Artists from Ghana, Togo, Benin and Norway explore how contemporary creativity can reconnect communities with their histories.

In Kamina, a village near Atakpamé in Togo, cultural heritage became more than something to remember. For two weeks, it became material to question, reshape and carry into the future.

The closing exhibition of the 2026 Karp Kamina Artists and Researchers Residency, held on Sunday, October 19, brought together paintings, sculptures, masks, ceramics and installations created through cross-cultural encounters.

The gathering offered a compelling reflection on how artistic collaboration can keep inherited knowledge relevant to changing societies.

Beyond Preserving the Past

Bringing together practitioners from Togo, Benin, Ghana and Norway, the residency created space for different artistic traditions to meet.

Ghanaian artists Frederick Bamfo and Livingstone Amoako joined fellow creatives, researchers and members of the Dzogbeadzi Music and Dance Group in an environment shaped by experimentation, performance and shared inquiry.

The significance of such encounters extends beyond the finished artworks. When artists work outside familiar studios, engage with local communities and exchange perspectives across generations, cultural knowledge can acquire new forms without losing its historical roots.

For Ghana and its neighbours, where oral traditions, craftsmanship, music and communal ceremonies remain important carriers of identity, this approach offers another way to engage younger audiences with heritage.

Rather than treating tradition as a fixed inheritance, artists can interpret it through contemporary materials, ideas and experiences.

A Regional Platform for Creative Exchange

Karp Kamina’s interdisciplinary approach also challenges the idea that meaningful art must remain within conventional galleries.

By engaging traditional, historic and public spaces, the residency places creative expression closer to the communities whose histories inform it.

Its lasting promise lies in the relationships established between practitioners and cultures.

The October exhibition marked the end of the residency, but its larger ambition reaches further: building connections through which African heritage can be examined, shared and reimagined internationally.

At Kamina, preserving culture meant allowing it to keep moving.

In Atakpamé, Ghanaian artist Dr. Frederick Bamfo transforms discarded garments into interactive spaces where children, cultural memory and collective play meet.

A discarded shirt can carry more than the memory of a former owner. In the hands of Ghanaian artist and academic Dr. Frederick Bamfo, it can become part of a place where children gather, games begin and strangers find reasons to connect.

His installation, The Games Feast, developed during the Karp Artists’ and Researchers’ Residency in Atakpamé, Togo, gives second-hand clothing a new social life.

Using Broni Wawu garments purchased at a local market, Bamfo creates enclosed and open environments designed for participation rather than distant observation.

The choice of material speaks to a familiar West African reality. Second-hand clothing circulates through markets, connecting consumers to international trade networks while raising questions about consumption, waste and the afterlife of textiles.

Often valued primarily for their usefulness or affordability, these garments become something different in Bamfo’s work: vessels of memory and possibilities for human connection.

The installation’s defining feature, however, is not simply its reuse of clothing. It is what happens inside these improvised spaces.

Children help shape the project’s collaborative spirit, while games such as ludo and oware, alongside dancing and skipping, turn the artwork into a setting for shared experience.

These activities draw on familiar forms of play that have long helped communities build relationships and pass cultural knowledge between generations.

Here, they also challenge conventional ideas of an art installation as something to admire without touching or entering.

For Bamfo, the transformation is both material and social. Clothing once associated with individual bodies becomes a collective environment, while everyday games become tools for participation.

In Atakpamé, The Games Feast suggests that the most meaningful second life of a discarded garment may not be another wardrobe, but a space where people come together.

From Ghana’s traditional craftsmen to self-taught street artists, creative excellence rarely follows a single road.

An artist may spend years in a university studio learning perspective, composition and art history.

Another may acquire the same confidence with materials through years of observation, experimentation and work passed down through generations. Which deserves greater recognition?

At Hotel Hong Kong in Atakpamé, Togo, this question became a starting point for a wider conversation about who gets to define artistic excellence.

Beyond the walls of the academy

The panel discussion, organised as part of the ongoing Karp Kamina Artists and Researchers Residency, brought together Ghanaian artists Frederick Bamfo, Livingstone Amoako and Ray Agbo.

Moderated by Kojo Biney, with Samuel Olou, the residency’s director, translating into French, the conversation examined the opportunities and limitations of formal and self-directed artistic education.

Art academies offer structured training, experienced mentors, studio facilities and access to professional networks.

Yet these advantages do not automatically produce originality. Outside institutional settings, artists often develop distinctive approaches through everyday encounters, community knowledge, apprenticeships and experimentation.

Ghana’s traditions offer another lesson

Ghana’s fantasy coffin makers illustrate why artistic knowledge cannot be measured by academic qualifications alone.

These craftspeople transform wood into elaborate forms representing professions, personal identities and family histories.

Their expertise is built through practical experience, inherited techniques and close relationships between makers and their communities.

Such traditions challenge institutions to reconsider what counts as legitimate artistic training and whose work deserves exhibition space, critical attention and commercial support.

Making room for different creative journeys

The discussion at Hotel Hong Kong did not present formal education and independent practice as opposing forces.

Instead, it highlighted the need for an art world that values technical knowledge without dismissing unconventional paths.

For African artists navigating galleries, museums and international exhibitions, that distinction matters.

Creativity may begin in a classroom, a workshop or on the street. The greater challenge is ensuring that opportunity does not depend solely on where an artist learned to create.