Traslation by Luigina D’Introno
I always say like I want people whenever they leave an exhibition or they look at my work, I want them to feel that they’re a king or a queen mother for that day. So they feel royal for that day. You know, a lot of times we might not have anything that makes us feel rich or royalty, but I want our past to make us feel that power because those powerful legacies that we still hold to this day. So how do we now incorporate these images into our everyday system where we’re continuing to learn about our history in Ghana, while also learning about real history?
Rita Mawuena Benissan, visual artist and founder of the non-profit platform Si Hene, is currently in residence in London with Gallery 1957 and recently presented her solo exhibition One Must Be Seated, at the ZEITZ MOCAA in South Africa (13 November 24 – 05 october 25). In parallel, Benissan is among the artists at the Sharjah Biennial 16 (6 February – 15 June 2025). Her practice stems from research into the royal umbrellas of the Ghanaian Asante tradition, symbols of spiritual and political authority. From there, a work combining photographic archive, memory and textile materials has taken shape, with the aim of deconstructing the colonial distortion around traditional sovereignty in pre-colonial Ghana – where the “chiefs” were, in reality, legitimate kings with deeply rooted roles in society – in an attempt to recover an authentic historical narrative unfiltered by the Western vision.
Rita Mawuena Benissa, details. Photo courtesy of the artist and Gallery 1957
During the colonial era, the institution of chieftaincy was strategically manipulated. Legitimate rulers, once powerful, spiritual, and political leaders, were reduced to ceremonial figures, their authority undermined and recast through the lens of colonial control. That legacy still lingers today, shaping how many perceive traditional leadership, as something outdated, ornamental, or purely symbolic – how the artist explains – Through works like The Triumphant King Rules (Ɔhene a wadi Nkonim No Di Tumi) (2023), I’m intentionally reframing that narrative. This piece, which reimagines the royal umbrella as a monumental textile work embroidered with portraits of past chiefs, is an act of visual restoration. It brings these leaders back into focus, not as passive subjects of colonial record, but as active holders of power, dignity, and legacy. By incorporating archival imagery and treating the umbrella as both monument and archive, I am asserting that our traditions are not relics, they are dynamic, intellectual, and worthy of reverence.
The royal umbrellas are not the only monumental element. Behind them, Si Hene’s narratives and photographic Archives are incorporated. As the artist herself states: instead of the structure of being on a typical umbrella, now people are able, or institutions or museums or foundations are able to actually, you know, have or how tapestry work that has an archival image. So when people go to my exhibitions, they’re not just seeing the history of these umbrellas, but they’re also seeing the history of these photographs. And these photographs that might used to be black and white, but now they’re seeing these photographs come to life because now I’m able to incorporate different colors and like the question of what could have been or what was that photo back in that time? What were they dressing back in that time? And a lot of times I don’t think we questioned that in our process or when we think about who we are as Ghanaians – as the artist states.
In this conversation Rita Mawuena Benissan reflects on the power of images as tools of historical rewriting, kingship as an everyday experience and the urgency of restoring complexity and dignity to history. Through exhibitions, archives and intergenerational collaborations, her work seems to answer an important question: how can we bring light back to our countries?
Let’s start with the Si Hene fondation. What motivated you to create it?
Si Hene, meaning “Enstoolment” in Akan, is a foundation dedicated to preserving and promoting the cultural heritage and chieftaincy archives of Ghana. Established in 2020. The foundation’s mission centers around three core principles: Preservation, Accessibility, and Awareness. I grew up in the U.S., where there’s a strong culture of documentation, museums, and access to historical records, even when it comes to African history from an outsider’s perspective. But the more I searched for my own roots, the more I realized how little was readily available about Ghana’s rich, complex history, especially our chieftaincy traditions and local archives.
That contrast really stayed with me. Why is it that in Ghana, where so much of this culture originates, access is limited? Why are so many stories, photographs, and traditions not preserved, or simply disappearing?
I studied photography for my master in fine arts. In the USA, I had a professor who was Native American, and that was his PA. And literally he was archiving the Native American history in Wisconsin, which is being erased. And so literally I was archiving Native American archives, images, documentaries, documents, helping him go on site as well to some of these festivals or events that they will do and I will catalog them. So during that process helped me to also think about oh I can also do this for myself you know and I was also during the time of COVID so our school was you know locked down our studios was locked down so I had all these books and I had all these information so even I started my own archival database on Instagram called Si Hene which I post all of the images films that I you know find from my research onto this page and we’re now five years it’s kind of like a five years of my art practice and then also five years of my research practice as well.
We can say your archival work is attempting a shift in cultural paradigms; so how is Ghana perceived?
