The 3D artworks come comforting or confronting you. The truth you want to embrace or the lie you want to escape. Deep hollow eyes, drawing you closer to it for moments of introspection or bulking eyes pushing you away to have a more satisfying look. Each mask tells a story.
Ed Gavua’s works take inspiration from a long tradition of mask making which served various functions in Africa, from warding off evil to celebrations and communications; Ed Gavua breaths life into this installation called: The Voice of The Waste, Yiiiiiikakaii African Mask collection (part of a series called From Borla to Dollar.) which was part of the THIS IS NOT MAKE BELIEVE Exhibition at the Christiansborg Castle Gardens in connection with the Chale Wote Street Art Festival, 2023 (21st August 2023- 27th August, 2023) under the main theme: Magneto Motherland.
Kakaii is something frightening. Having a ghoulish persona. It combines the personalities of the revered ancestral masks in places of worship and the colourful, funky, and celebratory masquerades of Fanteland. For example, in Takoradi, they are called Ankos.
Before taking on these contemporary sacral-funky positions, they were waste products and treated as a nuisance to society; discarded Cartons, electrical gadgets, clothes among others. The exhibition celebrates the resistance of these products, which were treated as still borns. Giving them life, a voice to speak and express themselves in the world where they are treated as evil.
Africans have always repurposed things. From a cooling pot to a medicine pot to a flower pot and sometimes finally a treasured utentsil for “Mama ne Dada’s” “bespoke kitchen” during playtime. The clothings of those who have died are treasured gifts and are valued as heirlooms that are passed on from generation to generation. This is partly because durable materials are used in the productions.
Arrangements like AGOA (African Growth and Opportunity Act) as a matter of policy create stumbling blocks to a country like Ghana’s own industrialization agenda. They include, Clothing, Agriculture products, electrical products among others. Their policies are not just to have only the best of African products on the U.SA market but also to make products suitable for only the international market, much to the detriment of the local market.
The irony is that, many products shipped from the west are of far more inferior quality and most times not fit for human use, so they end up on landfill sites and some find their way into our water bodies. The poor response of their actions is the “recycled” word called recycling; it is presented as a new/ woke phenomenon but has been with Africans since time immemorial.
Creators are continuing the sustainable cultures of their ancestors by repurposing these discarded materials. For Ed Gavua, an environmental advocate and artist, it is one mask at a time.
Click to watch The Voice of The Waste- Yiiiiiikakaii African Mask video.