Nana Oforiatta-Ayim

I studied Russian and Politics and worked as a researcher in the Eastern European Section of United Nations in New York, before turning to the politics of representation in African art. I did an MA in African Art History at the School of Oriental and African Studies with Professor John Picton, writing my thesis on contemporary Ghanaian art. After graduating from my MA, I was awarded an AHRC award to do a PhD on Ayan or Drum Poetics as an indigenous philosophical, aesthetic and analytical tool in Ghana and have presented my research at the Universities of Legon, London, Oxford and Cambridge.

I founded the platform ANO (http://anoghana.org), which integrates writing, film, arts, and research led projects that explore the construction of narratives and meaning, as well as the play of power.

I curated my first exhibition, One, a multidisciplinary exhibition of contemporary Ghanaian art at the Liverpool Biennial; worked as Associate Co-ordinator of Africa 05 at the British Museum with Dr. Augustus Casely-Hayford, co-ordinating London-wide exhibitions and events of contemporary African arts, and curated The Healers at The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; The Word and Afrofuturism at the Southbank Centre and consulted on Fashion in Motion Africa at the Victoria and Albert Museum; curated Living History, a photography exhibition at the British Council in Accra; Independence Days, the first Uk exhibition of Ghanaian photographer James Barnor at the Black Cultural Archives; curated Through The Lens, an exhibition of contemporary Nigerian photography at Bonham's, London and the young artist Ibrahim's first exhibition at KNUST Museum, in Kumasi.

I worked with African arts publisher Revue Noire in Paris and have written on contemporary African cultures and their trajectories for numerous publications, magazines and newspapers, including The National Geographic, The Statesman, The Dubliner, Arise, frieze, Kaleidoscope; books, like African Metropolitan Architecture and Visionary Africa; and have spoken on programmes like This is My Africa for HBO and Shoot The Messenger for Vox Africa.

After doing the authorised translation of Chris Marker and Alain Resnais' film on African Art, Les Statues Meurent Aussi, I began to explore the correlation between writing and film first in CrossOver, which translated the formal strategies of the Ayan, drum poetry into film, and was shown at festivals, like RAI and the Milan African film festival and nominated for various awards; then in my second film, A Shred of Identity , a tribute to writer Dambudzo Marechera, which was shown widely in exhibition; and in The Tightrope Walker, a book and film that I wrote in five languages that was first shown as an installation at NGBK in Berlin. In 2012, I travelled by road from West to East Africa with the group Invisible Borders, and made a film, Nowhere Else But Here, which was first shown at The New Museum Triennial in 2012. I also made my first fiction film, Tied and True, a tale of star-crossed lovers set in a hybrid futuristic landscape, in collaboration with artist Wu Tsang, which showed at Frieze films and on Channel 4.