A large, serpent-like LEGO sculpture has been put on display at the University of Wyoming.
Ekow Nimako, a Toronto-based, multidisciplinary artist has created a large-scale LEGO sculpture in order to showcase his take on Afrofuturism and the Ghanaian afterlife.
Nimako is not only inspired by not only the artistic, but the mechanical and engineering aspects of creating with LEGO as well.
“I think that LEGO play, It’s a pretty magical experience,” he said. “I think anybody that’s played with it, especially when they’re young, understands, there’s a tactile satisfaction that happens when you click and play and there’s a certain kind of freedom to create anything.”
Nimako acknowledged that his early years were filled with LEGO play, Transformers, GI Joes and cartoons.
“It definitely stemmed from that time when I was young, I wanted to do it forever. And you know, and I didn’t think that it would lead to me actually being able to do it forever,” he said. “But in hindsight, it feels like there was some kind of astral connection between my past self and the future self that would take those young dreams and make them manifest.”
Embarking on his artistic journey, he started exploring drawing, writing, music and sculpting as his creative outlets. Drawing in particular marked the moment when he knew he had an artistic eye. However, it was during his time in art school that a new dimension of his work unfolded as he began incorporating Lego elements into his projects, which sparked a new artistic path.
“The Transformers live action movie came out at that time. So it really galvanized me to want to play again, and capture that same feeling of when I was one watching cartoons and building,” Nimako Said, “Now [that I’m] older and listening to music and building, [it’s] the same kind of process.”
Creating with LEGO bricks presented a creative challenge, as it doesn’t only take artistic ability, but construction and engineering to get the look that he wanted. Nimako works in black, as it is sophisticated, and every part comes in the color.
“I appreciate that, when I’m creating humans or beings, because of using black parts – when they’re regarded, they’re regarded as black children, or black beings. And that way, it makes sure that their ethnicity can’t be denied,” he said.
“Asamando” is an artwork of a series which reimagines the sea voyage of Mansa Abu Bakr II, the visionary ninth ruler of the medieval empire of Mali who is said to have left his throne in order to travel across the Atlantic, over 100 years before Christopher Columbus.
“From academia, I get the sense that it’s not this concrete, irrefutable evidence that they did. But the story definitely captured my imagination,” said Nimako. “I decided to start building sculptures that represent a speculative view of that journey, and places that they may have wanted to [go].”
He wanted to change the narrative about about the coast of West Africa and ships, with there being a common association of the transatlantic slave trade.
“So it was important for me to change that narrative to something that was more positive, about science and expedition, and not about chattel slavery,” said Nimako.
“Asamando” is an outlier when it comes to the rest of the works in the series, as it represents the Ghanaian, or more specifically, the Akan, [which is] the meta ethnicity of people that exist in Ghana that believe Asamando as the afterlife.
“This is where the ancestors go when they die. Or when we die and become an ancestor, you go to Asamando, and it’s an underground city that is dark. But that is because the ancestors that exist, they are beings of light. So I felt like this would be a great kind of conclusion to that journey,” he said.
“I wanted to create it as the serpentine city because across the continent of Africa, various cultures and ethnic groups believe in spiritual practices that revolve around serpents and snakes holding spirits. So I thought it’d be interesting to give it that kind of a shape.”
