By John Owoo
(Accra – Ghana)
Currently on view at the Museum of Science and Technology in Accra, Zado Keli: Eclipse of a Continent? by Prof. Edwin Kwesi Bodjawah is a compelling exhibition that interrogates the enduring legacies of Western modernity and its violent encounters with Africa.
Through sculpture, assemblage, and installation, Bodjawah mobilizes indigenous knowledge systems—mainly African masking traditions—to challenge historical erasure and envision alternative futures rooted in collective memory and self-determination.
Curated by Dr. Kwesi Ohene Ayeh, the exhibition draws on the conceptual inspiration of The Vultures, the seminal poem by Senegalese writer David Diop, which mourns the moral contradictions and brutalities concealed within colonial “civilizing” missions.
Echoing this lament, Bodjawah’s works confront colonial trauma not as a closed chapter but as an ongoing condition that continues to shape cultural production, perception, and value systems. His practice resists the universalizing claims of Western liberal modernity, instead foregrounding African epistemologies that emphasize community, ritual, and technical reproduction.
Central to the exhibition is Bodjawah’s sustained engagement with African masking systems that date back centuries. Rather than allowing these forms to remain frozen in museum vitrines or reduced to aestheticized objects in white-cube galleries, the artist actively restitutes them to their original social and performative contexts. In doing so, he contests the tendency to render African masks mute, decontextualized, and placeless, reasserting their vitality as communal and participatory objects.
Material experimentation is a defining feature of Zado Keli. Bodjawah employs a wide range of manual and mechanical processes—carving, pounding, embossing, hammering, and stamping—to create works that are both tactile and conceptually layered.
He repurposes unconventional materials such as decommissioned corrugated iron and Aluzinc roofing sheets, decades-old eucalyptus wood, lithographic printing plates, archival texts, and weathered metal fragments, including remnants of 17th-century cannons and cannonballs. These materials, heavy with historical resonance, expand contemporary approaches to mask-making and sculptural practice.
Techniques of seriality and repetition recur throughout the exhibition, transforming masks, wooden forms, and archival elements into strange, theatrical, and haunting presences. These works feel less like static artifacts and more like living witnesses—objects that negotiate a shared, unfinished history and a collective becoming.
Undeniably, in Zado Keli: Eclipse of a Continent?, Bodjawah offers not only a critique of the past but also a resolute affirmation of Africa’s capacity to reimagine itself.
The exhibition ends on Sunday, February 15, 2026.
