Figural sedan chairs in Ghana

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Figurative litters in Ghana , even or palanquins on Ga akpakai called, are one of the ethnic group of the Ga in the region of Greater Accra used and whose coffin artists special form produced the famous boat or chair-shaped litters that in southern Ghana in particular from the Akan - Societies are used. Like the boat-shaped Akan sedan chairs, the figurative sedan chairs also belong to the regal insignia in which the heads of public processions are carried high.

Figurative litter drawn by Ataa Oko 2009

Meaning of the figural sedan chairs

Figurative palanquin drawn by Ataa Oko 2010

Figurative sedan chairs are usually associated with the totem or family symbol of their user. A head whose family uses the lion as a totem, for example, therefore uses a litter in the shape of a lion. Totems, so-called okadi , can represent animals, plants or objects that are related to the history of the clan and its ancestors . By allowing the worldly heads of the Ga to be carried in a figurative litter, they enjoy the protection of the ancestors associated with their totem. At the same time, the magical powers of her totem are also transferred to her. Compared to the traditional boat-shaped or chair-shaped Akan sedan chairs, the figurative ones also have the great advantage that the various Ga clan chiefs, when they sit in their figural sedan chair, can be easily distinguished and assigned to a corresponding clan. This is especially important when the leaders appear together in processions . The figural sedan chairs serve the chiefs for protection, but also for mutual demarcation and to represent the family identity. By using figural sedan chairs , the Ga also create easily recognizable differences between themselves and the Akan societies that surround them , who only use boat-shaped or chair-shaped sedan chairs.

On the history of figural sedan chairs

In the pre-colonial period , the Ga did not use palanquins, but carried their heads on shoulders. The use of sedan chairs was probably taken over from the Akwamu in the course of the 19th century as part of a new military organization . When exactly they began to make sedan chairs in the shape of their family symbols for their secular chiefs, there are no written sources. The ethnologist Regula Tschumi , who dealt with the figurative sedan chairs of the Ga for the first time as part of her scientific work, only discovered a brief indication in the Gold Coast Independent from 1925 that in those years the King of Accra, Ga Mantse Tacky Yaoboi , was in had carried a litter in the shape of an elephant during the annual Homowo festival. Regula Tschumi therefore assumes that the figural sedan chairs were already in use in Accra around 1920. From Accra, they spread in the course of the 20th century to other coastal cities in the Greater Accra region , where they are still used in some cases to the present day in Osu , La , Teshie and Nungua, among others .

User and manufacturer of figural sedan chairs

Paa Joe with a sandal coffin for the Kunstmuseum Bern (2006)

Figurative sedan chairs are only used by secular sub-chiefs among the Ga, but not by their highest spiritual leaders, the wulomei , and with the exception of a few families in Accra and Osu, unlike the matrilineal Akan, women are not allowed in the patrilineal Ga sit in sedan chairs. A figurative sedan chair is newly built for each chief and is used for the first time when the chief in question is ascended to the throne or appointed to office. After that, the Ga seldom use the sedan chairs on the occasion of important processions or festivals . Since sedan chairs are one of the most important regal insignia , they are kept in chair houses or ancestral houses and may only be brought out if they are actually used. Accordingly, the figural sedan chairs of the Ga, other than the figurative coffins that are often used and also known abroad, remained unknown outside the royal families and especially on the western western art market .

The figural sedan chairs have always been made by the same carpenters who also build figural coffins , but since the figural sedan chairs are largely kept secret among the Ga, the artisans were not allowed to talk about the royal regalia they made. Most of the figural sedan chairs that have survived or are still in use have been made in the last 30 years by the artist Paa Joe , who is also known abroad . This is surprising, because Paa Joe was previously only known as a coffin artist .

Figural coffins as litter copies

Ataa Oko with a coffin in the shape of a ship, around 1960

As Regula Tschumi proves with the initiated priests and chiefs, appointments and funeral rites are complementary among the Ga. Therefore, these persons must be buried as they came into office or on the throne. So if a chief used a figural sedan chair during his lifetime, he must also be buried in a figurative coffin that is a copy of a sedan chair. Contrary to what was first described by the photo journalist Thierry Secretan, the Ga never buried their chiefs in their figural sedan chairs, because sedan chairs are among the most important royal regalia, and they were not allowed to be buried in Ga’s grave either earlier or today. Regula Tschumi therefore assumes that all those families whose bosses had already used figural sedan chairs at the beginning of the 20th century also buried this figurative coffin replicated in one of their sedan chair. And because the heads of the Ga are buried at night, it was probably not noticed in the dark for a long time that not the original sedan chairs but only copies were used for their funerals. The original sedan chairs remained in the possession of the Ga family after the death of their user and transformed into a secret sanctuary through which the family maintains contact with the deceased.

