The Art Underground: Fantasy Coffins of Ghana

The exhibition features two dozen coffins connected to the Kane Kwei Carpentry Workshop in Teshie-Nungua, tracing the evolution of the abebuu adekai—Ga for “receptacles of proverbs”—from its origins in the 1950s to its presence in global art discourse today. According to oral histories, Kane Kwei first built a cocoa-pod-shaped palanquin for a Ga chief who died before its use; the family buried him in it instead. When his grandmother later passed, Kwei created her coffin in the form of an airplane so her spirit could, symbolically, take flight. These acts of imagination gave rise to a sculptural language that joins design to remembrance.

In Ga cosmology, the coffin is both vehicle and message, assisting the deceased on their passage to the ancestral world. Families commission forms that reflect occupation, status, or spiritual calling, and through dialogue with the artist, each coffin becomes a portrait in wood—a moral narrative as much as a work of art.

From this tradition grew a lineage of master craftsmen trained at the Kane Kwei Workshop, including Paa Joe and later his son Jacob, along with Daniel Mensah (“Hello”) and Eric Adjetey Anang, Kwei’s grandson and the workshop’s current director. The studio remains a crucible of artistic transmission where apprentices learn through carving, sanding, and storytelling.

By the 1970s, fantasy coffins had gained international attention. Museums, galleries, and collectors began commissioning works, recognizing them as sculptural expressions of imagination and cultural continuity. Their inclusion in the landmark 1989 exhibition Magiciens de la Terre in Paris marked a turning point, positioning these works within contemporary art’s global dialogue.

Guest curated by Mark Sloan in collaboration with Eric Adjetey Anang, The Art Underground: Fantasy Coffins of Ghana presents this remarkable living tradition as both ritual and art—where craftsmanship, cosmology, and remembrance converge.