Koo Nimo to Exhibit in Seattle

The Seattle Art Museum, located in Seattle, Washington U.S.A., is presenting "Art From Africa: Long Steps Never Broke a Back" from February 7 through May 19, 2002.

The exhibition is a collaboration between the Seattle Art Museum and African scholars and artists. Daniel "Koo Nimo" Amponsah is one of these artists, and his voice will guide visitors through the sights of an Asante royal court, particularly its gold jewellery and textiles.

The exhibition combines African art with the creative elements that once surrounded it in Africa: music, movements, staging, special effects and conversations.

A dozen or so African and American artists/scholars will guide the museum staff in presenting African works with the creative elements that contextualise them.

The "Long Steps" of the exhibition's title alludes to a Yoruba proverb, but can also refer to the distance visitors to American museums must travel to connect an African artwork with its origins.

In this exhibition, however, works from the museum's collection, as well as several loaned pieces, will

be presented along with audio and video recordings of personal memories and opinions; primary oral narratives; and conversations on such topics as the nature of collecting, the creation of heroes in the past and present, the separation of private from public art and the difficulty in discerning authenticity.

Art from Africa: Long Steps Never Broke a Back includes installations, performances, film showings, lectures and artist-in-residencies representing diverse cultural classifications such as royal art from the Kom and Asante

kingdoms; masquerades from the Yoruba, Dan and Mende; powerfully encrusted Mande hunters' shirts; sculptures created for healing from the Kongo; and Masai beadwork collected by a community.