In and Out of Time, Curated by Ekow Eshun: Third Floor, Galleria Mall, Accra

Drawing from the Ghanaian concept of Sankofa - to return to the past in order to move forward - the exhibition explores African cultural notions of non-linear time and brings together both established and emerging contemporary artists from across Africa and the diaspora. The exhibition gathers new artworks from a range of mediums, including painting, collage and moving image. The show introduces artists who are new to Gallery 1957’s roster, such as Tunji Adeniyi-Jones, Malala Andrialavidrazana, Shiraz Bayjoo, Kenturah Davis, Todd Gray, Eric Gyamfi, Julianknxx, Zanele Muholi and Emma Prempeh, as well as returning artists Gideon Appah, Amoako Boafo, Kwesi Botchway, Serge Attukwei Clottey, Tiffanie Delune, Godfried Donkor, Priscilla Kennedy, Yaw Owusu, and Arthur Timothy.

Gallery 1957 presents the exhibition in a large scale, industrial space of 1,400 square metres that amplifies the exhibition’s narrative and invites the artists to create unique works in strong dialogue with the scale of the space.

Interrogating concepts of time, African diasporic identities and collective memory, the works on show question linear narratives of progress and modernity which have historically categorised people of African origin as less developed than citizens of the West. Instead, the works on show draw on African cultural notions of non-linear time as well as the concept of circular time presented by American scholar Michelle Wright, who takes inspiration from quantum physics to re envision time as a circle, offering it “as a place of black possibility, where past, present, collective memory and speculative future merge into one.”