ABOUT SELF
For the purpose of this project, I, Poku Cheremeh would like to be identify as Poku Mensah. He has put on the persona of Opoku Mensah who is first and foremost a scholar who writes about Poku Mensah founder of the agency LES GUERRIERES AFRICAINES. Invited to participate in the very first biennial of Lagos- Nigeria, he finds such an opportunity to be a fantastic occasion to rethink and reimagine collaboration for the purpose of artistic creation across Africa.
Creativity, a core unit to divergent thinking, is more than just a courageous act. It is also a great commitment to be considered. For this reason, let us join and create new alliances. To Opoku, as art morphed into a tool to endure difficulties; he believes struggle is in need to be expressed in the form of creative expression.

O-POKU MENSAH

CREATIVITY

BIO

LIVING ON THE EDGE

LES GUERRIERES AFRICAINES

ABOUT CREATION
Poku Mensah’s artistic technique in the agency encompasses character building through fields of collaboration and artistic production. Hence, exposing adjacent dimensions to dwell on contemporary issues lead to better understanding of the multitudes of societal norms and customs. In this year’s Lagos Biennial, the artist and scholar invites you to take part of a creative process, for the stakes of our collective consciousness. He urges engagement of imagination and participation in a multi-faceted proliferation of networking.




Opoku Mensah, 5.JUNE.2017.
As ties are created and stronger bonds are made a room for creative research and innovation can take lead across Africa.

WE ARE SYNERGY:
AS A WHOLE WE ARE GREATER THAN THE SUM OF EACH PARTS.

Poku was born on the 27th of April 1992 in Accra-Ghana.
After completion of high school, he moves to Boston MA in the USA where he studies Architecture in compromise of the design school he had wishfully desired to integrate. After barely a year of study, he drops out of University in Boston. Like a Franz Kafka story, the metamorphosis of Poku starts when is shun by his family in Ghana. He moves to Paris and in 2012 he integrates Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux art de Paris after receiving multiple rejection to Parisian architecture schools. He completes his bachelor diploma at Beaux Art in 3 years and after sojourning in the Netherlands, Poku is picking up the pieces of his shattered life. He eludes mastery in reconstructing portraits of events of his life. In 2016, his first international show happens in Dakar.
Presently, in order to use the practice of fine arts as leverage for a better state of well being as well as to inspire others, he aspires to dive into deeper artistic research. Admitted to Van Eyck Academie in Maastricht, Poku interns for Claudy Jongstra in Friesland during the summer of July 2017 where he is offered me an uplifting taste towards the understanding of what it means to create a sustainable future for people, land, and place.
Inspired by the philosophy and the work ethics of Jongstra, his desires to foster an international service agency for African women in Africa takes form.

>Living on the edge is an event, which happens inside a YURT
called Guer-Hair.

On the 14th of October 2017, in LAGOS- NIGERIA, a prophecy acclaims that Poku Cheremeh transforms into Poku Mensah. Mensah is an Ashanti name of Egyptian heritage which traces back from his Ga-Dangmes grandfather (AKA GA) from Togoland. Oral history claims Ga-Dangmes as descendant of the Israeli tribes....­

The prophecy also states that 14th of October 2017, the new born identity ventures to Ethiopia in quest to nurture growth and recrute a first generation of Nnonmintons.

The prophecy acclaims that this agency will allow:
1. Creation of networks across Africa for participants to showcase art projects in plural forms.
2. Autonomous growth and opportunity to work jointly with Africans and the world.

Les Guerrieres Africaines was inspired by the story of Amazons of Dahomey aka N’Nonmiton. This group of women may have derived from the Ga-Dangmes which oral history claims as descendant of the Israeli tribes of Gad and Dan (GA-DANgme). Oral history also claims that the Assyrians attacked the Ga-Dangmes while they were in Ethiopia. From Ethiopia, they travelled through Southern Sudan and settled for a period of time at Sameh in Niger and then to Ileife in Nigeria. They migrated again and settled at Dahomey and later, travelled to Huatsi in Togo where they stayed briefly.

Ga people deriving from GA-DANgme, were originally farmers.
Vivian Mensah third born from a family of fourth children. Mother of three sons and mother of Poku Mensah, got her name from a Ga family originating from Togoland. As of today the popular name Mensah from Ghana, is claimed to originate from Egypt. It is also a name given to 3rd borns.

For this reason, motivated to offer my mother a better place to live, the agency aspires the movement of the N’Nonmiton by offering women the opportunity to “rise to positions of command and influence” in an environment which inspires empowerment.