Postbox Ghana

In 2021, Manuela Nebuloni (b. 1986 in Milan, Italy) created the collective known as Postbox Ghana. Its purpose is to constitute an archive of the history of architecture in West Africa through a collection of postcards and stamps from the 1950s to the 1980s depicting Ghana’s buildings and cityscapes. She has since been joined by Courage Dzidula Kpodo (b. 1999 in Kumasi, Ghana) and artist Nana Ofosu Adjei (b. 1993 in Accra, Ghana). Recognizing the lack of accessible visual references to African architectural history, whether on social media or in archival databases, Postbox Ghana aims to preserve and transmit this history through images. These archives contribute to the creation of a visual record of modern Ghana.

The installation entitled Stills from a moving past brings together one hundred postcards showing remarkable Modernist buildings and bearing witness to their transformation over time. Some have shaped the image of a post-independent Ghana, notably through the distribution of such postcards.

Produced in 2023 with Courage D. Kpodo, the film The Beautyful Ones Always Were furthers this reflection by juxtaposing a selection of postcards of buildings constructed during the period of independence and Modernist experimentation. In a sequence shot at Nkrumah Voli-ni in Tamale, a former grain silo built shortly before the fall of Nkrumah and purchased in 2021 by Ibrahim Mahama to be converted into an art center, Courage D. Kpodo and Postbox Ghana film the deterioration of the postcards in the humidity and darkness of the silo, momentarily transformed into a darkroom.