TALK
Postbox Ghana and Hotel Archive
by Manuela Nebuloni and Theophilus Imani
Sunday 21 June h. 7.30 pm
Launched in two thousand and twenty, Postbox Ghana is a project that uncovers subaltern stories embedded within Ghanaian archival materials. Developed together with Courage Dzidula Kpodo, the research explores the country’s collective memory through the creation of an archive of postcards sent during the nineteen sixties, a decade marked by postcolonial fervour and the construction of numerous state infrastructures, including dams, ports, factories, and hotels.
Tourist infrastructures later became the focus of Manuela’s most recent project, Hotel Archive, a research journey that led her to stay in historic hotels built in Ghana between the nineteen forties and the nineteen eighties, in order to study their spatial organisation, learn their histories, and transform rooms and lobbies into temporary exhibition spaces.
Manuela will discuss these projects together with Theophilus Imani, a Ghanaian visual researcher.
Theophilus Imani
Theophilus Imani is a visual researcher whose work investigates the representation of the Black body within diasporic visual culture. His
Manuela Nebuloni
With a practice that embraces both research and the active use of archives, Manuela Nebuloni structures her investigation of Ghana as a process of learning and inquiry. Since 2020, she has been working on the construction of a physical archive of postcards and ephemera from the sixties as a tool for critically reflecting on the present, with a particular interest in amateur artistic production as a space for experimentation. She is the founder and a member of Postbox Ghana, a project exploring collective memory through material culture.