By John Owoo
(Accra – Ghana)
Nubuke Foundation in Accra hosted Dr. Senam Okudzeto’s first solo exhibition in Ghana—and on the African continent—and it unfolded like a long-awaited homecoming.
Known for her mixed-media installations that blend social history, theory, and the politics of identity, Okudzeto shares a more personal side of her artistic journey: a collection of two-dimensional works created between 2002 and 2025.
These paintings and drawings, many from Ghanaian collections and the artist’s own archive, serve as a meditation on the language of the body. In them, gestures, movements, and subtle postures form a visual vocabulary through which she explores identity, presence, and the passage of time.
Her fascination with semiotic gesture—the body’s ability to communicate beyond words—is clear throughout. For instance, in “Turquoise Repose” (2023), the curve of a body transforms into an imagined landscape, simultaneously mountain and wave, suggesting both the stillness of dawn and the pull of the deep sea.
Curator and art historian Carla Patricia Kojich places these works within Okudzeto’s ongoing exploration of identity and cultural stories. The artist’s brush acts as a mirror—exploring the links between personal memory, dance, and diaspora experiences. In each piece, abstraction and figuration blend, suggesting movement even during moments of stillness.
What sets this exhibition apart is its quiet intensity. Okudzeto avoids the spectacular in favor of the meditative. Each work invites the viewer to slow down, to feel rather than decode. The rhythm of her compositions echoes the pulse of breath, the shifting of light on skin, or the suspended motion of dance caught mid-gesture.
Beyond its aesthetic achievements, the exhibition holds symbolic significance. It reconnects the artist—an internationally acclaimed Ghanaian—to her roots, while providing Ghanaian audiences an opportunity to experience her work. It is a return not only for the artist but also for ideas, forms, and histories to familiar ground.
She earned a bachelor’s degree from the Slade School of Fine Art in 1995 and a master’s degree from the Royal College of Art in 1997. Okudzeto continued her postgraduate studies through the Whitney Independent Study Program (ISP) at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, Harvard University (USA). She obtained a doctorate in Humanities and Cultural Studies from the London Consortium and Birkbeck, University of London (UK), in 2022.
Since 1998, Okudzeto has developed ‘conceptual drawing’ workshops that combine practical and theoretical approaches to drawing. These workshops have recently been taught at Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Arts de Paris-Cergy (ENSAPC), The University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and Yaba College of Technology, as part of the international exchange program she organized while serving as the ENSAPC visiting professor during 2018 and 2019.
With this thoughtful and understated presentation, Nubuke Foundation reaffirms its place as a vital space for reflection and renewal in contemporary African art.
The exhibition ended on Sunday, October 11, 2025.
