Sela’s works at Nubuke Foundation, Accra blend abstract and representational styles to prompt contemporary discussions
In Efo Sela’s painting Speak Your Truth Quietly (2021), two figures are seated with their backs against each other. The one to the left is unveiled and holds a pot of red liquid, presumably blood. In contrast, the figure to the right is masked, with the mouth agape exposing canine teeth as sharp as its horn or the used knife by its feet, while a golden egg glows in the left hand. On the ground, a crow mourns a dying rooster, its feet separated from the body. A line of ants animates the mystery by parading fallen feathers like coffins. As the main figures sit fixated as if possessed, the Adinkra symbol Owuo Atwedee, represented by a red ladder on a side of their seat, summarises the moment by denoting the certainty and universality of death. The white background with blots, splashes, scrawls and drips of black paint augments the sense of unease.
Within the brutalist interior of Nubuke Foundation, Sela’s solo exhibition brings together paintings and drawings that make use of reworked symbolism and striking colours – often gold, white and black – while combining free-flowing forms and cosmic features that seem to grow naturally from the artist’s subjects and materials. The painting Escapism: In the House of New Moon (2020) evokes a mystifying atmosphere with a bird perching on an ouroboros surrounding a foetus embossed in gold. Connected by the umbilical cord at the centre, the foetal form hangs away from vèvè cosmograms equidistantly placed at the four corners of the otherwise black canvas. Spiritual tools for making offerings to the deities of Vodu religion in exchange for blessings, protection or interventions, vèvè are characterised by intricate intersections of hooks, circles, flags, crosses, hearts, triangles, stars, quadrilaterals and serpents. Sela takes the potency of such traditional symbols and gives them contemporary form, while exploring the original intent and functionality of African art; for healing, reinvigoration of consciousness and the mutual thriving and interconnectedness of humans and the natural world.
Sela’s works blend abstract and representational styles with textural effects, as in the painting Resignation (2024), in which a figure faces east as the other, back to back, faces the west. With the lefthand figure, the use of an Akrafena (a ceremonial Akan sword) signifies leadership status. The figure on the right facing the East, wearing a gilded traditional headwrap, crosses its arms in reluctance. With reference to the title, this signals a withdrawal from confrontations, while the figure on the left appears to be celebrating triumph.
The Last Poets series (2024) is a group of charcoal drawings on paper. While the title might recall the band that came out of the American civil rights movement of the late 1960s, the series depicts conjoined abstracted figures made of intertwined lines and curves that lead the viewer’s eye to see landscapes as much as human bodies. Reimagining African traditional aesthetics, Sela’s work aims to open space for engagement with history and spirituality, while probing ideas of community, global interconnectedness; a meaningful contribution to contemporary conversations in Ghana and beyond.
Children of the Universe at Nubuke Foundation, Accra, 28 November – 29 March
From the April 2025 issue of ArtReview – get your copy.
