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Since then, you’ve established Manju’s creative studio, where you have collaborated with brands like Tommy Jeans and Burberry. With the latter, you created a photo series called ‘Together and One’ to celebrate Black History Month. 

The series was inspired by two prolific photographers, Kwame Brathwaite and Philip Kwame Apagya. In 2022, some of the images were selected to be part of The New Black Vanguard show, a landmark exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in London celebrating Black creativity. It was curated by Antwaun Sargent and supported by Burberry.

You’ve also done a lot of consulting for brands, like Polaroid and Show Studio. When doing so, is your role mainly to ensure that they represent African creativity in an authentic way? Often the continent can be misrepresented by Western media.

When Manju works with brands, we always make sure that the storytelling is in line with who we are as Africans. When we worked with Gucci, for example, it was very clear that a lot of people had no idea that we don’t use gendered pronouns in Ghanaian dialects. It’s very important to ensure that these stories are being told. The goal for Manju is for us to act as a bridge between creatives in Africa and brands or innovative institutions outside of the continent. We want to give them the spotlight they deserve.

A few months ago, you published Manju’s first digital zine. Is this indicative of the direction you want to take Manju in the future?

We want to see how we can venture into the world of publishing. Our long-term goal is to channel everything we do digitally into print. Our first digital zine celebrated fashion and innovative storytelling in Africa. We shot it in Tamale, the capital of the northern region of Ghana. This was very important to me: audiences see a lot of work coming out of Accra, but it’s important that the north of the country gets a spotlight too.

Your first print publication, ‘Voices: Ghana’s Artists in their Own Words’ is now available in the COLORS shop. How did this project come about?

During the pandemic, my publishers Twentyfour Thirtysix noticed that there were a lot of Ghanaian artists—from fashion designer Oswald Boateng to curator Ekow Eshun—who had the Ghanaian flag in their Instagram bios. There was a strong sense of community between them. After various conversations, we decided that it would be great to showcase this through a publication.

Initially, we wanted to feature a broad range of creatives from fashion and music too, but we decided that would make the book way too big! Instead, we focused on visual artists, including painters, photographers, performing artists, filmmakers, ceramicists, and textile designers. Ghanaian art is having a moment, but there were no concrete materials or documents to show the next generation of creatives who helped the scene develop. We wanted ‘Voices’ to fill that void.

Why was it so important to interview all of the 95 contributors, and make sure that they were represented, as the title says, in their own voices?

It was so beautiful getting to know all of these artists. We discussed their work, inspirations, and the future of Ghanaian and African visual arts. When you speak to one member of the Ghanaian creative community, then they love to recommend you other people to speak to as well! There’s a strong sense of community spirit among the talents here.

We featured everyone from new graduates to up-and-comers, established artists, and older creatives, like James Barnor, who turned 95 a few months ago! The book isn’t an exhaustive anthology, though. We want people to see it as a starting point.

Final question! You asked the artists in ‘Voices’ about the future of the Ghanaian creative scene. What do you think the future of creativity in Ghana, or Africa, looks like?

The future is bright! There’s an increasing interest in African creativity. Afrobeats originates from our continent, but now it’s being received globally. Fashion-wise, Chanel had their Metiers d’Art show in Dakar in 2022, and brands like Nike and Adidas have also been collaborating with a lot of Nigerian creatives. More recently, I saw that Dior collaborated with one of my favorite Cameroonian painters, Ludovic Nkoth. Gradually, people are learning that there is more to what they thought they knew about Africa.