.

Grounded in transformation, she thoughtfully assembles her works from the overlooked fragments of daily life—fabric scraps, discarded lottery forecast sheets, and a variety of reclaimed materials. These are not just remnants; they serve as repositories of shared histories and forgotten possibilities.

Through cutting, gluing, suturing, stitching, and weaving, Bewong crafts enchanting spaces and intriguing forms that exist between the familiar and the surreal. Her meticulous process emphasizes both healing and repair, as well as creation, suggesting an ethics of care that extends from the domestic to the ecological.

The resulting assemblages do not merely rest on surfaces; instead, they invite us inward, drawing the viewer into realms of wonder and reflection. Each piece poses a quiet question, a proposition, urging us to rethink our relationship with waste, memory, and the unseen threads that connect us to the earth.

All three spaces are vibrant with color as folds of her work inundate the walls, ceilings, windows, and floors. Undeniably, she conjures magical space scapes, mysterious objects, and captivating propositions that spark our imaginations while taking us on a journey of curiosity and intrigue. 

Curated by Dr. Bernard Akoi-Jackson, Adwoa Amoah, and Ato Annan, she opens portals of curiosity and intrigue with a sensitivity that is both urgent and tender, reminding us that even in detritus, there lies potential for magic, meaning, and radical connection.

Titled “Revolutions Round about the Sun and Round about the Sons,” her artworks primarily focus on the natural and built environments while exploring themes such as consumerism, discarded waste, loss, death, memory, healing, and cultural narratives. Given her broad scope, she also addresses issues related to economics, gender, and identity. 

The exhibition marks a pivotal moment in the artist’s career and seeks to extend the reach of her work even further beyond the exhibition itself. A series of accompanying projects and programs will be introduced to provide the artist and her audience with meaningful opportunities for exchange and discursive engagement, ultimately leading to a book project. 

“Revolutions Round about the Sun and Round about the Sons” concludes on Sunday, June 8, 2025.

By John Owoo

(Accra – Ghana)

In dimly lit rooms, behind closed doors, and through whispered traditions passed from mother to daughter, countless women across Sub-Saharan Africa are trained to provide pleasure, not their own, but that of men.

Indeed, a photo exhibition by Ghanaian photographer Fibi Afloe, in collaboration with Belgian academic Prof. Ann Cassiman, unveils this hidden world and offers a searing, intimate look into the lengths vulnerable women go to satisfy male desire. It is currently ongoing at the Kawukudi Library in Accra.

From bodily modifications and the use of cold creams, medications, vagina steaming, and secret herbs, to carefully choreographed sexual performances, the exhibition reveals not only physical acts but also the emotional and cultural weight carried by women conditioned to serve, please, and endure.

Titled “Kayanmata,” the photos by Afloe draw the viewer into a realm where beauty, suffering, and agency collide, encompassing skin lightening and cosmetic procedures to conform to erotic ideals imposed by colonial residue and global media. These are not merely portraits of women, but of systems – patriarchal, economic, and traditional – that shape their sexual identities.

Through deep conversations with single and married women, Cassiman and Afloe explored the moral anxieties and disagreements surrounding women and their sexuality. It also highlights that the issue relates to women’s expectations, resistance, and desires within marriage, along with their fears of unfaithful men and co-wives joining their households.

The exhibition equally explores the impact of “Kayanmata” on couples, as most “Kayanmata” products promise to give women control over their sexual partners – a prospect that instills suspicion in men, who also have a fear of being manipulated by women.  

Largely a documentary photographer based in Nima, Afloe’s work focuses on everyday life, intimate portraiture, and social themes ranging from gender, climate change, and culture. Her practice is shaped by a personal connection and a desire to express the lived experiences of those she photographs, often linking their stories to her own.

An Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Leuven in Belgium, Cassiman focuses on young women in Muslim migrant communities in Accra. She explores themes such as kinship, womanhood, apprenticeship, knowledge, love, and marriage. Her research consistently emphasizes visual storytelling, both in her research methods and in exploring new forms of anthropological knowledge production.

Produced by Cassiman and Nii Obodai in collaboration with Nuku Studio in Tamale, the exhibition ends on Saturday, May 31, 2025.