Cultural Encyclopaedia

Nana Oforiatta-Ayim used her Art + Technology Lab grant to pursue her concept of a cultural encyclopaedia that emcompasses a variety of forms of cultural expression that have frequently been omitted from the western canon of art history. Traveling to Accra, Ghana, Nana documented performances, oral histories, photographs, objects, and more at mobile kiosks she designed for this purpose and through online portals. In the course of the project, she explored the labyrinthine streets of Accra, originally designed to help residents evade slave traders, started work on an ambitious documentary film, and created a website that is infinitely expansible and seeks to "facilitate the re-ordering of knowledge, narrative and representations from and about the African continent."