ANO
Institute of Arts and Knowledge
A living ecology of knowledge, culture and practice.
Its question is how we awaken: to ourselves, to one another, to the living world, to what we inherit, and to what we might become. ANO explores what African cultural worlds can teach us about that awakening, and how those ways of being can generate new forms of art, knowledge, education, institutions and ecological relationship.
The name
ANO is named for the Akan word ɛno, grandmother, the fount of cultural wisdom, and for the Esperanto suffix -ano, which denotes belonging.
“…the festivals that were to me Gesamtkunstwerke, total works of art, almost always mediated to me by the old ladies, the grandmothers, who sat and watched all with the eyes of wisdom.”Nana Oforiatta Ayim
It began in 2002 with ONE, an exhibition at the Liverpool Biennial. Since then it has made exhibitions, films and publications, a museum that travels to where people are, and an encyclopaedia of cultural knowledge held in the terms of the communities it comes from. It has also built places for that work to live: a house in Osu, opened in 2017, land at Aburi, and a laboratory in Dzorwulu.
The foundation
Sunsum
ANO begins from Sunsum, the spirit that animates people, land and objects alike, in which everything is interconnected and interdependent.
In this world the material and the immaterial, the human and the more-than-human, those who came before and those who will come after are bound to one another.
Anibue
Anibue, in Twi, means the opening of the eye.
The word has also been associated with enlightenment, education and social progress. For ANO, its deeper resonance lies in the act of becoming awake to ourselves, to one another, to the living world, to what we inherit, and to what we might become.
Sunsum
What the world is: animated and interconnected.
Anibue
How we come to see it: the opening of the eye.
The Practice
How that way of seeing becomes work: researching, making, transmitting and sharing knowledge.
Ayan · Afahye · Adae
The three movements through which the practice is organised: becoming, gathering, passing on.
The practice
For more than two decades, ANO has explored how knowledge can be lived, transmitted and made visible from Africa and its diasporas.
Research
Knowledge systems studied from within, with the people who hold them.
Exhibitions
From ONE at the Liverpool Biennial in 2002 to Ghana's first pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2019.
The Mobile Museum
A museum that travels to where people are: Accra, the ten regions, Elmina, Popenguine.
The Cultural Encyclopaedia
More than 320 entries from 63 communities. Enter
Film
Agbako, 2015 · In My Bones, 2018 · Ghana Freedom, 2021
Publishing
Kiosk Culture, 2015 · My Mother's Wardrobe, 2016 · The Universal Museum, 2021 · A New Chapter: Ghana's Museums and Cultural Heritage, 2021
The places
Ayan Fie
Aburi
land · cultivation · rhythm · becoming
Afahye Fie
Osu
gathering · residency · encounter · making
Adae Fie
Dzorwulu
transmission · laboratory · learning · renewal
Mobile Museum
Wherever it stands
travel · display · encounter · return
The people
Those who make this ecology: founders, fellows, residents, contributors, elders and the communities whose knowledge it carries.
The history
2002
ONE, Liverpool Biennial. ANO's first exhibition, built around the courtyard of an Akan house.
2005
The Healers, at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; the first travelling salon, Royal Festival Hall.
2006
Living History, British Council, Accra. ANO's first project at home.
2010
Atlas Room, Visionary Africa, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels.
2015
The Cultural Encyclopaedia's first editorial workshop, Dak'art. The Kiosk Museum, Accra.
2017
ANO opens in Osu on 6 March, with Accra: Portraits of a City.
2018
The Sunsum Sessions. The Mobile Museum travels the ten regions of Ghana. Future Museums.
2019
Ghana's first pavilion at the Venice Biennale, curated by Nana Oforiatta Ayim.
2020
The Mobile Museum at Elmina. The Home Museum.
2022
The Mobile Museum crosses into Senegal, at Popenguine. Ayan Fie, the farm at Aburi, is designed.
2024
Fellows on the land: Reclaiming Afroecology.
2027
Twenty-five years.