My work explores invasiveness whilst also looking at identity through ideas of memory, and culture. I reflect on cultural sustainability and the need to preserve ecosystems, which is to transform what is discarded or fading into something meaningful and alive. My interest is also in how materials carry meaning and ecological histories. I make handmade paper from invasive plants, collect and grind eggshells by hand to create tactile surfaces, on which I appropriate Sirigu wall paintings. These materials are sometimes fused with aluminium to start conversations around the issues of invasiveness, cultural preservation and sustainability.

I am not just appropriating for the beauty of this vibrant culture, but I want to use my work to spark a conversation surrounding cultural preservation. Not every culture may need to be preserved, but the question is, what culture needs to be preserved? The handmade paper I make is derived from Japanese knotweed which is considered invasive by ecologists and plant scientists. I am not advocating for invasive plants to be left alone to destroy ecosystems but rather to give them a new way to be viewed. The eggshell present in my work is a domestic object, a daily presence, something abundant and easily discarded. Growing up in Ghana, I helped my mother sell eggs every evening, and the shells were constant, everywhere. The way I approach culture in material sense in my work is how I reflect on my childhood, selling eggs and covered in eggshells which is a byproduct of a commodity I make my art with today.  It is a way of bringing that specific material memory into the work. The aluminum I use to coat parts of my Sirigu-patterns should not be seen as a neutral industrial material. It arrived in Ghana after independence and restructured domestic life, replacing earthenware cooking utensil locally known as “ayewa’, thatched roofing, calabash craft economies, within a generation. This for me is to reflect on the issue of invasiveness and cultural sustainability.

With this, transformation plays an important role in my practice. Where materials that would otherwise be cut, used for research and dismissed becomes a piece that asks to be looked at differently. So instead of viewing materials as a neutral medium, I approach it as a functional contributor in my creative process. My work investigates how artistic practice can reveal hidden relationships between humans and ecology.

I am inspired by Jane Bennet’s philosophical argument on the power of non-human objects. She proposes the idea of thing-power. The capacity of nonhuman materials to act, resist, and participate in the world in ways that exceed human intention. The handmade paper, the hand ground eggshells, and aluminium I use all have their kind of force. They hold their own identity, they are being brought into a conversation, but they always maintain what makes them unique. The paper with its fibre length and the eggshells with its broken yet visible structure. The aluminium for how it drapes around the eggshell like a piece of cloth. All these materials have their own ways of expressing themselves in my work.