Gallery 1957 is proud to present LIGHTYEARS OF US, the inaugural solo exhibition by Ghanaian artist Denyse Gawu-Mensah, winner of the Yaa Asantewaa Art Prize 2024.
Opening on October 30th in Accra, the exhibition draws on Gawu-Mensah’s rich family archive of photographs from the 1960s and 1970s, depicting Ghana’s dynamic post-independence period, reconstructing personal and collective histories into tactile records of time. Working with image transfer techniques from digital collages Gawu-Mensah transforms vintage photographs into fragile yet enduring records of personal and collective history that she layers manually into textiles. Her practice engages the textures of memory—faded, worn, but never lost—while exploring what is passed down, and what disappears, across generations.
The astronomical unit distance of the lightyear in Denyse Gawu-Mensah's exhibition title refers to a structurally relative conception of time, one that underpins the nature of Gawu-Mensah's work. Each day, we perceive the sun as it was eight minutes ago — a delay caused by the time it takes for light to reach us. This dissonance between perception and reality is a metaphor for Denyse’s own exploration of time, specifically, her journey through the Ghana’s 1960s and 1970s. Lightyears in this regard are also a poetic invocation to photography — the foundation of Gawu-Mensah’s practice — and its elemental core: light itself.
Curated by Angelica Litta Modignani, the exhibition unfolds in two parts; the first evokes domestic interiors familiar to Ghanaian households, The show reflects Gawu-Mensah's tribute to her culture, her desire to share the intimacy of her origins, her home, and the domestic spaces lovingly preserved in memory. The second part re-stages 1960s photo studios. The recreated studio honours the aesthetic legacies of iconic African photographers including Samuel Fosso, Jean Depara, Sanlé Sory, and Ghana’s James Barnor. In this space, Gawu Mensah revives the fashion, style and spirit of a cultural renaissance that swept across Africa during the post-independence era; a contagious time of optimism, creativity and liberation.
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