"One man doesn't rule a nation" (2023)
The starting point for the work is a monument to the first president of the Republic of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, designed by the Polish sculptor Alina Ślesińska and unveiled in 1965 in Winneba, a Ghanaian coastal town. It was demolished soon after, in 1966, when a CIA-inspired coup ousted Nkrumah from power.
The project includes a reconstruction of the monument in the Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts, a presentation of research in the Kaunas Biennial, and a video – in the festival Survival Kit 14 in Riga. Janek Simon and Max Cegielski went to Ghana earlier this year to organize workshops to collectively discuss the meaning of this gesture as a metaphor for working with shared Eastern European and African histories of the 1960s and 1970s. The monument was originally intended to be made of Italian marble, which also opens the discussion on the materiality of contemporary reconstruction as a tool for using history to create new progressive narratives in the present. The multiple contexts behind the erection of the monument – Polish architects and economists working in Ghana, the legacy of Kwame Nkrumah, and the elusive presence of Ślesińska herself – are also considered through archival research and interviews with living witnesses of that time.
Janek Simon is an artist and occasional curator exploring the boundary between DIY technology and cultural geography.
Max Cegielski is a writer always looking for new ideas, especially when it comes to history, the margins of the world, and mixed forms of expression.
They are united by curiosity, which is the main emotional force behind both of their practices.
/ Photo credit: Kristīne Madjare / Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art