Citi TV’s Heritage Art Festival started today at the forecourt of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly office complex with a symposium.
This festival, as part of the Heritage Month celebration, serves as a platform for patrons to enjoy and celebrate artistic impressions from Ghanaian artists as they showcase their work telling the Ghanaian story through art.
Speaking at the symposium, Amarkine Amarteifio one of the speakers said the Ghanaian society should allow people who question the status quo to get above the colonial frame Africa suffers.
He particularly bemoaned the replacement of Ghanaian cultures with foreign cultures.
“Culture isn’t just drumming and dancing. The world in which drumming and dancing were central on the conception of culture and our identity has evolved and expanded,” he said.
He urged that societies encourage and protect the freedom of citizens.
“Societies must, therefore, encourage and protect the social climate of freedom that inspires citizens to look at their identity,” he said.
Another speaker at the symposium was curator Bernard Akoi Jackson.
According to Bernard, Ghanaian history did not start with colonialism.
He said identities are created by adding and subtracting from things that already existed.
“We have constructed tradition as we move along,” he said.
He noted that tradition may change as new things come along adding that one thing to note is that “things are always added on by those who come to meet it”.
“We critique the colonial stories in different ways but we must understand that our history didn’t start with colonialism”.
About forty (40) visual and fine artists exhibited their works at the event which begun today and will end on Saturday, March 14, 2020.
As part of the activities for the festival, there were art installations, live portraits, art exhibitions and the painting of “Accra’s Biggest Canvas.”
The art festival will also treat taste buds to delicious cuisines from across Ghana with the “Back to Your Village Food Bazaar” on Saturday, March 14, 2020.
See more photos below: