Nipadua · the human body
GALLERY
Nipadua
Nipadua is Twi — literally the Human Tree, the ancestors' word for the human body. In Nana Yaw Ananse's practice the body is a tree in earnest: neem bark from cemeteries, plastics from the shoreline, and denim from landfills are given new life as figures that ask what our existence leaves behind in nature.
The gallery is the tree's first branch — a museum-grade room for work about reincarnation, energy transformation, and the resilience of Pan-African memory.
OdumIrokoWhere it grows & why it's protected
OnyinaKapok · Silk CottonWhere it grows & why it's protected
DawadawaWest African Locust BeanWhere it grows & why it's protected
TamaSheaWhere it grows & why it's protected
ƆdanwomaAfrican Locust Bean (timber)Where it grows & why it's protected
ƆframCherry Mahogany · LimbaWhere it grows & why it's protected
WawaObeche · African WhitewoodWhere it grows & why it's protected
KyenkyenBark Cloth TreeWhere it grows & why it's protectedThe Disciplines
Five media, one material logic — everything on this page started as something Accra was ready to throw away.
Painting Theory
Not pigment on canvas but bark on frame. Ananse builds the painted surface from neem bark relief over hand-painted plastic sheeting and denim — the figure emerges from the material rather than being laid on top of it, bark and plastic worn into art instead of left on a beach.
Explore Painting
Framed studio work, shown as it was made: bark still raw at the edges, brushwork visible beneath — the tree it came from still legible in the finished piece.
Nipadua series. Neem bark relief figure in motion over painted plastic sheeting and denim, framed.
Projects
Whole bodies of work, not single frames
No Charge!!! · 2021–2025
Arrested for nothing. Charged with nothing. Silent for nothing.
A wrongful arrest at Chale Wote 2021 became a multi-year body of work about Ghana's police cells — told in plastic bottles, rubber, newsprint and staged photography.
View the project
The Framed Series · 2025
Nipa Dua, Framed
The Nipadua portraits, formally framed and installed as a single standing series — bark, denim and reclaimed cloth built into the faces of history and of the artist's own community.
View the project
The Adanwomase Weavers Collective · Ongoing
The loom that taught the practice
Ongoing support for the Kente weavers of Adanwomase — the artist's home village — as they integrate reclaimed fabric into traditional cloth at a fair, decentralised pace.
View the project
Kokrobite Coast Project · Ongoing
A tower built from what the sea gave back
Beach-plastic collection and material-transformation workshops with young makers along the Kokrobite shoreline — culminating in a lit tower raised from the bottles themselves.
View the projectThe Archive, Wandered
Move your cursor through the work
Why art
needs a home
A work without a room is a story without a listener. These figures are built from what the city discards — bark, bottles, denim, cocoa sacks — and the gallery is where they are stood before, circled, and carried home. Every sale returns a share to the branch it grew on.
Coming soon