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Abstract: My first encounter with Ghana was a brief few days' visit on my way from what was then Biafra to New York, staying with Roy and Sophie Sieber in Legon in the summer of 1967. I also made my way to Kumasi, where I purchased a batch of gold weights I hoped were not fakes.1 Later, in 1972, when diverted from continuing Igbo research with a fellowship to southern Nigeria, by socio-political uncertainties there, the National Endowment for the Humanities allowed me to shift my focus to Ghana. Once there, Ghanaian art forms known only from the few then-available publications both assaulted me with their aesthetic vibrancy and, as I traveled and learned more, crept up on me by surprise: their vast numbers and varied object ... Read More PubDate: 2023-02-11T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: In 1981, Asantehene Opoku Ware II opened the British Museum's exhibition Asante, Kingdom of Gold. It later traveled to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, where he again opened it. This article explains the genesis and aims of the exhibition and places it in the context of earlier Asante exhibitions. All, like the British Museum's, were organized by white outsiders.I became the British Museum's Keeper of Ethnography in 1974. At the time, the Department of Ethnography was maintained in what was called the Museum of Mankind, located in Burlington Gardens in London. Shortly after starting, I received a letter from the Asantehene requesting the return of all the gold regalia removed from Kumase by ... Read More PubDate: 2023-02-11T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: This article is about how the frankaakitafo (flag dancers) of the Fante asafo in the Central Region of Ghana are trained, dance with, and explain the content of their flags. The Fante asafo are traditional military companies, now social and political organizations. In contrast to the flags' passive display when hung around the asafo posuban, the flags during these "performances" are folded, spread out, and explained by the asikanmafo.1 The asikanmafo are gun-bearing members of the asafo who protect the frankaakitafo from abayimona (spells or charms) dropped by a rival to harm or disgrace the dancer during a performance.Asafo flags have been documented since the sixteenth century by various writers recounting their ... Read More PubDate: 2023-02-11T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: The history of Islam in Ghana is a story that has long been framed by the Sahel, whose iconic earth and timber mosques are often interpreted as the platforms from which Ghana's originary mosque-building traditions would spring. Such histories have merit; yet they potentially circumvent local narratives that have also shaped the particular character of Ghana's Islamic spaces—narratives that speak not only to the complex and fundamentally intersectional reality of Islam in Ghana, but also to the fact that Muslims in Ghana have always maintained authorship over their own spiritual reality, particularly through the medium of built form. Thus, this essay will focus on one of Ghana's newest Islamic spaces—the Accra ... Read More PubDate: 2023-02-11T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: "We must be humbled by the vastness of that only-apparently-small West African country whose borders surround a multitude of unsolved art historical problems, uncharted style areas, as well as untold depths and complexities of meaning and historical relationship"This introductory quote, taken from Herbert Cole and Doran Ross's coauthored publication The Arts of Ghana (1977), encapsulates both the continued, scholarly fascination with Ghanaian art and the enduring relevance of Ross's research and publications. A hallmark of his academic contributions, which has been particularly influential to my own scholarly research, was Ross's continued dedication to exploring all forms of Ghanaian dress and textile arts. Cole ... Read More PubDate: 2023-02-11T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: It is a pleasure to bring you the 25th volume of Ghana Studies, which will be our last as co-editors of the journal. We have been extremely honored to have the responsibility of shepherding the journal through these past three years, which included navigating the journal through the upheaval—academic and personal—caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. We would like to thank all the authors and peer reviewers we have worked with since we took over the journal in February 2020. Not only has their work—selfless and, in the case of the reviewers specifically, mostly hidden—helped the journal thrive under the circumstances, it has also helped us personally grow as scholars. We also want to thank the tireless staff at the ... Read More PubDate: 2023-02-11T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: One of the highlights of Ghana's sixtieth independence anniversary celebration, staged on Independence Square in Accra on March 7, 2017, was an elaborate choreography displaying the country's cultural diversity. Organized by the Ghana Dance Ensemble and the National Dance Company, the event featured dance troupes from all the country's (then) ten regions. After paying respect to "Mother Ghana," performed by a female dancer clad in the national colors, each of these troupes presented traditional dances and music and, at the culmination of the performance, handed over an artifact or agricultural product typical of their home territories. "Mother Ghana," in turn, concluded the choreography by lighting a giant lamp ... Read More PubDate: 2023-02-11T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: In the meantime, while Africa remains divided, oppressed, and exploited, the African Personality is merely a term expressing cultural and social bonds which unite Africans and people of African descent.