Ghanaian sculptor Kwame Akoto-Bamfo is assembling thousands of hand-finished cement heads at the Nkyinkyim Museum in Nuhalenya-Ada, about 180 kilometres from Accra, with a stated target of 11,111 sculptures. The museum, which he founded in 2019 through his non-profit Ancestor Project, has become the base of a body of work that has been shown in Ghana, the United States and other countries.
Akoto-Bamfo was born in 1983 and grew up in Accra and Ghana’s Eastern Region. He holds a BFA in Painting and Sculpture and an MFA in Sculpture from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), graduating from the College of Arts with first-class honours.
He taught briefly at Radford University in the United States before working full-time as an artist. His practice also includes multimedia, animation, illustration and digital design, and he draws on Akan symbols and design elements.
His figures are known for close attention to facial expression, hair, clothing and other fine detail. The faces are created from imagination and are not copies of named individuals, and many of the heads are cast in cement. The approach connects to the Akan tradition of making memorial portrait heads of deceased royals and elders, a practice that was disrupted during the colonial period. The museum presents his work as a way of reviving that tradition.
The tradition he draws on is not limited to the dead. Akan sacred funerary portraiture also includes portraits of the living, a trait shared by many African funerary portrait traditions, so his heads reflect a continuing relationship between families, ancestors and the living community.
His first large public installation, Faux-Reedom, placed more than 1,200 cement heads in Accra, including at the Kwame Nkrumah Mausoleum, and was linked to Ghana’s 60th independence anniversary in 2017.
In 2018, his Nkyinkyim installation was shown at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. His Blank Slate Monument was unveiled in Ghana in 2019 and toured United States cities from 2021, with stops reported in Selma, Harlem, Times Square, Louisville, Detroit, Chicago and Atlanta.
The museum sits in an open field beside his studio in Nuhalenya, Ada. Its sacred area holds thousands of heads, in tribal and hyper-realistic styles, and the collection is set to reach 11,111. The word Nkyinkyim is an Akan term, and the project is described as an evolving museum that spans Africa, Europe and the Americas.
An annual Ancestor Veneration ceremony brings together participants from the Akan, Ga-Dangme, Yoruba and Ewe communities, along with African Americans from the diaspora. The third was held in October 2024. The museum’s website lists a 2026 ceremony without a confirmed date. Visitors are asked to remove their shoes, knock before entering the sacred area and avoid photography that commercialises the work.
Kwame Akoto-Bamfo won the 2015 Kuenyehia Prize for Contemporary Ghanaian Art, which carried GH₵20,000 and business development support. He was named Influential Artist of the Year at the 2019 GUBA Awards and is a fellow of the Yale Directors Forum at the Yale Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage. He has also appeared in the 2020 series Enslaved and the 2022 documentary short The Lost Ancestors.
Africa Global News publication.