Worldfaze is proud to open its 2025 exhibition calendar with Flower Power: An Arewa Story from the South, a solo showcase by Al Hassan Issah. This exhibition marks a significant effort to support emerging local artists while spotlighting evolving cultural narratives from West Africa.
Issah’s work is a layered reflection on the changing identity of the traditional Hausa Arewa wedding ceremony, once rooted in spirituality, modesty, and communal values. Today, that ceremony has become increasingly influenced by luxury, visual performance, and global aesthetics. Through richly textured canvases that merge Victorian silhouettes, Arabian motifs, and West African traditions, Issah interrogates this transformation.
His artworks, often adorned with rhinestones, metallic fabrics, and gold accents, blend architectural ambition with storytelling. Female figures dominate the scenes, not as brides, but as cultural protagonists navigating the intersection of religion, tradition, and modernity. These women convey strength and grace through posture and costume, challenging assumptions about modesty and representation in Islamic art.
Drawing inspiration from fashion, design, and the 1960s Flower Power movement, Issah uses ornamentation as both protest and preservation. His visual language—what he describes as “metallurgical poetry”—turns hard materials like steel into delicate, blooming expressions of identity and heritage.
Set in Kumasi, Ghana’s “Garden City,” the exhibition reflects both the artist’s environment and broader questions about cultural continuity in the postcolonial and digital age. As Issah explores how love and ritual are increasingly curated, his work becomes a vivid archive of memory and reinvention.
Flower Power: An Arewa Story from the South is on view from June 20 to August 15, 2025, at Worldfaze Art Practice, Ogbojo-Accra.