Academic literature on the topic 'Ghanaian Sculpture'

The prevalence use and handling of plastics have become a global menace to the environment. This menace has even led to a national discourse on banning plastics in Ghana. The plastic waste situation seems to be an oblivious less concerned by some Ghanaian sculptors, engineers and scientists on its artistic exploration and contribution to the quota of environmental sanitation in Ghana. However, having identified the artistic qualities of plastics, this article seeks to transform plastic waste into art by exploring and analysing non-biodegradable polyethylene as a viable and unconventional material for sculpture. The focus of this studio-based research employed the Praxis with arts-based recycling approach as technique and procedures to create a bust from plastic waste as a means of establishing its viability as an unconventional material for sculpture. It was established from the outcome of the research that plastics as non-biodegradable material should not be seen as an environmental menace, but a viable and unconventional material for sculptors and other professionals like engineers and scientists beyond Ghana must also expand on this research further.

The Ghanaian sculptor Lee Nukpe belongs to the post-Independence or post-World War II generation of visual artists in Ghana whose bodies of work have not had due critical assessment, contextualization and review. The paper reviews Nukpe’s late-career work, Nubile, a bas relief representation of a bare-breasted young woman arrayed in Ghanaian nubility rites insignia. The authors identify carryovers from Ghana’s colonial and post-Independence generations such as the predominantly social realist aesthetic and veiled conservative sex and gender motifs. However, the authors also point out how the cut-and-dry cultural and formal motifs in Nubile are also undermined by Nukpe’s ostensible double-coding. This spectral feature of Nubile presents it as a “text with a shadow”. The authors argue that to a large extent, Nubile lends itself to ambivalent readings which could challenge Ghana’s patriarchal definitions of woman and nubility.