John Akomfrah’s ‘Four Nocturnes’ links migration and environmental collapse

Wrightwood 659 in Chicago is currently presenting John Akomfrah: Four Nocturnes, featuring two art installations by eminent Ghanaian-British artist and filmmaker Sir John Akomfrah that intersect themes of migration, environmental degradation and African heritage. The centrepiece of the show is the three-screen video installation Four Nocturnes (2019). It is accompanied by Toxic Cloud (2019), which comprises hundreds of plastic jugs suspended from the ceiling of the exhibition space. The exhibition is on view from September 27, 2024 – February 15, 2025, and is organised by Akomfrah's studio, with Ashley Janke, assistant curator, Wrightwood 659 facilitating the presentation. Janke joins STIR for a conversation that highlights Akomfrah’s connection between migration and the ongoing environmental crisis, along with the artist’s representation of African mythology in his work.

The expansive non-linear film dissolves perceived boundaries and hierarchies between humanity and the natural world. – Ashley Janke, assistant curator, Wrightwood 659

Akomfrah is a highly respected artist and filmmaker whose moving image works often blend archival material, still photos, newsreels and independently shot footage. He is deeply concerned with both historical and contemporary African displacement and migration, along with the experiences of the Black diaspora in the United Kingdom. The artist emigrated with his mother at a young age to London and became keenly aware of colonialist prejudices against Black people as he grew up. In Four Nocturnes, he shifts his primary focus to our destruction of the natural environment, using Africa’s dying elephant population as a thread to stitch together wilderness scenes, migrants on the road and more, without spoken narrative.

Janke explains, “John Akomfrah compels us to see how the exploitation of land, animals, and people is woven together in the same fabric of colonial extraction through a visual montage of original and archival footage.” The artist points out that the movement of people leads to agricultural expansion, which in turn forces elephants out of their natural habitats and into the scorched West African landscape, where much of Four Nocturnes is set . The conditions here are highly oppressive, eventually leading to the majestic animals’ deaths. In the organiser’s words, “The expansive non-linear film dissolves perceived boundaries and hierarchies between humanity and the natural world.”

The artist is keenly aware of the imperialist baggage that often accompanies international coverage of ecologies in Africa. For example, one may think back to the slew of nature documentaries that unthinkingly lump in reportage on human cultures along with studies on the behaviours of lions and gazelles. It is, sadly, easy to see how this is deeply dehumanising. To subvert this imperialist lens, Akomfrah consciously avoids narration in Four Nocturnes. Instead, he lets the film’s hypnotic shots do the talking. As the Wrightwood assistant curator identifies, the artist creates a “visual dialogue across time and space” between human movements and ecological catastrophes transpiring across the West African landscape.

Four Nocturnes reveal Akomfrah’s reverence for nature. He is the grandson of a high priest of a river and has been instructed in the stories and traditions of the Ga-Adangbe peoples , who are spread across Ghana, Togo and Benin. Like elephants, water bodies form an important part of the artist’s voiceless narrative as he traces the paths of winding rivers through Ghana in the film. To the Ga people, rivers are more than an essential source of sustenance; they are divine and are honoured as gods.

The art exhibition at Wrightwood 659 reveals a deadly butterfly effect in progress. While one might not immediately connect the migration of people to the deaths of an animal species, not only is this unfolding right now, it should prompt us to think of what comes next. What sort of ecological imbalance(s) will Africa’s declining elephant population lead to?

‘John Akomfrah: Four Nocturnes’ is on from September 27, 2024 – February 15, 2025, at Wrightwood 659 in Chicago.