araba s. ankuma

 
projects.


  RUWA
  Plasticwater Bodies
  Discarded
  WET
  These Hands
  A Closet Jam

WET

2022
In partnership with LIMBO ACCRA
[CREATIVE DIRECTION] [EXHIBITION PRODUCTION] [VISUAL DESIGN]


Accra, Ghana
This project was an exploration into the elements that surround and encapsulate our often chaotic ideas. During an 8-month stay in Accra, Ghana I began collaging what would become the 24 piece WET collection, utilizing repurposed print media as well as personal photography.  Each collage was then encased in a “bubble”— the epoxy resin acting as both canvas and frame. The works were “made for sunlight” as the watery and vibrant textural effect is highlighted best when sunlight strikes the surface.

Exploring the possibilities of unlimited access to sunlight as well as unique innovative spatial design the WET Collection premiered on display within an unfinished building development in Accra, Ghana. This experience was designed in partnership with LIMBO ACCRA, the pioneering architecture-infused spatial design studio operating within incomplete property developments. Through research and spatial curation, the studio provides an open medium for experimentation within Ghana’s art and architectural production. The space has since been repurposed as the LIMBO MUSEUM. 

TEAM


Creative Director
Araba Ankuma

Location
Dominique Petit-Frére of LIMBO ACCRA

Directors of Installation
Sascha Lewit 
Daniel Awuni
Darren Ziorkley

Lighting
Mimo Masri + NeonLightsGH

Exhibition Photography 
Black Image GH

Exhibition Materials
Lily Jade








ARTIST STATEMENT


Are you wet enough?

We are a generation drowning. Overwhelmed by this never-ending torrent of injustice, commercial interests, fake news, false prophets and our own waste... Rocked by wave after wave, most are drenched. And yet the waters only continue to rise.

To stay afloat we must find meaning in the debris. Piece together what has come before to redirect our path ahead.

WET is the collection of a collection. Items found and recomposed to pull on the relationship between original meaning and subsequent interpretation. Like messages without a bottle, floating to the surface of these murky waters, images cohere and combine to form truths.

But the nature of truth is that it too is a combination of its parts… only when we share perspectives, learning from one another,  will we begin to see the full picture.

BOAT or COFFIN?

created in collaboration with Darren Ziorkley

“

Gathering all those bottles felt like I was building a sort of life raft... or was it a coffin? 

”


As the centerpiece of the WET night time experience, this installation was created to shed light on our reliance on plastics as the source of our essential drinking water. Bottles gathered over the course of 7 months whilst in Accra, Ghana where drinking water can only be accessed through pre-packaged plastic containers.
CONSTRUCTION PROCESS—the boat featured an aluminum frame with a 9 foot “mast” on which we mounted the used plastic bottles. The bottle tops were then attached along the rim of the structure, featuring the red tops on one half and blue on the other. This “red pill, blue pill” motif presents itself many times throughout the pieces in WET. Each time it is meant to remind the viewer that truth is often shaped by one’s own perception. 


INSTALLATION