Yes, I do believe my archival work is attempting a shift in previous cultural paradigms, both in how Ghana is perceived externally and how we perceive ourselves internally. Historically, Ghana (and Africa more broadly) has often been represented through a colonial lens: as a place of the past, of loss, or of static tradition. Our narratives have too often been told about us, not by us.
Through my work, I’m challenging that. I want to show Ghana as a place of layered histories, deep intellectual traditions, innovation, and beauty. By focusing on chieftaincy, family archives, and visual culture, especially through materials like embroidery, photography, and installation, I’m making visible what has long been overlooked or simplified.
In doing so, I hope to shift perceptions: from seeing Ghana only through the lens of colonial trauma or tourism, to recognizing it as a space of cultural sovereignty, where tradition and futurism exist side by side. I want people, both in Ghana and abroad, to see our legacy not as something fading, but as something alive, evolving, and worthy of monumentality.
How do you feel the work in Si Hene contributes to creating new contemporary spaces to show and enhance Ghanaian culture inside the country?
So much of our history has been stored elsewhere, or appreciated more in international institutions than in our own communities. Si Hene is about shifting that dynamic.
By creating archival programs, workshops like Vanishing Past, and public-facing installations, we’re building new contemporary spaces of memory, where local stories, family histories, and traditional knowledge are not only preserved, but activated. These spaces aren’t always conventional museums or galleries, they’re pop-up labs, community centers, even open-air events that meet people where they are.
We’re not just showing culture; we’re inviting people to participate in it. To bring their photographs, their stories, their knowledge. That act of inclusion is powerful, it redefines what counts as history and who gets to tell it.
Which Si Hene recent projects have had a significant impact on local communities?
One of Si Hene’s most impactful recent projects has been The Vanishing Past Workshop, a 3-day community archiving initiative held in honor of legendary photographer James Barnor’s 95th birthday. The workshop welcomed over 150 participants and resulted in the digitization of more than 200 personal archives, including cherished family photographs and historical documents.
Participants learned how to preserve their family histories through storytelling, digitization, and oral history recording. We emphasized that the preservation of Ghana’s heritage doesn’t begin in institutions, it begins at home. The workshop created a welcoming space where people of all ages could reconnect with their roots, share stories, and celebrate the power of memory and history.
It was more than an event, it was a movement to show that everyone has a story worth archiving, and that by doing so, we build a stronger, more inclusive cultural memory for Ghana.
What are your Si Hene plans for the future?
Si Hene has ambitious and meaningful plans for the future, all rooted in our mission to preserve, celebrate, and make accessible Ghana’s cultural heritage. One of our major goals is to establish a physical cultural center in Ghana, a permanent space that will house our growing archive, host exhibitions, run educational workshops, and serve as a hub for research, community engagement, and creative exploration. We’re also expanding our collaborations with local and international institutions, including museums, galleries, and cultural organizations, to co-create exhibitions, share archival knowledge, and bring greater visibility to Ghanaian traditions on a global stage. We envision a space that doesn’t just preserve history, it brings it to life. A space where students can learn archival practices, where elders can share their knowledge, and where artists, researchers, and the public can engage with Ghanaian heritage in ways that feel relevant, accessible, and inspiring. This center will be a hybrid, part archive, part lab, part sanctuary.
Lately you have been in a continous exhibitive activity. Can you describe the works presented at the Sharjah Biennial 16?
At Sharjah Biennial 16, I presented You Must Cross and Seek, an installation honoring the heritage and everyday life of the Ewe people and my Anlo lineage in Ghana’s Volta Region. Through film, photography, sculpture, and embroidered tapestry, the work explores water as folklore, spiritual force, and source of life. Royal umbrellas act as sanctuaries, while a poetic film in Anlo Ewe evokes coastal traditions, storytelling, and ritual. A delicate fishnet connects land to sea, nature to spirit. The work ultimately asks the viewer: Are you ready to answer the ancestral call and cross the water into a new life?
You Must Cross and Seek is deeply rooted in Ewe cosmology, where water is not just a natural element, it is a living presence, often personified through deities like Mami Wata, and regarded as a bridge between the physical and spiritual realms. Ceremonial practices such as libation pouring, ritual cleansing, and ancestral invocation are central to Ewe belief systems, especially during rites of passage and festivals. The act of crossing water, whether metaphorically or physically, is symbolic of transformation, healing, and connection to one’s lineage. The fishnet motif in the work speaks to the livelihood of coastal Ewe communities, where fishing is both a practical craft and a metaphor for navigating life’s depths. Language, especially Anlo Ewe, is a vital part of these traditions, carrying oral histories, proverbs, and chants that preserve communal knowledge. The installation channels these elements to evoke a sacred, reflective space where viewers are invited not just to observe, but to spiritually cross into the ancestral and cultural consciousness the work embodies.
