Topographies of the Dark

A series of 'sculptural paintings' made in Accra by Australian visual artist Virginia Ryan, resident in Italy. Her textured assemblages in overlaying densities of black are featured in the accompanying booklet to the CD of the same name,music inspired by the series. Ryan’s Topographies of the Dark paintings are created from recycled flip-flops washed up on Accra’s beaches. Like the water rolling in and out along the Black Atlantic coast, these once-worn shoes embody histories of movement and passage, crossings close and far.

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The Topographies of the Dark CD similarly tells tales of musical crossings that connect Africa, Europe, and America in the diasporic grooves of jazz improvisation. Accra Trane Station is Nii Noi Nortey and Nii Otoo Annan. Nortey is inventor of the afrifones, African winds with saxophone mouthpieces, and Annan plays the APK, or African percussion kit, a battery of African bells and drums together with jazz cymbals.