By John Owoo
(Accra – Ghana)
Stars have long held a powerful place in human imagination. They have served as guides for travelers, symbols of destiny, and metaphors for the mysterious forces that shape human life.
In Nsoromma, a group exhibition currently on view at the Mix Design Gallery and featuring selected participants from the Rising Star 2026 cohort, celestial symbolism serves as a point of departure for five emerging artists—Albert Nii Nortey Dowuona, Baaba Sarpong, Christabel Dzandu, Paul Leslie Ahadji and Emmanuel Tetteh—to explore ancestry, identity, spirituality and the complex process of becoming.
The title, Nsoromma, meaning “children of the stars,” immediately establishes the exhibition’s conceptual terrain. Rather than treating the stars as merely decorative or mystical symbols, the exhibition uses them as a metaphorical framework through which the artists examine the forces—visible and invisible—that shape individual lives.
The resulting works move between the personal and the universal, inviting viewers to consider how family, community, history and place shape the construction of identity. Across painting, installation, and mixed media, the exhibition reveals an emerging generation negotiating the relationship between inherited traditions and contemporary artistic experimentation.
Cultural memory is not presented as something fixed or securely preserved in the past. Instead, it appears as something continually reconstructed through experience. This gives Nsoromma much of its relevance: its artists are not merely looking backward for cultural references, but examining how those references survive, change and acquire new meanings in the present.
Themes of migration, ritual, spirituality, and self-discovery further complicate the exhibition. They suggest lives shaped by movement—across places, generations, belief systems, and states of belonging. In this context, the idea of a constellation becomes particularly effective.
Individual stars may appear isolated, yet their significance emerges through relationships and patterns. Similarly, the five artistic voices gain resonance through their differences as much as through their shared concerns.
What distinguishes Nsoromma is its refusal to impose a single interpretation on these questions. Thus, the exhibition leaves room for uncertainty, reflection, and personal discovery. Its invitation to viewers to “find their own cosmologies” transforms the gallery into a space for contemplation rather than mere observation.
As a showcase of emerging practitioners, Nsoromma presents artistic emergence not as a finished destination but as an unfolding journey. Like the night sky that inspired its title, the exhibition offers multiple points of light—distinct, sometimes distant, yet connected within a larger, ever-expanding constellation.
Organized as part of events marking Accra Art Week, it ends on Wednesday, September 2, 2026.
