Paa Joe and Elisabeth Efua Sutherland Akԑ yaaa heko || One does not take it anywhere: Accra, Gallery II

This November, Gallery 1957, Accra presents a collaborative project between renowned fantasy coffin maker Paa Joe and performance artist Elisabeth Efua Sutherland. Coinciding with Paa Joe’s seventieth birthday (and marking his fortieth year in the coffin trade), the exhibition considers traditional funerary customs in contemporary Ghana.

Exploring specific funeral practices of the country’s Ga and Fante communities – coastal societies to which the artists belong - the exhibition focuses on the fictional passing of a young girl. Presenting death as a journey, mediated through water, the works consider the trisection of the worlds of the unborn, the living, and the dead.