The six participating artists—Felicia Abban, John Akomfrah, El Anatsui, Selasi Awusi Sosu, Ibrahim Mahama, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye—represented a range of artist age, gender, locations, and prestige, selected by curator Nana Oforiatta Ayim.
The show paired young and old artists across sculpture, filmmaking, and portraiture, and emphasized common threads across postcolonial Ghanaian culture in both its current inhabitants and the diaspora.
Architect David Adjaye designed the pavilion with rusty red walls of imported soil to reflect the cylindrical, earthen dwellings of the Gurunsi within the Biennale's Arsenale exhibition space.
[1] The pavilion, located in the Venice Arsenale building's Artiglierie (artillery),[2] was made to reflect Ghana in both the material and architectural style of its construction.
[3] In reflection of the earthen, cylindrical homes of Gurunsi villages,[4] the pavilion is partitioned into elliptical rooms by rusty red walls of imported Ghanaian soil.
[7] Anatsui's Earth Shedding Its Skin (2019), on a theme of ecological and self-renewal, consists of three new wall hangings made from flattened yellow bottle caps and strung with copper wire, in reference to the ravages of gold panning on Ghanaian rivers.
[7][8] Akomfrah's three-channel video installation, The Elephant in the Room – Four Nocturnes (2019) and Awusi Sosu's Glass Factory II (2019) both use poetic visuals to show postcolonial Africa's cultural landscape.
While both works showcase a forgotten, fragmented history, Akonfrah's installation juxtaposes West African violence while Awusi Sosu focuses on the rise and decline of glass factories in independent Ghana.
[7] The pavilion's curator, Nana Oforiatta Ayim, and its architect, David Adjaye, had previously worked with the government on national museum and art initiatives intended to support the country's international profile.
[6] Enwezor's Biennale also influenced the artist selection, as both Akomfrah and Mahama had big installations there and Anatsui had won its lifetime achievement prize.
[16] But while the artistic firepower was impressive, the New York Times did not consider the show revelatory, particularly since Anatsui already won a lifetime achievement prize at the 2015 Biennale.
[17] While The Art Newspaper wrote that Akomfrah's three-channel film united the pavilion's themes,[16] Frieze thought its clichés did not meet the level of allegory.
[7] While pavilions were rarely designed by famous architects, Frieze found Adjaye's womblike scenery to cast an ambiance unlike any other show in Venice.