Black History Month: With Arts and Fashion, Ghana’s Mohammed Blakk Proudly Wields The Vision Of Kwame Nkrumah and Other African Ancestors Into The Future

With denims, upcycled jewelry, artsy drawings, and lots of thought, Mohammed Blakk carries with him into the future, the vision of Kwame Nkrumah and other great personalities of black heritage.

Photographed by AfriQueendom via Instagram

In this year’s Black History Month, we explore Mohammed Blakk’s visual arts prowess, culturally flavored fashion sense, and his taste for pretty much everything that has been abandoned.

His craft is deeply rooted in his fervor to see an African people unperturbed to identify as what they truly are, regardless of wherever they are in this world; an African people with respect for culture, humanity, and diversity — a vision spoken of by Kwame Nkrumah in his 1961 book ‘I Speak of Freedom’

On this particular denim pants, Mohammed Blakk paints the images of the unsung Queen Nanny of the maroons and of Ghanaian descent who helped free many slaves in Jamaica during the 17th century. The pants have very extensive information about this era and the contributions of the queen to the black liberation struggle.

By Felix Tetteh/MohypeStudios

On other pants and bare t-shirts, which are his topmost medium, Mohammed Blakk does the same for other civil rights and black revolutionaries like more unsung names like Asebu Amenfi, King Takyi among others.

Phtographed by @ReQshotit via Instagram.
More often, Mohammed Blakk who has been doing this consistently over the last six years would get positive feedback about his works, a lot more people would also ask him to make for them a pair or a shirt.

“some of the items like the denim pants (which are of vintage quality) i use are very rare on the market. Also all the designs you see in there are all handmade, every bit of it is painted and written by me,”

In the near future, Mohammed Blakk hopes to scale up production by employing modern technologies. He hopes to spread the knowledge, creating awareness on how much of the journey (embarked by these ancestors) is left and the need for everyone’s tailored involvement.

“In my own world, i live my life everyday in remembrance of the sacrifices it took for me to be here today. History is a good teacher and arts is a good drawing board. We have a collective purpose as black creatives and with all of us pooling our weights, we can recreate the distorted picture of the continent — one drawn by our own hands.”

This vision is expressed in several ways for Mohammed as he consistently ideates and experiments diverse art forms.

His participation in Jeneva Burton’s poetry project dubbed ‘Beyond the Return: OurAncestors Wildest Dreams’ is tied to several other efforts by Mohammed Blakk to ensure that the very narratives of the African continent are told in an African light.

Here are some more footage of his creations.