Half million LEGO® blocks: Amazing futuristic scenes in Kelowna

A majestic, make-believe, monochromatic ensemble of extraordinary LEGO creations are on view at the Kelowna Art Gallery.

Check out the video.

The installation called Building Black Civilizations: Journey of 2,000 Ships, is a work the artist hopes will give audiences a glimpse into his imagination as he asks: What if?

Toronto-based Ekow Nimako is showing off six distinct installations that involve an incredible half-a-million black LEGO blocks in total. Some of the sculptures have taken up to 800 hours to complete.

Central to the work is Nimako's approach to Afrofuturism.

"It's really just allowing my imaginative landscape to flourish and run wild," he told Kelowna10. "I incorporate little aspects of history where I can. I've also been very much influenced by other futuristic landscapes coming from anywhere like Star Wars, comics, Black Panther; anything that starts making me think about the future and what that might look like."

Visitors are first introduced to the display with a mythical Bay of Banjul scene, which is the capital of Gambia and from where, according to legend, Abu Bakr II, an intrepid explorer, abdicated his throne and set sail with 2,000 ships across the Atlantic, never to be seen again.

Nimako re-imagines what ancient African kingdoms could look like from a futuristic perspective and from a bold re-think on what some of our assumptions are about the folktales, stories, media coverage, and even the history we have all learned from a Eurocentric perspective. So much is written and depicted about European Middle Ages history while Africa is largely overlooked.

Speculative Reclamation

Another fantastical piece on display imagines an island featuring giant statues and bridges over an oceanic canyon that is home to an imaginary heroine who attacks and steals from rich slave caravan owners to liberate and feed the poor. It's Nimako's take on the Robin Hood fable.

"When I started thinking about the medieval era in general, my mind started going to King Arthur and Robin Hood," he explained, noting those were the stories he was brought up with in popular Eurocentric media.

"That bothered me because clearly Europe wasn't the only continent experiencing the Middle Ages."

What if that Robin Hood folktale didn't have its origins in Europe but in Africa, he ponders.

Nimako's own fascinating theory, which he calls Speculative Reclamation, asks: what if a British explorer were to have come across such an island, witnessed the heroic actions of the slaves being freed, and then that myth became repackaged into a story for European and British audiences?

"So, speculative reclamation supposes that there is a cultural element or story ... that has been observed by a foreign person and is taken and appropriated, and that reclamation part comes in because a person from that original group reclaims the story. The speculative part comes into play because there is no proof that that theft actually occurred," he explained.

Building Black Civilizations: Journey of 2,000 Ships, runs at the Kelowna Art Gallery until August 24.

There is also a Block& Build: A LEGO® Night at the Gallery where visitors can reflect on the installations and construct their own sculptures.