Arts in Ghana

Hello all!

Having visited the National Museum last week, and with considerable exposure to Ghanaian music, the next items on the list was obvious: seeing the famous thematic coffins and visiting an art gallery. OK, maybe it was not so clear, and our visit to coffin workshops and the Artists' Alliance was a suggestion from Yaw and Clara, the program coordinators, over the week.

Nonetheless, on Saturday Ryan, Lindsay, Pallavi and I (Cam was resting at home) took long trotro rides to a neighborhood by the Labadi beach. Around this area, a special kind of casket is manufactured. People with special wishes while alive, sometimes decide to be buried in tune to their passions or professions. For example, we saw several models of beer bottles, cars, cameras, fish, airplanes...all in reality coffins!
Clara had given me telephone number to call, and Halo, one of the craftsmen at the first shop we saw, told us a little about his work. It takes about two weeks to finish one of the caskets, and the price is around 2500 GHC, or $1700.

The girls showcasing the inside of a truck coffin.

After a quick walk looking at a few coffin stores (two...), we hauled a trotro and went to the Artists' Alliance, an art gallery opened by famous Ghanaian painter Ablade Glover. Different pieces were on sale, from furniture, cloths and beads, to painting, drums and weapons.
Many of them were from colonial times, and thus a brownish-gray color predominated in many wings of the building. Naturally, our volunteer/college student budgets were way short of being able to purchase any of the 5-foot tall drums, or abstract paintings there exposed. Nonetheless, the collection was indeed impressive and comprehensive on the Ghanaian colonial and modern arts scene.

 
In my first few weeks with the Kumi, my brother Kwasi had showed me a book with selected paintings by Ablade Glover, whose heavy brush-style of painting routine scenes in the country had already caught my attention. The Alliance is an initiative of his, and thus also has some of his painting for sale. Seeing his work up close is a complete different experience, one that had me running up the stars for another quick look before leaving the building. From inches away, you can feel the dry paint reaching out (so much to the point that there are spider webs between strokes). As you step back, scenes of marketplaces, trotro stations and beaches appear. Below, my favorite at the Alliance, which is not as "crowded" as most of his other works.

On Friday we leave for a 5-day excursion to the Volta Region, so I am sorry to say the blog will have a post-less week for the first time in 3 months! Look forward to coming back and updating with some cool stories, straight from different parts of Ghana!

All the best,

Henrique