John Akomfrah in conversation with Osei Bonsu

The filmmaker and screenwriter John Akomfrah’s atmospheric films probe the structure of memory, the diasporic experiences of migrants, and the historical, social, and political roots of post colonialism. A founding member of the influential Black Audio Film Collective (1982–1998), he continues to work with his long-term creative partners David Lawson and Lina Gopaul. He established a multifaceted visual style of his filmic essays, for which he combines archival material from different periods of history, writings from literary and classical sources, and newly shot sequences in distinctive and poetic montages.
In the Secession, John Akomfrah will show three film installations: Vertigo Sea (2015), Peripeteia (2012) and Mnemosyne (2010). A recurring motif in all of these works is water.

John Akomfrah was born in Accra, Ghana, in 1957 and lives in London.

Osei Bonsu is a British-Ghanaian curator, critic and art historian. The focus of his exhibition and publishing projects is transnational history of art and African art. In 2017, he curated the 10th edition of Satellites, an exhibition co-commissioned by Jeu de Paume and CAPC: Centre for Contemporary Art, Bordeaux. Since September 2019 Bonsu is Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art of Africa at Tate Modern, London.