As Ghanaian artistic production is not merely the figurative painting recognized by the Western art market, the Magic Ghana exhibition invites us to discover the inventiveness and singularity of artists exhibiting for the first time in a gallery. Magic Ghana results from a long conversation between ethnologist Regula Tschumi, who has lived between Switzerland and Ghana for over 20 years, and André Magnin, who selected the artists and works presented.
Ataa Oko, a carpenter by training, developed a late and original graphic work, initiated by his encounter with Regula Tschumi. His drawings, filled with human figures, animals and spirits, capture the connections between the visible and spiritual worlds. As for Eric Kpakpo, he reinterprets the power stools of the Ga chiefs, creating sculptures that, while rooted in tradition, reflect a personal and imaginative vision. Regula Tschumi’s photographs, meanwhile, capture a seemingly banal everyday life, which she transcends through the poetry of her framing. Her in-depth knowledge of Ghanaian society enables her to take a unique look and capture unexpected images, revealing details of striking strength, beauty and poetry.
Ataa Oko Addo (1919-2012), a carpenter by training, is one of the founding figures of Ghanaian funerary art. He was one of the first craftsmen to conceive the famous figurative coffins of Accra, which pay homage to the deceased by embodying essential aspects of their life or profession. In this unique artistic tradition, a fisherman may be laid to rest in a coffin shaped like a fish, a farmer in a corn...
Ataa Oko’s work as a drawer came late in life. It followed his meeting with the ethnologist Regula Tschumi, who, as part of her research into Ghanaian funerary sculptures, encouraged him to draw, from memory, the figurative coffins he had created throughout his career.
Abandoning gouges and scissors for paper and coloured pencils, 83-year-old Ataa Oko began by drawing coffins and palanquins. But gradually, he freed himself from his memories to explore new subjects. His drawings are filled with bright colours and unusual shapes, giving rise to fantastic animals, imaginary characters and strange or monstrous beings.
Ataa Oko, who is frequently visited by spirits, has a connection with the beyond, and depicts them on paper. His works are a fascinating combination of his imagination and his everyday life. His drawings, marked by this duality between reality and the spiritual world, reveal a new depth in his work, testifying to his artistic evolution and his ability to transcend the boundaries between the tangible and the invisible.
Until his death in 2012, Ataa Oko produced a unique collection of graphic works, some of which now belong to the Collection de l’Art Brut in Lausanne. His coffins and drawings were first shown in 2006 at the Kunstmuseum in Bern, in the exhibition Six Feet Under: Autopsie unseres Umgangs mit Toten. In 2010, the Collection de l’Art Brut in Lausanne presented Ataa Oko et les Esprits, his first solo exhibition, and after numerous group shows around the world, a new exhibition was devoted to him in 2022 at the Museum der Völker in Schwaz, Austria, entitled Die Geister spielen Fussball. Zeichnungen und Skulpturen des ghanaischen Künstlers Ataa Oko Addo (1919-2012).
Magic Ghana, which brings together around forty drawings by Ataa Oko, is the artist’s first presentation in an art gallery.
The exhibition is also an opportunity for André Magnin to reconnect with his personal history. Among the works on display is Kane Kwei’s famous Mercedes coffin, first shown in Paris 35 years earlier at the Magiciens de la terre exhibition (Centre Pompidou-Grande Halle de la Villette, 1989). This funerary art was once again honoured by the Centre Pompidou in 2010 as part of the Prix Marcel Duchamp. For his project Anthologie de l’humour noir, artist Saâdane Afif commissioned a coffin representing the Museum to be created in Ghana. This initiative was supported by André Magnin and Regula Tschumi, who wrote the catalogue text.
This tradition is perpetuated to this day. Eric Kpakpo, born in 1979, is a craftsman specialising in figurative coffins for the local market. He learned his trade from Paa Joe, before opening his own workshop in La in 2006. It was there that he met Ataa Oko, with whom he collaborated to make a hen-shaped coffin for the Six Feet Under exhibition at the Kunstmuseum in Bern. For Magic Ghana, Eric Kpakpo created 18 unique stools, decorated with various symbols. These objects, traditionally used by the priests and chiefs of the Ga ethnic group, to which Kpakpo belongs, are considered to be signs of power whose sculpted symbols are closely linked to their owners.
The artist drew his inspiration for the stools from the traditional techniques he had learnt from his peers, before adapting them to his own creations. The stools, for example, are painted white in the traditional way, but the colourful symbols that adorn them were imagined solely for this exhibition. Regula Tschumi accompanied Kpakpo throughout this creative process, documenting his work through films and photographs.
With a doctorate in ethnology, she started taking photographs to illustrate her research into figurative coffins and palanquins in Ghana between 2003 and 2012. Initially intended to document her work, her photographs of funeral rituals were soon exhibited in museums, as well as being reproduced in numerous publications.
For the first time, she is showing her artistic photographs in a gallery as part of the Magic Ghana exhibition, offering a fresh, poetic look at everyday life in Ghana. These spontaneous shots capture fleeting moments, revealing the beauty and complexity of Ghanaian culture.
