The Same Key

The key to the city is in the heart of the city. City's key, city's heart, city master key, the same key, the back door. Effiakuman. Old houses. Going green. New houses. European Town. I began painting houses as one of my subjects, reaching toward a rise in tourism in our Twin City, Sekondi-Takoradi. To enter a city without trouble, you need its key, and before that key is given, a little struggle, a little earning of your room inside it.

My interest in houses began in 1998, the year I married and left my father's home for my spouse's. I found my way in a new place, staying with the late Mr. Afful, my brother-in-law, may his soul rest, and that was my first real encounter with houses, with what it means to be housed. These images started to appeal to me there, and never really let go.

We have a culture of copying, planted early by how we're educated, and it shows in our buildings: the same shapes, the same forms, the same colours and materials, repeated until they no longer carry anything unique about us. Our buildings today don't make anyone stop to look. Heads turn away, and that should trouble builders, architects, planners alike. Even the animal world builds with more distinction than we do, the bird's nest, the ant hill, each one telling you exactly what made it. This project is my attempt to hand people back their confidence to build something that's actually theirs.

The back door is easy to forget, but it holds a lot: an access for thieves, an access to escape through, an access to carry the day's waste out unseen. No home is ever fully sealed. There's always a plan B.

Names, though, do not go extinct. Even when a house empties, the name it carried stays behind. An empty house smells like a ghost town, and people keep being pushed out of them, by rent, by the cost of living, by homes that were never built to meet what people actually need. What I want, with this project, is to give these houses a second life, to be seen again, to be remembered for what they held when they were full.

These cities have their own aroma too, and it's in the paintings if you look closely: dead fish over a fire, something frying, palm soap, the shouts of people selling in the street. That scent is fading from us, and painting is one of the few ways I know to hold onto it, to carry it past our own time.

Buildings should outlast party lines, tribe, colour, generation. That's how I want us to see them, beyond ourselves. Using art to kick-start the Twin City is possible. If we can set its stillness in motion through these building symbols, I believe it can carry the recognition, the tourism, our city deserves.