Selorm Fiadjoe is an African gallerist at ENA Gallery. He’s an aspiring artist from Ghana who runs a gallery showcasing his and other artists’ artwork that uses Ghanaian culture to draw artwork that helps spread a message to reduce plastic pollution in the ocean in his home country and across the African continent.
Fiadjoe was born into an agricultural family and studied general arts at St. Peter’s Senior High School, furthering his education at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, where he studied economics and Geography.
To build fame for himself and his network within the art circle, Fiadjoe used to work after school with other Ghanaian artists, demonstrating his art and crafts to people and showcasing his hard work and determination on international platforms.
“I realized that the actual calling was to work with artists, like people who make art and crafts, so when the call came, I moved away from musicians and started interacting more with some incredible Ghanaian artists who were close to me to learn and find out what inspires them, and that’s how the journey started,” said Fiadjoe in an interview with Melange Africa.
ENA Gallery was founded by Fiadjoe, whose main focus was art with its distinct forms, such as paintings, music, applied arts, and unique pieces of African artists showcased to a global audience. His work included the use of silk thread embroidery, typography, and recycled plastic optical illusion, which are some of the techniques that Fiadjoe and his team also use to create their various art pieces and advocate for the United Nations Sustainable Goals of Responsible Consumption and Production.
Recycled art can be described as art that uses materials that are usually discarded. It symbolizes a vision of art as part of a circular economy, making functional and aesthetic use of what we would, in other contexts, define as waste. Different types of materials can be used, provided they fit the criterion of being waste, such as plastic, metal, paper, electronic waste, or any other found objects.
On a superficial level, recycled art can be described as creative productions that make use of waste or discarded objects. In other words, it can refer to the basic creations by children of things like toilet rolls and bottle caps to instill consciousness about how we dispose of items in our everyday lives and to help children learn about the practice of upcycling everyday waste for functional or aesthetic purposes.
Along with the artworks that were displayed, Fiadjoe and his team went all out to deliver a cultural experience at the Global Citizen’s head office, befitting the African Union celebration. During the Global Citizen Festival, its president discussed the impact and the social change attributed to the artwork, while Fiadjoe emphasized the need for sustainable working relations and collaborations to create more opportunities for the youth in Africa.
As regards the setup, it featured various visual cultural elements and artifacts, from Kente to traditional stools, to make the viewing experience worthwhile, as well as caring about cleaning the planet since they create pieces from recycled plastic.
"Art is a symphony of imagination, painted with the hues of creativity, orchestrated with precision, and conducted by the heart's relentless passion," stated Fiadjoe about art on his gallery website.
The main purpose of the art pieces created by Selorm and his team is to showcase humanity in a more colourful light and use that to advocate for their environmental protection mission to clean the beaches and water bodies in Ghana and across Africa.
Fiadjoe also considered the African art scene to always be shown as a significant promise on the world stage. However, artists creating their work separately and not grasping new ways to improve the art experience have always proven to be hindrances to the strides of Ghana’s art scene.
Selorm and his team have been and will continue to create and showcase very intriguing art that will inform, educate, entertain, and advocate for the development of creative art, with a keen focus on the African Youth.