Figural sedan chairs and the art market

While the figurative coffins of the Ga since the exhibition “Les Magiciens de la terre” have also become famous outside of Ghana, the figural sedan chairs, which look the same on the outside, have remained completely different, not only hidden from many Ga, but also from the western art market to the present day. According to Thierry Secretan, it was generally assumed in the West that the figural sedan chairs had long since ceased to be used and that the old sedan chairs would no longer exist because they had allegedly been buried. This assumption is related, among other things, to the fact that even many Ga believe that the sedan chairs once also served as coffins. Because the big chief funerals of the Ga took place at night and people who were not initiated have only limited or no access to such events. That is why there are neither photos nor written sources from which one could learn anything about the great funeral rites of the Ga at the beginning of the 20th century. The first figurative coffins were used as copies of the figural sedan chairs in the context of such funerals. Contrary to what was previously assumed by Thierry Secretan and others, the figurative coffins of the Ga are not an invention of an individual artist made in the 1950s, but they developed directly from the litter. It was not until the 1960s that the use of figurative coffins also came into fashion among the Christian Ga, a privilege that had previously only been granted to the initiated “elite”. According to the latest research results, the figural coffins were only adopted by the Christian Ga around 1950, but not invented by their carpenters. The use of family totems has been reserved for the initiated chiefs, priests and elders until the present. The Christian Ga were therefore only allowed to use coffin symbols since the 1960s, which in their figurative form did not bring them into conflict with either the Christian Church or their initiated “elite”. Therefore, between 1945 and 1955 , carpenters such as Ataa Oko (1919–2012) from La or Kane Kwei (1925–1992) from Teshie began to manufacture figurative coffins for Christians or non-initiated Ga, the symbolism of which is now based on the profession of the deceased in Connected and not with its totem. Ever since these figural coffins were discovered by Western art dealers in Seth Kane Kwei's old studio in Teshie in the 1970s , this artist has been invented in the West as the inventor of a supposedly new art form that, according to Thierry Sercretan, had no African forerunners.

Exhibitions

In March 2017 , a figural sedan chair was exhibited for the first time in the group exhibition Accra: Portraits of A City in the ANO gallery in Accra, Ghana. This litter in the shape of a parrot was created by the artist Kudjoe Affutu on behalf of a head in Ghana in 2013.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Regula Tschumi: The Figurative Palanquins of the Ga. History and Significance. In: African Arts , 46 (4), 2013, pp. 60–73.
  2. ^ Regula Tschumi: The Figurative Palanquins of the Ga. History and Significance. In: African Arts , 46 (4), 2013, pp. 61–62.
  3. ^ Margaret Joyce Field: Religion and Medicine of the Gã people. The Crown Agents for the Colony, London 1961, p. 88.
  4. ^ Regula Tschumi: The Figurative Palanquins of the Ga. History and Significance. In: African Arts , 46 (4), 2013, p. 64.
  5. ^ Regula Tschumi: The figural sedan chairs and coffins of the Ga in southern Ghana. History, transformation and meaning of an artistic form of expression from the beginning to the present. Diss. Phil. Hist. Univ. Basel, pp. 125-144.
  6. ^ Regula Tschumi: The Figurative Palanquins of the Ga. History and Significance. In: African Arts , 46 (4), 2013, pp. 62–64.
  7. ^ Regula Tschumi: The Figurative Palanquins of the Ga. History and Significance. In: African Arts , 46 (4), 2013, p. 65.
  8. ↑ a b Thierry Secretan: Il fait sombre, va-t'en. Hazan, Paris 1994, p. 14.
  9. ^ Regula Tschumi: The figural sedan chairs and coffins of the Ga in southern Ghana. History, transformation and meaning of an artistic form of expression from the beginning to the present. Diss. Phil. Hist. Univ. Basel, pp. 111-124.
  10. ^ Regula Tschumi: The Figurative Palanquins of the Ga. History and Significance. In: African Arts , 46 (4), 2013, pp. 65–66.
  11. ^ Regula Tschumi: The Figurative Palanquins of the Ga. History and Significance. In: African Arts . 46 (4), 2013, pp. 71-72.
  12. ↑ Thierry Secretan: Il fait sombre, va-t'en. Hazan, Paris 1994, p. 9.
  13. ^ Regula Tschumi: The Figurative Palanquins of the Ga. History and Significance. In: African Arts , 46 (4), 2013, p. 64.
  14. ^ Regula Tschumi: The figural sedan chairs and coffins of the Ga in southern Ghana. History, transformation and meaning of an artistic form of expression from the beginning to the present. Diss. Phil. Hist. Univ. Basel, pp. 181–193.
  15. ↑ Thierry Secretan: Il fait sombre, va-t'en. Hazan, Paris 1994, p. 9.
  16. ^ Regula Tschumi: The figural sedan chairs and coffins of the Ga in southern Ghana. History, transformation and meaning of an artistic form of expression from the beginning to the present. Diss. Phil. Hist. Univ. Basel, pp. 181–193.

literature

  • Regula Tschumi: Hidden Art. The figural sedan chairs and coffins in Ghana. Edition Till Schaap, Bern, 2014. ISBN 978-3-03828-098-9 .
  • Regula Tschumi: The buried treasures of the Ga: Coffin art in Ghana. Edition Till Schaap, Bern, 2014. ISBN 9783038280163 .
  • Regula Tschumi : The Figurative Palanquins of the Ga. History and Significance. In: African Arts , Vol. 46, No. 4, 2013, pp. 60–73.
  • Regula Tschumi: The figural sedan chairs and coffins of the Ga in southern Ghana. History, transformation and meaning of an artistic form of expression from the beginning to the present. Diss. Phil.-Hist. University of Basel , 2013.
  • Margaret Joyce Field : Religion and Medicine of the Gã People . Oxford University Press , London, New York, Toronto 1937. (Reprinted 1961; Reprinted by AMS Press, New York 1979).
  • Thierry Secretan: Il fait sombre, va-t'en. Hazan, Paris 1994.

Web links

Commons : Coffin Art in Ghana  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files