ANO

How do we awaken?

Enter

ANO

Institute of Arts and Knowledge

ANO takes its name from ɛno, grandmother.

The name speaks to lineages of wisdom transmitted through presence, practice, story and relationship.

Founded in 2002, ANO creates spaces for transmission across generations, communities and forms.

At ANO, wisdom is transmitted through rhythm, sound, gesture, image and encounter, not only through words.

Anyane

Awakening

A part of the Ayan, or drum poem, Anyane, The Awakening. Drummed at dawn, it is where the Ɔdomankoma Kyerɛma, the Divine Drummer, awakens the spirits of the elements, the community, the ancestors and the divine. In it, silence is as important as what is drummed.

5:09

Recorded by Nana Oforiatta Ayim

Since 2002

The practice

ANO creates spaces for wisdom to become lived practice. Across generations, communities and forms, we explore how wisdom is transmitted through rhythm, sound, gesture, image, place and encounter.

A research session in 2019, beneath a chalkboard of research plansResearchKnowledge systems studied from within, with the people who hold them. Earthen rooms of Ghana Freedom, Ghana's pavilion at the Venice Biennale, 2019ExhibitionsFrom ONE at the Liverpool Biennial in 2002 to Ghana's first pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2019. The Mobile Museum lit at duskThe Mobile MuseumA museum that travels to where people are: Accra, the ten regions, Elmina, Popenguine. The Cultural Encyclopaedia online: a living encyclopaedia of African and diasporic worldsThe Cultural EncyclopaediaMore than 320 entries from 63 communities. A still from Agbako, 2015: painted performers in a street processionFilmAgbako, 2015 · In My Bones, 2018 · Ghana Freedom, 2021 The cover of A New Chapter: Ghana's Museums and Cultural Heritage, 2021PublishingKiosk Culture, 2015 · My Mother's Wardrobe, 2016 · The Universal Museum, 2021 · A New Chapter: Ghana's Museums and Cultural Heritage, 2021

Ayan · Afahye · Adae

The places

Three houses in Ghana and a museum that moves, each an embodiment of the practice: drawing on inherited knowledge of making and dwelling, expressed through raffia palm, the Akan courtyard, tropical modernism and sustainable wood, and shaped by ANO’s three movements: being, gathering and passing on.

Leads to

This season

October to December

Essay

A Place We Wish to Be

Fowota Mortoo, from the land at Ayan Fie, in Disegno. “The way to keep archives alive is by living them.”

Encyclopaedia

Shining the light on Ghana’s Permaculture Institute

Benedicta Gokah on Paul Yeboah’s teaching of farming that gives back to the earth. Environment · Akan · Brong Ahafo