Buried in Style: Artistic Coffins and Funerary Culture in Ghana

Ghana’s extraordinary coffin shapes and farewell culture

Celebrate death as we celebrate life: This is the credo of the funeral culture of the Ghanaian ethnic group Ga-Adangme, where creative coffins in the shape of animals, vehicles, etc. are used to represent the preferences, or dreams of the deceased. In addition, perfectly choreographed dances transform funerals into colorful and energetic celebrations. For more than twenty years, Regula Tschumi, who holds a doctorate in ethnology, has researched and photographed the Ghanaian funeral cult. Her astonishing, vibrantly colorful images depict Christian and traditional funeral ceremonies, bizarre installations, and various forms of laying out the deceased, as well as spectacular trends in figural coffin design over the past two decades. Tschumi also accompanied and photographed the undertaker and pallbearer Benjamin Aidoo (known as ＂Ghana’s Coffin Dancer＂), who has become world famous through social media.

Regula Tschumi is a freelance scholar, art mediator and photographer based in Berne, Switzerland. She studied social anthropology, art history and religious studies in Berne. 2013 she received a PhD in social anthropology from the University of Basel with her research about the figurative palanquins and coffins in Ghana. Tschumi has published a number of articles and photographs in exhibition catalogues and scholarly journals, as well as two books about the figurative coffins and palanquins of the Ga in Ghana. She participated in several art exhibitions and art projects as a co-curator, consultant and as a photographer, including ones at the Art Museum in Berne, at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, at the Collection de l’Art Brut in Lausanne and at the Musée d’ethnographie in Neuchâtel.