John Akomfrah. Purple

The British artist John Akomfrah, born in 1957 in Ghana, co-founded the London-based Black Audio Film Collective in 1982. In this exhibition, the Museum Kurhaus Kleve presents works by this internationally acclaimed artist who has received relatively little attention in Germany. In his installations that characteristically integrate film and video projections, he produces epically associative streams of images highlighting post-colonialism and experiences related to global migration. He also taps a pool of collective memory using a complex web of simultaneous narrative structures. By superimposing archived material, his own videos, natural panoramas and structured sound works, he then creates his own imagery with a high degree of perceptual intensity. The exhibition at the Museum Kurhaus Kleve focuses on Akomfrah’s early works, from which it draws links to his current major projects, such as the three-channel project “Four Nocturnes”, which was recently shown at the Venice Biennale. The exhibition is being developed in close coordination with the artist himself.

Artistic director: Harald Kunde
Artist: John Akomfrah