Kofi Setordji, one of Ghana’s most respected contemporary artists, is widely recognized for his bold and often politically charged sculptures, installations, and mixed-media works. Though he is known internationally for large-scale works such as Genocide, a haunting multimedia installation inspired by the Rwandan genocide, Setordji has also turned a deeply thoughtful eye to the cultural heritage of his homeland, particularly the Krobo glass bead tradition. His engagement with these beads transcends mere appropriation of a craft; instead, he reimagines Krobo beads as conceptual building blocks in a dynamic dialogue between ancestral identity, contemporary African expression, and the repurposing of traditional media for global discourse.
Krobo beads, produced primarily in the eastern region of Ghana, are among the most celebrated forms of African beadmaking. Created from recycled glass—bottles, jars, and fragments crushed into fine powder and fired in handmade clay molds—these beads have long served as important cultural markers among the Krobo people. They are worn in rites of passage, particularly during the Dipo puberty ceremonies for girls, and are often passed down through generations as symbols of continuity, wealth, and status. Each bead’s shape, color, and pattern carries specific meaning, forming a sophisticated visual language that predates written forms of communication in the region.
Setordji, while respectful of this deep cultural lineage, approaches Krobo beads not simply as ethnographic relics but as material ripe for transformation. In his studio in Accra, where he also mentors younger artists through his creative hub Arthaus, he incorporates these beads into contemporary sculptures and assemblages that interrogate history, memory, and the legacy of colonialism. In his hands, Krobo beads become metaphors—glass conduits through which conversations about heritage, identity, and modern African realities flow with renewed urgency.
One of his notable pieces, Fragmented Histories, juxtaposes a series of carved wooden heads with cascades of embedded Krobo beads strung into hair-like formations or wound around the neck and shoulders of the figures. The wood is raw, textured, and earthy, while the beads provide moments of vibrant chromatic intensity—pale blues, yellows, deep reds, and opaque whites—signifying both adornment and burden. The piece speaks to the layers of African identity as shaped by tradition, interrupted by colonial violence, and reconstituted in post-independence cultural resilience. Each bead becomes a node of history, an atom of meaning stitched into the evolving fabric of African modernism.
Setordji also uses Krobo beads in more abstract, geometric constructions. In works like Urban Codex, he aligns beads in grid-like patterns on steel or aluminum panels, referencing the coded logic of African textiles and indigenous architectural plans while also evoking the circuitry of contemporary information networks. The contrast between ancient handcraft and industrial base materials serves to highlight the tension between continuity and change, between the handmade past and the mechanized present. His work interrogates the place of African tradition in a world increasingly defined by digital fragmentation and cultural commodification.
A particularly innovative aspect of Setordji’s approach lies in his integration of broken, discarded, or “imperfect” Krobo beads—fragments that would typically be set aside by traditional artisans. In his work, these shards are not errors but symbols of rupture and resilience. He assembles them into mosaics that form the basis of sculptural portraits or topographical wall pieces. These mosaics often resemble archaeological strata, layers of debris and treasure, inviting the viewer to excavate meaning from the fragmented beauty. The incorporation of imperfection serves as a metaphor for the postcolonial African psyche: fractured, yes, but still vibrant and whole in its own evolving image.
Setordji’s use of Krobo beads also speaks to broader ecological and economic issues. By foregrounding a material rooted in sustainable practice—beads made entirely from recycled glass—he highlights the potential for traditional methods to address contemporary environmental concerns. The Krobo bead tradition itself, while ancient, has always embodied principles of resourcefulness and cyclical use, and Setordji’s art reinserts these values into a modern, critical framework. His works implicitly critique the wastefulness of modern production systems while celebrating the ingenuity embedded in African craft.
Despite their incorporation into fine art contexts, Setordji never strips the Krobo bead of its cultural weight. He insists on maintaining the integrity of its historical function even as he reinterprets it. In exhibitions across Africa, Europe, and North America, his works confront audiences with the complexity of African identity—not as a fixed or folkloric entity, but as a constantly negotiated interplay between the past and the present. Whether hanging as adornment on a carved torso or embedded in the core of a steel sculpture, the beads carry with them the whispers of generations, the pulse of the land, and the enduring rhythm of Ghanaian craftsmanship.
Through his reimagining of Krobo glass beads, Kofi Setordji demonstrates that tradition is not static but inherently generative. His art is not about nostalgia but about reactivation—activating old forms to tell new stories, to pose new questions, and to construct new visual vocabularies for African expression. In his hands, beads are not merely cultural ornaments; they are particles of thought, memory, and resistance. They shimmer not just with light but with the weight of history, the complexity of identity, and the promise of transformation.