While researching for her master's degree in African Art History, she realised all the terms and concepts used to describe Ghanaian artistic expression were Western ones. Her research for indigenous concepts led her to the
Ayan, a form of telling history in Ghana; and the
Afahye, a historical exhibition or
Gesamtkunstwerk model. She began incorporating them in her writing on cultural narratives, histories, and institutions in Africa. She speaks regularly on new models of knowledge and of museums, and devised a course on this for the
Architectural Association School of Architecture. In an interview with the
Financial Times, Ayim said: "It sometimes feels like everything happens in the diaspora. That's important and it's part of who we are. But now we need to focus on evolving work within our continent." She is the founder of the ANO Institute of Arts & Knowledge in Accra, and has said that "like a lot of people involved in creative work in Ghana and other parts of Africa, it feels like it's not just enough for us to produce, but that we have to provide the context and the paradigms for that production."
The New York Times reviewer writes: "The encyclopaedia will consist of an open-source internet platform for documenting past, present and future African arts and culture (starting with Ghana) and eventually will be published in 54 volumes, one for each country. An ambitious undertaking, the Cultural Encyclopaedia aims to change perceptions of the continent and help alleviate the frustration of African cultural producers concerned that their rich histories have been lost or forgotten over the decades because they lack good archives." Ayim has also created a new type of
mobile museum. In
The Guardian, Charlotte Jansen writes: "Ayim said she started to reflect on the museum model in Africa while working at the British Museum. Struck by how differently African objects were encountered in display cabinets in the UK with how they were actively used in festivals back home, she began to think about how material culture could be preserved and presented in a way that was more in keeping with local traditions." Ayim is using the research gathered through the mobile museum to help create a new kind of museum model for the
Government of Ghana that, she writes in
The Art Newspaper, "honours and takes into account the many spirits of our communities, our environment, and our objects, both at home and those to be returned. A structure that will allow for narratives and exchange with, and across, other parts of the world, on equal terms". After developing the narratives for, and curating the first institutional shows of, several Ghanaian artists, including
James Barnor,
Felicia Ansah Abban and
Ibrahim Mahama, she curated the much acclaimed
Ghana Freedom exhibition as Ghana's first ever Pavilion at the 2019
Venice Biennale. The pavilion was among the Biennale's most anticipated, and multiple journalists named the pavilion as a "triumph" and highlight of the Biennale, particularly in tribute to its cultural underpinnings both in the country and the diaspora.
The Art Newspaper wrote that "a palpable sense of pride" permeated the pavilion.
Charlotte Higgins of
The Guardian wrote that the pavilion marked a subtle shift in balance as African national pavilions begin to contest the historic dominance of European pavilions at the Biennale, a history intertwined with colonialism. ==Films==