In John Akomfrah’s Arcadia, look from one screen to the next

John Akomfrah speaking to Studio International at Artes Mundi 7 in Cardiff on 20 October 2016. This archival interview frame predates Arcadia. Studio International, filmed by Martin Kennedy. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0. First uploaded still unchanged by PING. Exact portrait record · CC BY 3.0.

What happens when a landscape and a cargo ship share your field of view? John Akomfrah uses five screens in Arcadia, so an image can keep unfolding while another asks for your attention. The film’s London debut gives visitors a reason to pay attention to the space between the screens. The connections you make there are part of how the work asks you to think about trade, migration and the movement of living things.

Look across the screens

At the Natural History Museum, the Jerwood Gallery installation is described as bringing images of ice fields, seas and mountains into contact with images of cargo, deteriorating ships and disease. The museum describes a soundtrack that includes poetry, opera and sounds from nature. With images unfolding together, the same moment can hold a view of a place and a clue to how it changed. Try letting your attention move between two screens for a while. See what changes in the connection when you return to the first image. Exhibition guide.

The work takes the Columbian Exchange as its subject. From the late fifteenth century onward, people, plants, animals and pathogens moved between the Americas and Afro-Eurasia through networks that also carried goods and ideas. In the museum’s announcement, Akomfrah says he wanted to think about how these movements shaped human and natural histories together. A practical question to carry into the gallery is whose movement each image suggests and what, or who, determined it. Artist’s statement in the museum announcement.

Follow the filmmaker’s way of putting things together

Akomfrah was born in Accra and helped found the Black Audio Film Collective in London. The museum points to Handsworth Songs, the collective’s 1986 film, as an example of its layered use of archive, stills and newly shot material. In a published 2016 interview about his earlier two-screen work Auto da Fé, Akomfrah discussed his interest in events happening alongside one another. That interview provides context for thinking about how a filmmaker can ask viewers to make a connection across images. Art21 biography · Studio International interview.

For readers following work between Ghana and Britain, the Venice Biennale’s archive offers another starting point. It lists Akomfrah among the artists in Ghana Freedom in 2019, where the Natural History Museum’s biography records his presentation of Four Nocturnes. The exhibition was a collective presentation. Following that record alongside his London work makes room for the institutions and artists around the individual filmmaker. Ghana Freedom archive.

Give the gallery visit its own time

Arcadia premiered at the Sharjah Biennial in 2023. The Natural History Museum gives 6 November 2026 as the opening of its London showing and says it runs until May 2027. The installation is free and plays on a loop. The exhibition page says it needs no separate ticket. The museum advises advance booking for general entry, so check its visitor details before travelling to South Kensington. Original biennial programme · Museum visitor information.

Lisson and the Royal College of Art also list a free symposium on 26 November in Kensington. Its programme starts with an introduction to Arcadia from Smoking Dogs Films collaborator David Lawson and Lisson’s Ossian Ward. Akomfrah is due to speak with film programmer Roisin Tapponi later in the day. Check booking and access details with the organisers. Royal College of Art programme.

The exhibition and the discussion offer two different ways into the work. You can start with the relationship between images, then follow the people who made and presented them. For another example of a PING story that starts with the circumstances in which images were made, see our piece on Sanlé Sory’s colour archive.