RELEASE: Life, legacy, and imagination take shape in Ghana’s figurative “fantasy” coffins at Museum of International Folk Art
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RELEASE: Life, legacy, and imagination take shape in Ghana’s figurative “fantasy” coffins at Museum of International Folk Art
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 30, 2026 MEDIA CONTACT Ashley Espinoza 505-479-0906 ashley.espinoza@dca.nm.gov
Santa Fe, NM — The Museum of International Folk Art (MOIFA) announces The Art Underground: Fantasy Coffins of Ghana , opening Sunday, July 19, 2026, and on view through Saturday, September 5, 2027. This groundbreaking exhibition brings together more than twenty works including newly commissioned coffins—in both full-size and miniature-size—to take full measure of one of Ghana’s most inventive living art forms: figurative coffins made in coastal Ga communities that transform lived biographies into sculptural form.
Hand-carved and vividly painted, these works—often referred to in Ga as abέbùù adékà —are made to honor the dead through symbols of vocation, reputation, aspiration, and lineage. A coffin might take the shape of a fish, a Bible, a shoe, a bottle, or a vehicle, designed to be read in public procession as a bold statement about a life lived. The Art Underground presents these coffins not as curiosities, but as coffins that communicate something about the deceased. These are objects that move between craft, ritual, and art, carrying memory into public view.
The exhibition also highlights the double role that the tradition plays today. In Ghana, coffins remain vessels shaped by family consultation and funerary purpose. Yet, since the 1970s, accelerated by international exhibitions and publications, these works have also traveled widely, entering museums and private collections worldwide. The Art Underground restores the cultural context often lost in that global circulation, returning attention to the coffin builder’s workshop as a living site of knowledge, negotiation, humor, skill, and belief.
The Art Underground is guest curated by Mark Sloan in collaboration with master coffin maker Eric Adjetey Anang, grandson of Seth Kane Kwei, a foundational figure associated with the tradition’s rise to public visibility in the late 1950s. The project foregrounds workshop lineages and apprenticeship, while also acknowledging that early histories are plural, shaped by multiple perspectives and local memory.
“Fantasy coffins embody dialogue—between families and craftsmen, between tradition and innovation, between local rituals and global art markets,” said Sloan. “Our goal is to honor the artistry, ingenuity, and cultural depth of this living tradition while presenting it with the respect and seriousness it deserves.”
The exhibition will be accompanied by a richly illustrated publication from the Museum of New Mexico Press, edited by Mark Sloan, and featuring essays by Roberta Bonetti, Nii O. Quarcoopome, Steven Feld with Nii Yemo Nunu, and John Owoo, with…