Kwabena Agyare Yeboah is a writer and transdisciplinary historian based in Accra.Our conversation with Kwabena embraces the interactions of different knowledge forms and disciplines with history. For example, he traces the history of Accra’s residential segregation back to its public health origins in the 1890s to cement the idea of the inner complexities of seeming banal outcomes in pursuit of what he called “valid answers” instead of “accurate answers”. Kwabena views time as a material for analysing the past (thus, his definition of history), drawing references to how artists may use materials to tell a story. We interrogate Kwabena on the ownership of art and its relationship with the capitalist elite, to which he cites the historical precedence of art in Africa as a communal good. Kwabena argues that in “saving capitalism” the “academy” and practitioners must be willing to learn from the people to allow the community to wholesomely own the narrative of the art. In talking about community ownership, Kwabena believes the people already know the art around them: the materials, the processes and the stories, and advocates for a new breed of ordinary people, not professionals, emerging as art critics and writers. Our conversation segues into the inherent differences between African knowledge forms and the West’s, the claiming of indigenous discoveries as Western and the understanding of African ways of knowing, exemplified in medicine and the arts, and why history must be retold and reclaimed. We also take a historical look at contemporary art from the global stage, tracing it to its Ghanaian origins and influencesWe explore Kwabena’s birth to writing and poetry, his influences and his work. We conclude with thoughts on Nkrumah’s historical complexity and an insight into Kwabena’s favourite piece of Ghanaian history; a powerful feminist sex worker and politician who may have been pivotal in Ghana’s early politics. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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