Sankofa: An Exploration Informed By Africanfuturism
by Georgina Grant
8th-29th March 2025
Open Wednesdays to Saturdays, 12:00-5:00pm
Meet the Artist: 8th March, 1:00-3:00pm
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Georgina Grant (b. 1959, Bristol) lives and works in Devon. She has dual heritage Ghanaian-English and grew up in Ghana, Zambia, England and California (USA). Georgina studied her foundation and BA in London, where she was part of the Black Arts Group formed from art students in the 1980s. She continued her art education in Devon at Arts University Plymouth (AUP) MA and MFA.
Georgina’s work is based on the concepts of futurism and Africanism. She uses ideas surrounding Africanfuturism as a platform to play with ideas of what a future could look like in the year 2225. As we can look back and view the histories of 200 years, can we look at the possibilities of what the future in 200 years might be? And what if African history had not been interrupted by colonialism? Could African spiritualism, ritual, and belief in the ancestors, change our relationship with the lands we inhabit.
Georgina explores her dual heritage and knowledge of growing up in different countries. Her collection of objects placed together as sculpture and installations explores concepts of decolonization, Africanism, animalism, spiritualism, and futures without technology. Quite often they take on a ritualistic atmosphere in a dreamlike landscape.
The objects are symbolic, and the materials are natural, biodegradable, recyclable or reused ‘ready-mades’. Deliberately working with non-invasive materials, highlighting the importance of environment and place. Their construction lasts for a short period of time, where they can be dismantled and reformed as part of a different installation. All part of the impermanence and cycles of life.
Georgina’s work incorporates African spirituality, a nature based belief system, which is greatly in tune with nature and the elements where the natural world and the spirit world are interwoven, and land nature is viewed as highly sacred and spiritual. Land is sacred because it is ancestral, and the work explores the cause and effect phenomenon of material, where the physical is tied to the spirit world.
Glossary of terms:
Futurism mainly describes using technological and industrial societies’ structure and terminology, which are fundamentally a natural by-product of the evolution of western capitalism as a way to view the future as being ‘progress’. Therefore an industrial technological future is fundamentally western in character.
Afrofuturism Putting the black diaspora into future technology. This concept continues to project western capitalist ideas into the future, which in turn reflects the colonised mindset and history of western society. Therefore it fails to imagine a non-industrial ‘western’ future for other parts of the world specifically in this case Africa.
Africanfuturism is rooted in the experience and aesthetics of the African continent, native Africans and with belief in Pan-Africanism. To imagine a non-industrial future is to explore the importance of Africa's own ancient knowledge, folklore, mythology, spirituality of the different African spaces. Recognising the fundamental difference between Afrofuturism and Africanfuturism is to acknowledge the fact that the experiences of black people have distinctive differences depending on their histories.
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