Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1957 Accra, Ghana

Year of Migration to the UK: 1966

Biography

Filmmaker John Akomfrah was born in Accra, Ghana in 1957. His parents were actively involved in anti-colonial movements in Ghana. His father was a member of the National Liberal Council (NLC) cabinet. In an interview conducted by Sukhdev Sandhu, Akomfrah stated that his family left Ghana for London after the 1966 coup because his mother's life was in danger, further commenting that his father had died in part because of the struggle leading up to the coup. In London, Akomfrah attended school in west London and went on to study Sociology at Portsmouth Polytechnic, graduating in 1982. In the same year, he co-founded the Black Audio Film Collective with David Lawson and Lina Gopaul. Their first film, Handsworth Songs (1986), explored the events surrounding the 1985 riots in Birmingham and London. The collective, dedicated to examining issues of black British identity through film and media, was active until 1988.

In 1998, Akomfrah co-founded - again with Lina Gopaul and David Lawson - Smoking Dogs Films, a film and television production company conceived to produce works of imagination and innovation using film, television and new technologies. From 2001 to 2007, he was a governor of the British Film Institute (BFI) and from 2004 to 2013, governor of the film organisation Film London. He has taught at several universities and institutes, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Brown University, New York University, Westminster University and Princeton University. In 2013, he became the University of Toronto's Artist-in-Residence.

In 2008, Akomfrah was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to the film industry and in 2017, Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to art and film making. He is also the winner of the European Cultural Foundation's Princess Margaret Award in 2012, and has received honorary doctorates from the University of the Arts London (UAL) and Goldsmiths, University of London in 2013, and from Portsmouth University in 2014. In 2017, Akomfrah won the biennial Artes Mundi prize and was later named Artist of the Year by Apollo Magazine Awards.

Akomfrah has produced many pieces exploring themes related to the diaspora, climate-change and racial discrimination. His 2012 three-screen installation, The Unfinished Conversation, is a moving portrait of the cultural theorist Stuart Hall's life and work. Peripeteia (2012) is an imagined drama visualising the lives of individuals included in two 16th century portraits by Albrecht Durer. Mnemosyne (2010), which exposes the experience of migrants in the UK, questions the notion of Britain as a promised land by revealing the realities of economic hardship and casual racism. In 2015, Akomfrah premiered his three-screen film installation Vertigo Sea. Fusing archival material, readings from classical sources and newly shot footage, the piece focuses on the disorder and cruelty of the whaling industry and juxtaposes it with scenes of many generations of migrants making epic crossings across the ocean in search of a better life. In 2017, Akomfrah presented Purple at the Barbican, London, a six-channel video installation addressing climate change, human communities and the wilderness and John Akomfrah: The Unintended Beauty of Disaster at the Lisson Gallery (13 April – 10 July 2021). In 2023 he was honoured with a knighthood in the UK honours list, and following this became the artist to represent Great Britain in the 2024 Venice Biennale.

Related organisations

Black Audio Film Collective (co-founder)
British Film Institute (governor)
Brown University (professor)
Film London (governor)
Goldsmiths, University of London (honorary doctorate)
Massacusetts Institute of Technology (professor)
New York University (professor)
Portsmouth Polytechnic (student)
Portsmouth University (honorary doctorate)
Westminster University (professor)
Princeton University (professor)
Smoking Dogs Films (co-founder)
University of Toronto (artist-in-residence)
University of the Arts, London (honorary doctor)

Selected exhibitions

John Akomfrah: The Unintended Beauty of Disaster, Lisson Gallery, London (2021)
New Art Exchange, Nottingham, UK (2019)
BALTIC, Gateshead, UK (2019)
ICA Boston, MA, USA (2019)
Ghana Pavilion, 58th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy (2019)
Museu Coleção Berardo, Lisbon, Portugal (2018)
Imperial War Museum, London, UK (2018)
New Museum, New York, NY, USA (2018)
'Strange Days: Memories of the Future', New Museum x The Store, London, UK (2018)
Bildmuseet, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden (2015, 2018)
Nasher Museum at Duke University, Durham, DC, USA (2018)
SFMOMA, San Francisco, CA, USA (2018)
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Spain (2018)
Barbican, London, UK (2017)
'Restless Earth', La Triennale di Milano, Milan, Italy (2017)
Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, UK (2017)
Prospect 4, New Orleans, LA, USA (2017)
Unfinished Conversations, Museum of Modern Art, New York City, NY, USA (2017)
Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK (2016)
Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen, Denmark (2016)
STUK Kunstcentrum, Leuven, Belgium (2016)
History is Now: 7 Artists Take On Britain’, Hayward Gallery, London, UK (2015)
British Art Show 8 (2015-17)
‘All the World’s Futures’, 56th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy (2015)
Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Michigan, USA (2014)
‘Africa Now: Politcal Patterns’, SeMA, Seoul, South Korea (2014)
Tate Britain, London, UK (2013-14)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [John Akomfrah]

Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.

John Akomfrah artist