Artist in RESIDENCE: Maku Azu
Ghanaian artist Maku Azu’s recent works are intensely personal and endearingly vulnerable. Taking a close relative’s funeral as a point of departure, the artist’s newest series deals delicately with an enduring theme throughout art history - the realities of life and death. Across these works, the artist deploys a uniquely gestural technique, blurring boundaries between distinct forms and thereby presenting a mourning family as one body united in both love and grief.
The collection examines the beauty in ephemeral moments shared between loved ones, manifesting both the fragility and the resilience of her people and celebrating the rituals of her culture. The artist draws the viewer’s attention to the traditions central to a Ghanaian funeral; she depicts her sister having her hair braided in preparation for the service and includes hints of the family cloth worn throughout by those closest to the deceased as a symbol of connection. In including these details, Azu commemorates the cornerstones of her culture while encapsulating the universal and inescapable experience of loss.
