Ghanaian-Canadian artist Ekow Nimako presents 'Building Black Civilisations – The Nile 3025 CE' at Wereldmuseum Amsterdam, an exhibition of monumental sculptures constructed entirely from black LEGO elements. The works imagine a liberated Africa in the year 3025, merging ancient Nile civilizations with Afrofuturist visions of technological transcendence and ancestral memory. In an interview with ART AFRICA, Nimako discusses how his practice uses the cultural polarity of LEGO—a childhood toy—to build serious, Black-centered narratives that resist historical erasure and propose expansive futures for the African continent.
This exhibition matters because it reframes a globally recognized play material as a medium for cultural reclamation and speculative world-building, challenging colonial narratives that have shaped perceptions of African history. Nimako's work speaks to both continental Africans and the diaspora, offering a utopian vision of an Africa unplagued by enslavement and colonialism. By using micro-scale LEGO techniques and incorporating Black hairstyles into his sculptures, he pushes the boundaries of the medium while centering Black imagination and futurity in contemporary art discourse.