Frederick Ebenezer Okai Serves “Light Soup,” Both Literally and Metaphorically. Exhibition Review

ABSTRACT:

This review focuses on Frederick Ebenezer Okai’s exhibition Light Soup, which took place in Kumasi between October and November 2021. The show featured not only clay objects but also sound and video projections as well as the very space in which the works were exhibited. In addition, the artist served soup to visitors. In sum, the exhibition was a multisensory experience. Liberation and community were foregrounded as artist, space, objects, and the public became equal players in a theater of sorts. These interventions constituted the strategies Okai employed to activate a sense of belonging and freedom. The review points to some of the highlights of the exhibition. It also discusses the methods that the artist used to gather his material, as well as the processes he employed in executing his multi-disciplinary. The artist’s courage and irreverence are captured in the bold manner in which he gestures to the revolutionary in a spirit of play. At the center of Okai’s practice is the opening up of the aesthetic experience so that it touches everyone on common ground.