… For those who project it, it expresses identification not only with Africa's historical past, but with the struggle of the African people and the African Revolution to liberate and unify the continent and to build a just society.1It is necessary to underscore the fact that whilst according proper pride of place to Ghanaian and African art, drama, music, and dancing on our Television, we shall not raise any type of curtain against foreign culture, provided that such foreign cultural programmes we telecast are in ... Read More PubDate: 2023-02-11T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: In "Colonialism and the Two Publics in Africa: A Theoretical Statement," Peter Ekeh (1975) identifies two publics (primordial and civic) as having emerged out of European colonialism in Africa. The primordial public (akin to ethnic federations) and the civic public (the state and its bureaucracies) are all institutions bequeathed through colonialism. There are different attitudinal inclinations and essentially moral standards demonstrated toward these spaces. While the primordial is perceived as vulnerable, and thus is supported, in line with the exploitative European colonial enterprise, the civic public is seen as affluent and thus an item for exploitation.European colonialism ushered African societies into its ... Read More PubDate: 2023-02-11T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: The visual arts of Ghana have been the focus of a vital field of study for over sixty years. Since only a few articles dealing with visual art have appeared in Ghana Studies over the last twenty plus years, we thought it fitting to dedicate an issue of the journal to assessing how the visual arts of Ghana have been approached by scholars, art critics, and curators. We have given this thematic issue of Ghana Studies the title Looking Back, Looking Forward, which signals our interest in exploring where the field of Ghanaian visual art studies has been, where it is now, and where it might go in the future.Prior to the late nineteenth century, information regarding material and visual culture is found primarily in the ... Read More PubDate: 2023-02-11T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: This essay is not the historiography of Ghanaian art that the volume's editors requested from me. That has already been done (Labi 2015; Quarcoopome 2019). Instead, I have chosen to briefly critique the scholarship pertaining specifically to indigenous visual practices, both past and present, which I will hereafter refer to as traditional art. Consequently, though I acknowledge contemporary studio-based art and related art forms, I exclude them for two strategic reasons: first, to underscore traditional art's precarious state, caused in part by a pervasive shift toward the study of contemporary art; and second, to challenge the erroneous notion that we have exhausted research on traditional art. With so much in ... Read More PubDate: 2023-02-11T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: The following is an abridged and edited version of the transcript from a discussion between Gilbert Amegatcher and Raymond Silverman that took place in September 2021. It draws upon Amegatcher's memories from the 1970s of his days as a student at the University of Science and Technology in Kumasi and his early career as Curator of Art at the National Museum of Ghana.Gilbert, let's begin with a very basic question, where and when did you do your undergraduate degree'I graduated from the University of Science and Technology (UST), Kumasi, in 1973, with a B.A. in Art.1 And in 1974, I earned a Postgraduate Diploma in Art Education.Excellent. And with your degree in Art, did you have a specialization, a particular ... Read More PubDate: 2023-02-11T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: The following is an abridged and edited version of the transcript from a discussion between kąrî'ka chä seid'ou and Raymond Silverman that took place in April 2022. It presents seid'ou's reflections on the experiences and thinking that have shaped his revolutionary collaborative art making and pedagogical practice. His efforts have transformed the curricula of Ghana's preeminent art school at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), where he and his colleagues have created an environment that has produced a generation of innovative artists, many of whom are exhibiting not only in Ghana, but at premier international venues.kąrî, can you tell me a bit about yourself' When and how did you become ... Read More PubDate: 2023-02-11T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: Frederick Ebenezer Okai (b. 1986) is an artist who operates from Accra, Kumasi, and Sunyani in Ghana. He works mainly with clay, exploring the medium's plasticity and the potential it holds as an expression of both ephemerality and permanence.1 