The GOLD MATTERS project virtual exhibition is now live and available to explore online. The Exhibition takes the audience on a journey moving from ‘Exhibition of the Exhibition in Kejetia’ to visual results from three regions organized around the themes: Co-labouring, ARTistic and ARTisanal, In-depth terrains, Gold Lifeways and Moving Matters.

Activities of the Gold Matters project include research with miners to understand how they see the future and sustainability in gold mining. This has involved photography, painting and sculpture to find ways to express people’s lives and futures in mining. The exhibition is a collaborative effort of the Gold Matters Team and members of mining communities. The Gold Matters Team would like to acknowledge gratitude to the miners and community members who have made this exhibition possible.

The exhibition includes work by the photographer Nii Obodai and images by the painter Christophe Sawadogo. All the other visual materials result from research collaborations, often involving members of mining communities. The team has taken particular care over consent, and in order to protect individuals, the names of people and places are not always specified.

At the start of the project, the intention was to have an exhibition that could travel and ‘pop-up’ in mining communities, including artwork created in these communities to stimulate debate about gold mining. Photos show how the exhibition began like this in Kejetia, northern Ghana, in January 2020. However, the Covid-19 pandemic put a halt to plans for the exhibition to pop up in the same way in other communities or countries. Now it pops up virtually on the exhibition website.

Header image by Nii Obodai.