ONLINE TALK: ‘Land as a Conscious Being’ with Photographer Nii Obodai

Friday 14 January 2022

In this online conversation, Nii Obodai presented his poetic series ‘Big Dreams’ and ‘Paradox of Paradise’.

Nii Obodai (b. 1968) has had an extensive photographic career over the last two decades, deploying the medium to record and document the ‘unseen’ and every day in Africa. Photographing in black and white, his contemplative images bring attention to the remains, traces, and scars of the past on the land, especially in Mozambique and Ghana, where Nii Obodai grew up. In his series ‘Big Dreams’, Nii Obodai tackles gold mining in Ghana, and the relationship between this country and the world economy. Created in Mozambique, his most recent project, ‘Paradox of Paradise’, explores the environment as a living and mythological space bound by oral and historical stories, as well as narratives of self-determination. The natural environments photographed by Nii Obodai hold conflicted stories, shaped by colonial and post-independent histories and, at the same time, informed by the custodians of cultural and spiritual heritage.

A selection of photographs by Nii Obodai and Justin Keene will feature in Resonances, Messums London’s first contemporary photography show. Through a selection of delicately composed and elusive images, this exhibition encourages us to ponder our relationship with nature and read cultural history through the environment.