Serge Attukwei Clottey Revives Jamestown’s Rituals

Walk through the historic fishing district of Jamestown, Accra, on any given day, and chances are you will encounter a funeral. For Ghana’s Ga people, funerals are vibrant, joyous occasions; in a place where Christianity and indigenous practices coexist, death is celebrated alongside life. It may not be surprising, then, that Serge Attukwei Clottey’s dazzling exhibition, ‘[Dis]Appearing Rituals: An Open Lab of Now for Tomorrow’ – an ode to Jamestown – is full of ghosts. Uncanny apparitions lurk behind glistening portals or hang suspended from ceilings at each turn. These spectres, however, are not to be feared or mourned.

The exhibition title alludes to how life and death coalesce: as histories, traditions and rituals die out, they are reborn with each generation in new forms. Here, the ritual is Jamestown itself, a place continually negotiating its survival amid socio-economic, environmental and infrastructural concerns. As co-curator Allotey Bruce-Konuah notes, the ‘first wave of the death of Jamestown’ began in the 1960s, when Ghana’s main port was relocated to Tema, some 30 kilometres away. More recently, the 2020 harbour redevelopment led to the demolition of informal settlements and displacement of residents.

Cascading cellular sheets fall from the ceiling, forming undulating waves of yellow, gold and bronze. Clottey’s signature monumental tapestries are formed by cutting the ubiquitous plastic jerrycans known in Ghana as ‘Kufuor gallons’ into small squares and stitching them together with copper wire – a practice coined by the artist as afrogallonism. Originally made for transporting oil and repurposed for carrying water and fuel, the vessels’ inclusion invokes migration, water scarcity, consumption and the climate crisis. Throughout the exhibition, light pours through the tapestries’ fissures, casting spectres that dance across the industrial concrete floor.

In the introductory room, Sea View (all works 2025) comprises walls punctured with portals, revealing cartoonish figures with elongated limbs and bulbous eyes (Dance Battle; Game Bois), inviting us to look but not get too close. These apertures speak to the layers of multigenerational creativity on which the artist builds: Clottey’s father is an artist, while the pastel, oil and charcoal drawings were made in collaboration with his young son. The room’s focal point is the glistening mosaic Sea Never Dries II, its just-legible titular affirmation – a common phrase written on local fishing boats – expressing both faith in the ocean’s abundance and its centrality to Jamestown’s communities. 

In the centre of one large room, a black fishing net titled Spotlight hangs torn, like an eerie apparition: a repository of memories, secrets and stories past. This sentiment is echoed in Memory Lane, a nearby bathroom-like space featuring urinals fashioned out of gallons. Visitors are invited to ‘whisper to the wall, confess to the cracks’ by writing on the black walls with chalk. The interactive element – central to Clottey’s practice – reminds us of the value of vulnerability and shared experience in the most unexpected of places.

A moment of repose arrives in the exhibition’s most immersive installation, Jamestown nshonaa (Jamestown Beach). You peel back a worn blue net; before your eyes can adjust to the darkened space, the soles of your feet are cushioned by soft sand, signalling a shift to the Jamestown shoreline. All the senses are summoned here; we cast our eyes onto a fishing boat and rusty corrugated metal shacks as the smell of smoke and sea – entwined in the fishing nets – hangs heavily in the air. We are mollified by the sounds of the tide lapping against the shore, played through a meditative film that wholly envelops and grounds the space.

‘[Dis]appearing Rituals’ is so dynamic that you neglect to mourn what has passed. Here, Clottey boldly reimagines Jamestown not as a site of demise and decay but as one of fertile and perpetual renewal, at once alluring, hopeful and alive. 

Serge Attukwei Clottey’s ‘[Dis]Appearing Rituals: An Open Lab of Now for Tomorrow’ is on view at Gallery 1957, Accra, until 3 January 2026

_{Main image: Serge Attukwei Clottey, ‘[Dis]Appearing Rituals: An Open Lab of Now for Tomorrow’ , 2025, exhibition view. Courtesy: the artist and Gallery 1957}