Nsasawa: A mixed-media interactive re-envisioning black exoticism in Ghanaian socio-political archives

Abstract

This paper examines historical Black exotic imagery through Nsasawa mixed-media interactive project. In the Akan words Nsasawa represents a process of interlinking or interweaving cloths/traditions. Digital arrangements of West African Kente cloth and wax print fabrics placed over 17th-19th century Black exoticism partings from British art galleries attempt to establish a connection between past and present while taking back authority from these historical portraits. Through the digital collage and patching process, sensors are woven into the fabric overlay to create an interactive space where the viewers movement activates various layered responses that speak to contemporary issues of representation, memory, and the "uncanny" aspects of these exoticised depictions. The outcomes offer a critical re-envisioning that connects the exoticised subject positions directly to postcolonial theories by scholars like Frantz Fanon, Homi Bahbah, and Paul Gilroy regarding identity, cultural hybridity and the spectral remains of colonialism that linger into the present. By invoking the Akan concept of "Nsasawa," this mixed-media project aims to re-weave these archival hauntings from the past into a thoughtful, interactive experience that demands an engagement with how such fetishised representations live on to shape cultural fantasies and fears regarding Blackness today. The outcomes explore what truths may lie beneath these ghostly images through a digital patching process that creates an uncanny space of the exoticised subjects represented, reanimating them through an artist-fabric-sensor reworking to speak back from another temporal and cultural position.