Larry Achiampong
What I Hear I Keep, 2020
Achiampong’s flag What I Hear I Keep, commissioned by De La Warr Pavilion (2020), was installed atop the Good Hotel in the Royal Docks, viewable from the shore and in the air.
What I Hear I Keep is a flag created by British-Ghanaian artist Larry Achiampong. It forms part of a series of Pan African flags that the artist has created to highlight and celebrate African identities. Achiampong incorporates green, black, and red to reflect the land, the people and the struggles the continent has endured, and yellow-gold colour to represent a new day and prosperity. The formation of 54 stars represents each of the countries on the African continent, while the chevron shapes allude to the act of sending and receiving messages that resonate. The artwork is the graphic used for Sanko-time. What I Hear I Keep also forms part of the artist’s ongoing multi-site and multi-media Relic Traveller project. Taking place across various landscapes and locations, the project builds upon a postcolonial perspective informed by technology, agency and the body, and narratives of migration.
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Biography
Larry Achiampong’s solo and collaborative projects employ imagery, aural and visual archives, live performance and sound to explore ideas surrounding class, cross-cultural and post-digital identity. His work examines his communal and personal heritage – in particular, the intersection between pop culture and the postcolonial position, seeking to reveal the entrenched socio-political contradictions in contemporary society.
Achiampong has worked on commissions, residencies and exhibitions with major institutions both in the UK and internationally including Tate, the Venice and Singapore Biennales, Somerset House and Art on the Underground (his commission for Westminster Station, Pan African Flags for the Relic Travellers’ Alliance, was installed until February 2020). Achiampong currently serves on the Board of Trustees at Iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts) and was a 2019 recipient of the Paul Hamlyn Award for Artists and awarded the Stanley Picker Fellowship in 2020.
Image:
What I Hear I Keep (commissioned by De La Warr Pavilion © 2020 Larry Achiampong. Courtesy of the Artist and Copperfield London)
