Kwame Akoto-Bamfo

For Ghana's 60th independence anniversary in 2017, Kwame Akoto-Bamfo laid out more than 1,200 concrete heads at the Kwame Nkrumah Mausoleum, each one a portrait of an African ancestor. He called the show Faux-Reedom, a challenge to how free Ghana really was.

Roots

He was born in 1983 and raised by his mother and grandmother in Accra and the Eastern Region, where village life taught him traditional values and philosophy. He attended PRESEC Legon, then graduated with first-class honours from the College of Art at KNUST and took his master's there. He taught at KNUST and was acting head of graphic design for four years before leaving in 2013 to work as a full-time artist.

Memory and justice

His Nkyinkyim installation of sculpted heads is part of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, which opened in 2018 to remember victims of lynching and slavery. His travelling Blank Slate Monument, unveiled in Ghana in 2019, toured the United States, stopping at Selma, Harlem, the Motown Museum in Detroit and the DuSable Museum in Chicago; it was shown in Times Square on the day Derek Chauvin was sentenced for George Floyd's murder.