LONDON — In Serge Attukwei Clottey’s exhibition, Crossroads at Simon Lee Gallery, the Accra-based multidisciplinary artist uses found materials to explore Ghanaian culture and identity. Many of his large-scale pieces are brightly colored mosaics created by Clottey by piecing together square pieces of plastic from Kufuor gallons. Named after then-President of Ghana John Agyekum Kufuor, these jerry cans were used to collect and store water when the country suffered severe shortages in the 2000s. The artist calls the use and l exploration of this material Afrogallonism, for the way this practice highlights the gallon as, at once, a pervasive symbol of recent Ghanaian cultural history, a representation of the environmental injustice of water scarcity in across the continent, and an object that tells the story of trade between Ghana and the West. Thus, these large vibrant orange-yellow tapestries follow one another on the two floors of the exhibition like a pattern.
You can almost smell the sticky residue left by the labels, which add tones of brown to the upholstery as you step back. In other works, Clottey uses sharply contrasting plastic pieces to render abstract figures. “Man’s world” (2022) depicts a large male with an orange and black phallus. The irony is that it is actually millions of women around the world who are tasked with walking miles to fetch water from the plastic gallons that are transformed into the artist’s work.
In striking portraits painted on patterned and colorful tape and cork, Clottey depicts members of her local community. It expresses their personal style, the way their clothes portray the marriage of traditional Ghanaian, European and American styles. Red paisley print bandanas. Military sets. Their faces convey the self-confidence and self-assurance, and “coolness”, which philosopher Thorsten Botz-Bornstein intriguingly describes – and appropriately, in relation to Clottey’s work and the emphasis on exhibit on Kufuor gallon coins – described as ‘imp[lying] the power of abstraction without becoming too abstract.
All of the portraits are connected to each other by the repeated use of black and white checkered ribbon – another recurring motif, such as the gallon mosaics. However, one portrait in particular stands out, the only one that depicts more than one person. In “The Pillars” (2021), two women lay hands on each other, each dressed in a swirling zebra-print top and black duku (scarf). It could be a funeral or maybe a week (a celebration of life that takes place seven days after the funeral). Both women are wearing pink lipstick and shiny earrings. The woman on the left wears a gold watch on her wrist. At first glance, they may look identically dressed, until those little details come to light.
This is also a recurring theme in the works presented in Clottey’s first exhibition at Simon Lee: the singular and the collective. The singular In collective. Moving away from the tiles, you see an orange and yellow blur. Up close, each square has its own character, revealing secrets about its past life. The subjects of the portraits are taped in the same patterns, but their sense of style is quite original. Clottey’s work here – particularly her use of pattern – emphasizes a sense of interdependence and the world as a global village, exhibiting a kind of homogeneity that does not entirely obliterate individuality.
Serge Attukwei Clottey: Crossroads continues at the Simon Lee Gallery (12 Berkeley Street, London, England) until April 15. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.
