"Light Soup" (2021), an immersive art installation.

Описание: The installation is made up of collected pottery objects from some regions in Ghana combined with earth, light, sound, and video.

Artist bio:
Frederick Ebenezer Okai (b. 1986), is an artist based in Kumasi, Accra and Sunyani, Ghana. His interest in earthly materials, largely clay, as core fabric extends to the immense possibilities the material offers in terms of plasticity and how its usage is susceptible to temporality and permanence simultaneously. He pursues the material culture of pottery in Ghanaian cultures, researching ways it knits into the complex lives of humans. His practice is greatly influenced by the emancipatory teachings of artist and pedagogue karȋ’kạchä seid’ou at the Department of Painting and Sculpture, KNUST – Ghana. He is a lecturer at the Department of Visual and Industrial Art, Sunyani Technical University and a member of blaxTARLINES -- project space for contemporary art, KNUST, Kumasi.

Artist Statement:
Like play like play we dey make art. We dey roam, we dey do investigation through dialogues and observations. We dey collect objects so say we go fi reimagine am. We dey follow minute details as we trail in the shadows of a search, seeking the momentary spikes the search reveals. The journey generates diverse art forms. Like play like play, all be the art.

In this exhibition I seek to set the terms of role play, like a writer to my own novel where I cast my audience as both actors and spectators; the former in the form of hanging pots within the installation and the latter as general public.

The exhibition title, 'Light Soup', is in this case, a stylistic abstraction of the Ghanaian soup delicacy that is metaphorically offered to visiting viewers as they are ushered into a space of pluralistic art experiences. The architectural formation within the installation emanates from my encounters with spaces as I journeyed through the North and South of Ghana in search of indigenous pottery styles pushed into the margins of formal or mainstream aesthetics. The conversations, pictorial evidence, and demonstrations offered to me with warmth by honorific artists I have met in my journeys is staged in this exhibition. The pottery objects found in this exhibition were made by women of diverse social, ethnic and cultural backgrounds. The pottery objects within the installation possess a descriptive persona constituting neck, body, and foot and the introduction of led lights inside the reconstructed pots are suggestive of initiating an internal being, a soul. The intention of the artist to the viewers experiencing this part of the installation is for them to dive into the surgical process of an inner self or not.

Frederick Ebenezer Okai, Light Soup, solo exhibition, Old Tech Sec, KNUST campus, 2021.

'Light Soup' is an immersive art installation that explores the engagement between objects and spaces. The installation is made up of collected pottery objects from some regions in Ghana combined with earth, light, sound, and video.

Artist bio:
Frederick Ebenezer Okai (b. 1986), is an artist based in Kumasi, Accra and Sunyani, Ghana. His interest in earthly materials, largely clay, as core fabric extends to the immense possibilities the material offers in terms of plasticity and how its usage is susceptible to temporality and permanence simultaneously. He pursues the material culture of pottery in Ghanaian cultures, researching ways it knits into the complex lives of humans. His practice is greatly influenced by the emancipatory teachings of artist and pedagogue karȋ’kạchä seid’ou at the Department of Painting and Sculpture, KNUST – Ghana. He is a lecturer at the Department of Visual and Industrial Art, Sunyani Technical University and a member of blaxTARLINES -- project space for contemporary art, KNUST, Kumasi.