Your practice is deeply connected to the Ewe traditions. Does it stem from personal research?
Yes, I feel deeply connected to both Ewe and Asante traditions, and that connection is very personal. My maternal grandfather, Togbe Fosuhene III, was a chief. I never had the chance to meet him but knowing that I come from someone who held such a position of cultural and spiritual responsibility has shaped how I move through the world. His legacy links me directly to the Ewe chieftaincy traditions, and through family ties and research, I’ve also come to engage closely with Asante symbolism and ceremony.
To carry both of those traditions within me feels like a form of inheritance, not just of bloodline, but of duty. It’s why I work with objects like the umbrella, the stool, and textiles, they are not just materials, they are living symbols that speak to leadership, memory, and spiritual presence. Even though I never met my grandfather, I feel like my work is a dialogue with him. It’s my way of answering his call across time and honoring the legacy that I’m still learning to carry. (aggiungi le cose che ti ha detto lei nella call)
In the solo exhibition One Must Be Seated at the Zeitz MOCAA, works inspired by the Asante tradition can be seen. Can you talk about it?
At Zeitz MOCAA, my exhibition One Must Be Seated is centered on the enstoolment process, the traditional Ghanaian rite through which a leader is chosen and installed. The installation reimagines this sacred ceremony through a series of embroidered umbrellas, sculptural forms, photography, and textile-based works that guide the viewer through the symbolic stages of becoming a chief. The exhibition asks a central question: Are you ready to answer the call to this new position in life? It challenges viewers to consider the responsibilities of leadership, legacy, and self-transformation. At the heart of the work is also a tribute to the power of women, who play a crucial but often overlooked role in the enstoolment process, as kingmakers, they are the ones who identify, choose, and legitimize the next leader. By centering this narrative, the exhibition honors the wisdom, authority, and spiritual grounding that women bring to leadership traditions in Ghana, while inviting all who enter to reflect on their own readiness to sit in positions of responsibility, purpose, and ancestral alignment.
In my practice, I try to reimagine it because the royal umbrella is still used to this day. You see a lot of our chiefs, kings, and queen mothers use them, but I feel like to the everyday guardian, they forget what the umbrella is actually known for. They think the umbrella is just an object that is used to protect the king or that royal person from the sun, but actually the umbrella showcases the hierarchy or the power that that person has to another person that’s powerful. So in a festival or an event or a funeral, you can see maybe a hundred kings and chiefs and queen mothers, but you can tell by how many umbrellas or the type of umbrellas that they have which showcases who is more powerful.
The story I want to tell through this tradition is one of power, memory, and reclamation. Within the symbols, rituals, and regalia of our chieftaincy, especially the royal umbrella and the stool, exist deep, layered stories about who we are, where we come from, and how we relate to leadership, identity, and legacy. These aren’t just ceremonial objects; they are vessels of history and tools of empowerment.
Through my work, I want to honor these traditions while reimagining them for today. I want people to leave my exhibition feeling like a king or a queen for a day, not just in the aesthetic sense, but in how they carry themselves, how they reflect on their lineage, and how they see their place in the larger narrative of culture and history.
How do you make the traditional umbrellas of Asante customs and what materials do you use?
The umbrellas are constructed in collaboration with skilled artisans in Kumasi, following techniques passed down through generations. The structures are traditionally made from bamboo, chosen for its flexibility, durability, and cultural relevance. Once the structure is formed, it is covered with fabrics such as velvet, often in deep, regal tones. I then layer the surface with detailed embroidery, incorporating archival photographs, royal emblems, and symbolic motifs, each thread contributing to a visual archive of memory, power, and identity.
The totems draw on the symbolic language of clan emblems and ancestral markers. In Asante tradition, totems are sacred, often representing animals or objects linked to the soul of a family or stool. My totems are made using a mix of carved wood, and gold leaf. They are not fixed replicas, but reinterpretations, meant to invoke presence and protection
What are you inspired by for textile designs on umbrellas?
For the textile designs on the umbrellas, I’m inspired by a mix of archival imagery, royal symbolism, and ancestral narratives. or example, The Triumphant King Rules (Ɔhene a wadi Nkonim No Di Tumi) (2023) reimagines the royal umbrella as a monumental textile work, embroidered with portraits of past chiefs. The piece integrates archival photographs into the structure of the umbrella itself, layering historical memory into a contemporary sculptural form that speaks to victory, continuity, and legacy.
Another piece, We Give Power to You (2024) uses a hand gesture known as the “power sign”, a raised, open palm, as a central motif. In many traditional settings, this gesture symbolizes the transfer of power: from the community to their chief, or from the leader to their people. Embroidered into fabric, the gesture becomes both symbolic and intimate, an offering, a command, and a reminder of the relationship between authority and communal trust.