As a practice-led researcher and studio-oriented artist, Okai engages the various pottery cultures in Ghana. By learning from pottery making collectives and communities throughout Ghana and harnessing a growing repertoire of forming and finishing processes, he has been focused on unearthing the multiple ways in which indigenous and contemporary approaches to pottery relate to lived experience. His method involves collaborating with these communities in a spirit of equality ... Read More PubDate: 2023-02-11T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: "My aim is to make a painting for audiences to possibly walk through—not only to walk around or to merely see […] but something that creates or organises spaces."Can painting transcend the symbolic task of representation' Is a painting always greater than the surface of its support and the boundaries of its shape' How can painting accede to its spatialness in terms of form' What happens to the experience of a painting when it is augmented with olfaction, touch, and sound' How can an essence of painting be sustained without repressing such excesses' These are a few of the questions that animate Ghanaian artist Al Hassan Issah's works staged within the elevated one-room rectangular concrete extension of Nubuke ... Read More PubDate: 2023-02-11T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: The study of the visual arts in Ghana has come a long way in the last sixty years. The contributions to this special issue of Ghana Studies are a testimony to the vitality of this field of inquiry and, as Nii Quarcoopome has noted, the expansion of the canon. Having considered the past and present, we thought it would be worthwhile to offer a few observations regarding the future: both where it seems to be headed, and where it needs to go. We asked each of the contributors if they might offer a few thoughts on the subject. What follows is a summary of their responses, integrated with our own reflections.This collection of short essays reveals that, over the last sixty years, there has been a dramatic epistemic ... Read More PubDate: 2023-02-11T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: In the epilogue to Village Work, author Alice Wiemers emphasizes the reality that "development is a political enterprise" (148). By historicizing the "NGO-ification" of Northern Ghana or the ubiquity of non-governmental organizations across the region today, Wiemers shows us how categories of development are used by a range of people and institutions to meet a multitude of "ideological, political, and practical needs" (27). The book spans almost eight decades, from the colonial to neo-liberal era, and each chapter reveals elements of what Wiemers calls "hinterland statecraft" (13)—a process that not only acknowledges that rural development initiatives were a primary way that people in the North encountered the ... Read More PubDate: 2023-02-11T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: I first came to Ghana in late 1989 to spend a doctoral research year investigating Kumasi's fashion culture and commission-based grassroots fashion system. In this historically cosmopolitan metropolis, women of all ages, except the most elderly, took great care in dressing fashionably and well, not only for formal occasions such as church events and social gatherings, but also for more informal public settings, such as shopping in the central Adum commercial district or open-air Central and Asafo markets.Although men and women alike valued and continued to wear handcrafted kente and adinkra textiles for special occasions, fashion, I soon learned, was viewed as a distinctively female concern. Popular terms for ... Read More PubDate: 2023-02-11T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: A common occurrence on global video streaming platforms is the group categorization of video movies from Ghana and other West African countries as simply Nollywood films. According to Krings, Matthias and Okome (2013), the transnational visibility of Nollywood films attests to the Nigerian movie industry's dominance on the African continent and in black African communities around the world (Krings, Matthias and Okome 2013,1–22).Ghana and Nigeria's cinematic bond dates back to the colonial era, when the Colonial Film Unit (CFU) produced instructional films for distribution in the two colonies, Gold Coast (Ghana) and Nigeria (Rice 2011, 135–53). The relationship between Ghana and Nigeria was again enforced when the ... Read More PubDate: 2023-02-11T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: Popular cultural productions are "expressive forms that are constantly emergent, ephemeral, embedded in daily life, given to extraordinary bursts of activity and rapid transformation" (Barber 2018, 13).2 With regards to the literature on popular arts in Ghana, one observes that there is a significant research output on the subject.3 Yet, my profound interest, since 2012, in attending exhibitions in Accra reveals a near absence of popular cultural art forms at these locations. Although I have not interviewed gallery owners regarding their motives on this matter, one can surmise, at least, one key reason; i.e., that most galleries in Accra (as elsewhere) are simultaneously commercial and elite locations, where ... Read More PubDate: 2023-02-11T00:00:00-05:00
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