Lois Selasie Arde-Acquah and Gallery 1957 present ‘In Echoes of Mundane Mindfulness’ an exhibition that seeks to reclaim the quiet power of repetition by elevating the seemingly mundane gestures of mark-making, cutting and stitching. Arde-Acquah’s mesmerising, monochromatic works are both abstract and topographical, meditating on the intersections of time, labour and resilience. Through a rigorous studio practice rooted in collective care, the artist pushes the boundaries of what constitutes our individual selves and our enduring connection with the infinite.
‘In Echoes of Mundane Mindfulness’ opened with an immersive installation with a durational performance which span 5 hours, where audiences experienced the artist’s painstaking creative practice transcend into a spectacle of stamina and radical presence. They also witnessed Arde-Acquah’s repetitive and transformative process while listening to the rhythms and echoes of our daily gestures and discovering the sacred potential of mindful creation. With this exhibition, Arde-Acquah seeks to reclaim the quiet power of repetition, transforming a seemingly mundane gesture into a journey, into meditation on time, labour and materiality. She encourages us to listen to the rhythms of the ordinary, to feel the echoes of our daily rituals and gestures and to get lost in their physical manifestation.
Through the delicate balance of mark-making, cutting, and stitching, patterns emerge on canvas, leatherette and paper. This exhibition poses the question: what if, instead of depleting meaning, repetition allows us to re-engage with ourselves and the world? Arde-Acquah’s work proposes that repetition, when done mindfully, can lead to new ways of seeing and being, creating space for reflection and growth. The exhibition will be on view until the 14th of January 2024.
Lois Selasie Arde-Acquah (b. 1992) is a Ghanaian artist living and working in Ghana. She creates hand drawings of her intricate monochrome patterns on various surfaces such as paper and canvas to explore the relationship between repetitive actions and their impact on the mind and the body. Her initial process of hand drawings with black markers has evolved into cutting out these patterns from black synthetic leathers into creating something that seems sculptural. She is also the winner of the 2023 Yaa Asantewaa Art Prize.
Arde-Acquah’s works have shown in group exhibitions such as ‘The gown must go to Town’ (2015), ‘Cornfieldsin Accra’ (2016) and ‘Orderly disorderly'(2017) all organised by blaxTARLINES, Kumasi. Together with Tanzanian multi-disciplinary cultural practitioner Kathleen Bomani, South African visual artist Lebohang Kganye, Sheila Natiende and a few others, she partook in a performative group installation in 2017 titled ‘Nathi. Aha. Sasa’ curated by a German-Ghanaian artist and curator Zohra Opoku at Wiener Festwochen, Vienna-Austria. In 2009, she performed in ‘Palimpsest’ an all-female, multidisciplinary group exhibition at Gallery 1957, Accra–Ghana.
