“Why the Past is Never Dead…”
Rebecca Anne Proctor writes for Whitehot Magazine about Langlands & Bell: “The Past is Never Dead…” at Gallery 1957, Accra and reflects on the disturbing history shared between West Africa, Europe and the Americas.
“I want to see how this devasting part of history that we understand through these architectural buildings represents an extended or expanded narrative,” said Ghana-based American-born art patron and collector Nish McCree “This exhibition should live in a larger context. I think that others can benefit from it by experiencing it around the world.….”
……It is a new concept for artists who are not from Africa but instead from the West and from Great Britain, one of the nations most responsible for the transatlantic slave trade, to create art about monuments that have witnessed such horrors, particularly during a time when the topic of race, equal rights, and the underprivileged runs high in public awareness and on most political agendas. But does that mean it should not be done?