Not Rushing the Healing Process
June - November 2025
Samuel Baah Kortey is a multidisciplinary artist from Ghana whose work traverses the visible expressions that characterise cities, historical findings, and global encounters.
“Not Rushing the Healing Process” explores the cultural and emotional significance of hair and haircare through the lense of the collections at the Ethnologisches Museum and the Museum für Asiatische Kunst. By integrating visual and auditory artefacts, the project reflects on a multisensory experience that fosters empathy and highlights shared human experiences. In dialogue with African-German heritage, it emphasises oral histories and community contributions, aiming to challenge colonial legacies and promote healing through art and storytelling. The project serves as both an educational and discursive tool.
“This study is about the vigorous cultural and emotional significance we attach to everyday items and how transformation can create new meaning from loss. ‘Not Rushing the Healing Process’ combines elements of social and political history in order to examine people’s experiences within dominant narratives of race, identity, and nationality. The project connects archives, locations, bodies, and performative practices as carriers of today’s reality as well as diasporic life, fostering a sense of global interconnectedness.”
Samuel Baah Kortey is a graduate of Hochschule für Bildende Künste–Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main and KNUST – Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana (Dept. of Painting & Sculpture). He was a 2023 Villa Romana Fellow and lives between Berlin and Kumasi, Ghana. Samuel is a member of the collective blaxTARLINES and a co-founder of the Asafo Black Collective.