Rita Mawuena Benissan, Ghanaian-American artist, takes us through her exhibition One Must Be Seated, with Curator Beata America, on the Arts Round Up on Fine Music Radio. This solo exhibition is on show at Zeitz MOCAA until 5 October 2025.
Listen to the Arts Round Up on Fine Music Radio FMR 101.3fm on Fridays at 17h30
Rita Mawuena Benissan, Beata America
Beata America explains what that it was Rita’s massive, large scale tapestries, large scale umbrellas and bold colours that attracted her. It also was an opportunity to explore another part of the continent, which many people are not familiar with.
Rita Mawuena Benissan reveals that the exhibition is looking at Ghananian culture using very contemporary media to tell her country’s history. The rationale is to use art as a way of transporting the viewer and making it more accessible. She grew up considering history as boring, It was only at art graduate school and having grown up in the United Sates, that she started to rethink her Ghanaian history and things in her family archives. She wanted to review her culture in a more modern way – a more frontal view. Things were lost in archives and museums.
The subject she chose was the enstoolment of a prospective chief – the process gone through leading up to the seating of a chief, which is a very important position.
The exhibition takes you through this process. In the first gallery, you are invited to take a seat to see a traditional chair and the symbolic umbrellas. In the second gallery you can take a seat to watch a vibrant and colourful review of the process leading to the ‘enthronement’. And you will proceed through the other galleries to be confronted by ‘paintings’ that turn out to be tapestries.
Thanks to her sharp eye and contemporary expertise and skills in new media, in One Must Be Seated, Rita Mawuena Benissan transports you into a new world of old tradition. Through tapestry, sculpture, photography and video, her work highlights and celebrates the rich traditions of Ghanaian culture
WHAT: Rita Mawuena Benissan – One Must Be Seated
WHERE: Zeitz MOCAA, Silo District, V&A Waterfront, Cape Town 8001 |
WHEN: until 5 October 2025 |Â
INFO: E communications@zeitzmocaa.museum |  VISIT | See also Rita Mawuena Benissan, Ghanaian-American artist, at Zeitz MOCAA
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