“A couple of months ago, I was approached by my longtime friend and curator, Krzysztof Candrowicz, whom I had met a few years earlier in the wilderness of the Polish Bieszczady Mountains. Krzysztof approached me with a simple yet intriguing question: who would be my dream video artist to collaborate with? I answered, ‘Well, there is one, but it’s highly improbable that he would ever be up for a collaboration like that.’ He persisted and asked me to reveal the artist’s name, and I said: ‘John Akomfrah.’ When I think about John, I’m not even sure whether calling him an artist, a title usually reserved as the highest kind of crown, wouldn’t in fact be limiting. I think of him more as a philosopher for our times: a human being of supreme quality and incredible kindness, the sharpest thinker, and the humblest of legends.
Perhaps this is also because he rarely, if ever, works alone. Since the very beginning of the Black Audio Film Collective in 1982, formed together with his amazing colleagues Reece Auguiste, Edward George, Lina Gopaul, Avril Johnson, David Lawson, and Trevor Mathison — the focus has always been on redirecting our gaze toward the communal, the collective, the shared and common, rather than toward the individualistic and ultimately exclusive. There is an endless gap between me and John Akomfrah, cultural, generational, personal, and yet it is precisely his artistic language that makes me feel inspired, embraced, and included. Most importantly, it makes me think, doubt, and raise questions. His work destabilises and dismantles concepts that deserve to collapse, while enhancing and bolstering those that require our attention and care. It is always political and radical, yet it never tells you what to think or feel. Two years ago, I went to the Venice Biennale, and one of the main reasons was to see Akomfrah’s expansive new work, Listening All Night To The Rain, created for the British Pavilion. I spent most of the day inside that single pavilion, transformed for the exhibition into a timeless, poetic space dressed in dark, purplish colours, with sounds and images bleeding from every corner of the interior. There was an overwhelming beauty and terror within the piece. I sat on a bench and cried.
Two years later, thanks to the impossible magician-like skills of Krzysztof Candrowicz, I found myself joining a call with John Akomfrah and his wife Lina Gopaul, also the producer of his films, to propose presenting this particular body of work during the Fotofestiwal in Łódź, as part of its 25th anniversary celebration. On the 18th of June, we will present in Poland for the first time the eight-screen, seventeen-audio-channel installation, Listening All Night To The Rain, accompanied by my own contribution: a composition for piano and cymbals created especially for this piece, which I will perform live. A recorded version will then remain available throughout the following three days of the festival. It is an incredible joy and honour to be able to work on this occasion with such an extraordinary artist as John Akomfrah, and to commune so intimately with his practice and philosophy. I am also immensely excited for those who have never encountered his work before and who, thanks to Fotofestiwal, will now have an opportunity to experience his fascinating and nourishing art.
— Hania Rani
-
-
Hania Rani, by Olivia Wunsche
-
-
John Akomfrah, by Christian Cassiel
Event patron: PKO Bank Polski
Exhibition partner: Eidotech
__________
» GET TO KNOW THE ARTISTS «
Composer, pianist and vocalist Hania Rani has established herself as a genre-blending nonconformist whose iconoclastic compositions interweave classical, jazz, and electronic influences. Born in 1990 in Gdańsk, Poland—a city renowned for the Solidarity resistance movement— Hania began playing the piano at age seven. She eventually trained as a classical pianist in Warsaw and later pursued studies in Berlin. Recently, she has settled in London.
In January 2026, Rani won “Best Composer” at the European Film Award for her score for Joachim Trier’s Cannes and Oscar-winning film ‘Sentimental Value’ (2025). And in June 2026, Rani collaborates with Ghanaian-born British artist and writer John Akomfrah for the 40th anniversary of Fotofestiwal in Łódź, performing specially composed new music, alongside and in response to his monumental work ‘Listening All Night to The Rain’ (originally commissioned for the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2024). October 2026 will see the premiere of her first Opera, IF I DO NOT RETURN commissioned by Theatre Basel; featuring renowned opera singers Emily D’Angelo and Álfheidur Erla Guðmundsdóttir; Kammerorchester Basel and a voice ensemble of Schola Cantorum Basiliensis.
John Akomfrah is a celebrated artist and filmmaker whose works investigate memory, post-colonialism, and the effects of time and aesthetics, and often explores the experiences of migrant diasporas globally. Akomfrah was a founding member of the influential Black Audio Film Collective (1982–1998), which started in London in 1982 with artists David Lawson and Lina Gopaul. Lawson and Gopaul remain his collaborators today, alongside Ashitey Akomfrah, as Smoking Dogs Films (1997–present).
John Akomfrah’s work has been shown in museums and exhibitions around the world, including Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC; Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Washington, DC; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the New Museum, New York; Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Los Angeles; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Tate, London; and the British Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale. Akomfrah was awarded the Artes Mundi Prize in 2017 and a Knighthood for services to the Arts in the 2023 New Year Honours.
