Lord Ohene okye-Bour
‘Afro Memoirs’, Exhibition essay, Gallery 1957, Accra, Ghana: 2021
Beads, like people, are individually textured, painstakingly created entities. Once strung together their meaning, value, beauty, and energy connects and expands – creating something new, a collective.
These powerful sources play as culturally specific visual tools in the compositions imagined by artist Lord OHENE Okyere-Bour. From layered krobo necklaces and personalised pendants to traditional waist beads and trendy asymmetrical earrings – all but one painting in this new body of work features beadwork, like a treasure hunt hinting at the character, style, performance, and dreams of the sitter. The Afro Memoirs series is a deep look inward in order to see outwards. It is a space created for everyone to look back on their past to look forwards to their future. It is a memory, a mirror, a movie set, where one can imagine who they can be and what is possible, when we string our stories together.