Tuesday, February 8, 2022

Beneath The Baobab Tree

This work pictured here is part of Ghanaian artist Kwame Akoto-Bamfo’s Nkyinkyim installation.

Beneath the Baobab tree,
There is too much pain 
To calculate 
To ingest
Almost to speak of
Too much horror 
To comprehend 

And yet, 
I listen 
To their salted tears
That drift upon the winds 
Across the sands 
In this land
That speak 
from beneath
red clay dirt
The color 
of faded blood

Monday, February 7, 2022

"Upon Their Faces" - An Exhibit, A Lesson in History to Never Forget

These are among the stunning images at the Nkyinkyim Museum in Ghana.
Written after visiting the Nkyinkyim installation by Ghanaian artist Kwame Akoto-Bamfo. The exhibit, which has more than 1,700 cement effigies in a field, seeks to create a total of 11,111, in remembrance and honor of Africans who were enslaved.

By John W. Fountain

Within these ancestral faces
Of horror
Of shock
Of anguish
And of pain
Lie history's shame
Unforgivable
Almost unspeakable
Unforgettably enshrined
upon these hallowed grounds