Naming ceremony 2020

Curator: Cornelius Annor's oil painting, "Naming Ceremony" from 2020, strikes me immediately. Editor: There's a stillness, a muted joy about it. The palette is soft, and it feels very intimate, almost as if we’ve stumbled upon a private moment. Curator: Annor's work often depicts scenes from everyday life in Ghana, and you can feel the cultural richness through his choices of pattern and dress. It also demonstrates how important social activities contribute to contemporary Ghanaian culture. The title directs our attention to a cultural moment of naming a child, of great importance in West African cultures. I also want to point out the way Annor works the oil-paint is quite contemporary, looking less to Renaissance models than it does to twentieth century expressionistic forms of portraiture. Editor: Definitely, you sense the ritualistic importance. The white garments—such striking uniformity among some of the figures—they really draw you in. Is it to suggest innocence, or maybe the spiritual significance? Curator: Precisely. White is often associated with purity and celebration in such ceremonies. Note how the geometric patterns of the women’s dresses contrast with the otherwise plain background. I wonder if these distinct elements—the forms and geometric figures in oil, arranged asymmetrically—are a kind of coded message of modern and pre-modern modes of seeing, something of importance, I suspect, in a quickly globalizing culture. The surface itself, the weave of the canvas, seems part of the piece. Editor: It feels very raw, I get the sense of the painting still being fresh. And there's a weightiness, an emotional texture woven in as much as the figures present themselves. What I keep pondering is the viewer’s relationship: we are both inside and outside the depicted gathering. Curator: I agree. The intimacy invites you, yet the formality holds you at a slight remove, which makes for a fascinating tension. This balance surely engages questions about who we are as social beings but also as individual agents acting in cultural contexts. Editor: I am moved. I almost feel a memory forming as I look into their faces. Curator: And for me it makes one question how cultural memories inform our own sense of social responsibility. The artist surely would want that response, too.