Ghana / 2000 / 5mins / Video Art, Experimental / English

Mawuli Afatsiawo’s Man in a Box was originally conceived as a two-channel projection. This composite version fuses the two elements into one charged space: The artist, his body naked and painted red, is crouched inside a small box. His contorted figure, moving within the enclosed space is seen against a collage of images: children playing a game, scenes of urban street life in Ghana, construction machinery, and colonial era monuments.

Mawuli Afatsiawo

Mawuli Afatsiawo was born in 1974 in Accra, Ghana. After attending school in London, he returned to Ghana in 1986, graduating with a BA in painting from the College of Art, Kwame Nkrumah University, Kumasi, in 1999. Afatsiawo’s interest in media began with a workshop in 1999 given by Marcel Odenbach, at the College of Art, Kumasi. He participated in the exhibition Blick-Wechsel: African Video Art, Berlin, 2001, and was artist in residence at IFA Galleries in Bonn, Germany, 2000. Afatsiawo has shown work in several exhibitions in Ghana, as well as the Hanover Expo, 2000; the Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil, 2002; the Kunsthalle Mannheim, Germany, 2003–04; and the African Film Festival, EAI, New York, 2003. In 2005 he was artist-in-residence at the Cornerhouse, Manchester, UK, where he initiated new works based on the economic exchange between Ghana and the world. Afatsiawo is creative director for Documenta AV Ltd, a communications design and production agency based in Accra, Ghana. Learn More