Serge Attukwei Clottey
photo Lance Gerber, courtesy of Desert X
Gold Falls
26.651056, 37.992889
AlUla, Saudi Arabia
Desert X AlUla 2022
I discovered Serge Attukwei Clottey’s work through a talk hosted by Zócalo in March 2023, Can Decolonization Explain Everything. (link takes you to the video recording).
The artist is known for a project he entitled Afrogallonism, which he describes as “an artistic concept to explore the relationship between the prevalence of the yellow oil gallons in regards to consumption and necessity in the life of the modern African.”
Born in Ghana, Serge Attukwei Clottey works across multiple disciplines, exploring narratives of trade and migration. The prevailing material is the Kuofor jug, a yellow plastic gallon container that is ubiquitous in Accra. From the Desert X site (his work was displayed in Saudi Arabia in the 2022 version) “Historically used to import cooking oil and frequently repurposed as vessels for water storage, the containers are cut into small tiles and bound with copper wire. The jugs are used as means to raise awareness of the water access crisis and to call local communities into action.
Through cutting, drilling, stitching, and melting materials, Clottey’s installations are bold assemblages that act as means of inquiry into global consumption, climate change, and the languages of form and abstraction.”
Gold Falls plays with the tension of oil and water, wealth and scarcity.