Larry Achiampong is a multi-disciplinary Ghanaian-British artist whose work explores identity in the digital age. Achiampong’s practice is deeply personal, engaging with the themes of cross-cultural identity, African diasporic experience, class, and the intersection between pop culture and the postcolonialism. His work captures his personal heritage and engages with ideas of the post-human experience through various mediums, such as sculptures, moving image, and photographic collage. He is known for his popular public commissions for Transport for London and Somerset House.
The Relic Traveller is an ambitious project started in 2017 by Achiampong combining performance, audio, moving image, and prose. Achiampong imagines a world in which western-European powers are in decline and a Pan African Union deploys the Relic Travellers’ Alliance to uncover the voices and experiences of lost diasporic histories across our planet. Flags and protective suits with insignia are drawn from the films’ speculative futures into our present, creating a symbolic language reflecting African lands, its people, and the shared struggles historically endured across the continent, moving towards a new day of prosperity.
Moving beyond Afrofuturism, Achiampong’s suit engages with the artist’s own terminology of 'sanko-time.' 'Sankofa,' a Ghanaian Twi term meaning 'to go back and retrieve,' embodies the principle that the past must be revisited to comprehend and heal the present, paving the way to a better future. Achiampong’s work exposes the complex narratives surrounding humanity’s relationship to the cosmos and exploration, as well as the lasting consequences of colonial histories in space missions and programmes.
This Relic Travellers’ Alliance: Assembly (Standing, Downward Stare) MK 001 (2022) suit, posed with downcast face, was exhibited as part of the Science Museum’s Science Fiction: Voyage to the Edge of Imagination in 2022-23. In the exhibition, it encouraged visitors to consider what communities are often left out of science-fictional futures and how artists are addressing this absence. The suit also speaks directly to the Science Museum’s mission to inspire futures. Its addition to our collections enables us to continue to share the complex stories of science and technology, championing the next generation of thinkers and explorers from diverse experiences and backgrounds. This important contemporary installation opens dialogue between art and science for broader audiences, especially when juxtaposed with the thousands of historical objects from our collection like Helen Sharman's Sokol space suit.
(Text by Anna Ferrari, Curator of Art and Visual Culture, Science Museum)