What questions does the audience ask when looking at your works?
When people encounter my work, they often ask two things right away: “Where do you get these photos?” and “Why umbrellas?” There’s always this curiosity, and sometimes even disbelief, around my source material. Most of the photographs I use come from institutional collections. I spend a lot of time building trust and gathering stories that were never formally recorded, piecing together a visual memory that’s often been forgotten or overlooked.
The umbrella always catches people off guard. They’re shocked at how central it is to my work, and even more shocked at how large the umbrellas are in real life. For many, it’s the first time they’ve seen a royal umbrella reimagined in this way, scaled monumentally and transformed into an art object that commands space and attention. In our culture, umbrellas symbolize authority and legacy, but I treat them like living archives, mobile monuments that carry layers of history, protection, and storytelling.
Another common reaction is when people step closer to the work. From a distance, many assume it’s a painting, but then they realize it’s embroidery. That moment of recognition always shifts something. They’re surprised by the texture, the depth, the hours of handwork, and the physicality of it all.
What are you working on right now? Is there any upcoming exhibition?
Right now, I’m in a really exciting season of residencies and research. I’m currently in London with Gallery 1957, doing a residency that involves deep archival research across several museum collections. After this, I’ll be traveling to the Wereldmuseum in the Netherlands to continue this research, specifically looking into their holdings related to Ghana. I’m creating new work in response to these collections, exploring how colonial archives can be reinterpreted through contemporary Ghanaian narratives. I’m also preparing for my first solo exhibition in London with Gallery 1957, which feels like an important milestone.
Currently, in London I’m also doing research on access to archives with the museum’s collection, like the VNA, the British Museum. So being able to say that you know, how doing get access to our archives? How do we get access to our history and actually tell our own narratives? Because we’re using the narratives from Western institutions, Western directors, Curator historians, but we don’t actually have a lot of historians in our own country that are able to tell the narrative because they’re getting sources that are, yes, are from their personal lives, but also combining those narratives with the Western eye, and a lot of times that’s like a contradiction.
Alongside that, I’m deep in production with my team on a major new project: an atrium installation at Zeitz MOCAA. This is incredibly special because I’ll be the first female artist to present an installation in the museum’s atrium space, and only the fifth artist in the museum’s history to do so, joining the company of icons like El Anatsui, Joël Andrianomearisoa, Nicholas Hlobo and Abdoulaye Konaté. It’s a huge honor and one of most ambitious projects I’ve worked on to date. The installation will open this summer, and I can’t wait to share it with the world.
Have you got any theme you want to explore in your upcoming exhibitions yet?
Yes, I’m currently focusing on the question of “what if?” What if Ghanaian royal history had been represented on the same monumental scale as European monarchs during the colonial era? What would it look like if a Ghanaian royal figure had a statue in London, the way Prince Albert does?
I’m also thinking about how many of the early visual records of Ghana, especially from the late 1800s, were in black and white, often just drawings or etchings made by outsiders. I’m interested in what happens when I bring those images into light and color. How does that shift the narrative? How does adding depth, scale, and materiality change the way we see ourselves and our history?
Rita Mawuena Benissan, born in Abidjan, Cote D’Ivoire in 1995, is a Ghanaian-American interdisciplinary artist, is on a mission to reimagine the royal umbrella, transforming it from a mere protective object into a potent symbol of Ghanaian identity.
In 2020, Benissan established Si Hene, a foundation dedicated to preserving Ghana’s chieftaincy and traditional culture, leaving a significant mark on Ghana’s artistic and historical narratives. Through her foundation, she played a pivotal role in the reopening of the National Museum of Ghana in 2022 and served as the Chief Curator at the Institute Museum of Ghana (Noldor Artist Residency) until 2022. Furthermore, Rita served as the artistic director for the Open Society Foundation’s Restitution Conference in Accra, demonstrating her commitment to cultural preservation and representation.
Benissan’s artistic prowess has garnered global recognition, with exhibitions at prestigious venues such as Arts + Literature Laboratory in Wisconsin (2021), the Foundation Contemporary of Art at Afrochella Festival (2021), Dak’Art – Biennale de l’Art Africain Contemporain at the IFAN African Art Museum in Dakar, Senegal (2022), and the group show “EFIE: Museum as Home” in Dortmund, Germany, Mitchell and Innes Gallery in New York (2023), “In the World Not of the World,” at Gallery 1957 in Accra (2023), 1-54 Marrakesh, in Morocco (2024) and participated in a group exhibition at the Venice Biennale (2024) called Unapologetic WomXn: The Dream is the Truth