by: Jehanzeb Khan and Sharon Lee
We attempted to understand the images within the work that the artist utilized. We saw hearts, flowers, suns, and abstract images which we tried to understand. We analyzed the image before us and the lighting used in the museum to fully illuminate the meaning of “Looking Back Into the Future.” We did not understand the context of the painting and the greater, spiritual meaning that the artist was trying to depict. After some research, we learned that Owusu-Ankomah was trying to depict a spiritual world occupied by people and symbols. “Looking Back Into the Future” depicted a nude man with his head turned backward, in a pose associate with the Akan proverbial concept of sankofa (“one must know the past to know the future.” Perhaps if we spent more time on the canvas, we would have been able to understand the importance of the dimensions and scalings of the images used. If we had more time, we would have liked to try to interpret the rest of the images besides the ones mentioned in the video, and the universal meaning this work could potentially bring to other cultures.
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