Giles Nartey interprets African rituals into daring design objects

‘African craft cultures are a catalyst for re-imagining the areas we reside in’ says Giles Nartey. Via his work the British-Ghanian architect seeks to have fun Black identification, traditions, and tradition. Shifting between artwork, movie, and structure his research-based follow goals to translate African rituals into daring design objects. 

Giles Nartey: academia meets design

Born in South London, Nartey spent nearly a decade of his adolescence in Accra, Ghana. ‘Rising up in Labadi I used to be impressed by the casual structure, behaviours and practices that animated constructions,’ says the designer. Seeing practices reminiscent of folks washing their arms in a bowl earlier than a meal or the grinding of peppers in an Asanka (picket grinder), proceed to affect the work of the London-based designer as we speak.

Having studied at Politecnico di Milano and the Bartlett Faculty of Structure, academia has at all times performed an important position in Nartey’s life. At current, he lectures on the College School London and co-runs a diploma unit on the AA with architect, author, and educator Nana Biamah-Ofosu. ‘My intention is to at all times train, analysis and follow as a designer. This mix supplies me with the instruments to push boundaries in my work.’

At the moment, endeavor a PhD on the Bartlett Faculty of Structure, academia additionally serves as a testing floor for the British-Ghanian lecturer. ‘Interaction’ is a direct output of a lot of his doctorate analysis into African ontologies. First exhibited at POoR’s Powershift exhibition on the London Design Pageant in 2023, this placing piece of seating rethinks furnishings as a shared pores and skin, with engraved and overlapped narratives occupying its marked floor. ‘The piece takes reference from conventional West African Senufo carved bed-bench that are conventional carved out of a single piece of timber’ explains Nartey.

Embedding the Ghanaian sport ‘Oware,’ Interaction is a communal bench which permits for performative interplay. ‘Traditionally African objects have been miscategorised as inanimate artefacts, however most had been a part of rituals and practices from the non secular to the home both within the making or the use.’

‘Thus far, exhibiting Interaction within the Victoria and Albert Museum for the Friday Late: Radical Imaginaries is one among my biggest profession moments. The V&A is a spot my mom would take me and my sisters after we had been youthful, so it meant so much to exhibit a chunk of labor so tied to our heritage and shared household recollections there.’