Ewe Funerary Sculpture

Abstract

Much has been written recently about Ghanaian art both traditional and modern, and readers of African Arts are familiar with the striking and colorful cement sculpture made by the Fante on the central coast. Both the monumental military shrines (posuban) for the asafo companies, with life-size soldiers, officials, and symbolic animals set in the context of European warships and forts (see Preston 1975, Cole & Ross 1977), and the modern sculptured gardens containing Biblical personages for the Apostolic Christian and Divine Healing Churches (see Briedenbach & Ross 1978) are by-products of the introduction of Portland cement in the early 20th century (Briedenbach & Ross 1978:34). Less well known is the tradition of cement funerary art that has evolved among the Ewe, who live east of the Volta River in southeastern Ghana, which does not appear to be related to that of their Ghanaian compatriots to the west. If anything, it seems probable, considering the historical origins of the Ewe from the east and their maintenance of traditional patterns of visiting with people to the east, that this art form derives from southern Nigeria.1 The Anlo Ewe, well known as fishermen, farmers, and weavers, live in a series of towns set along the coast from Anloga to Lome. Christianity was introduced early (the mid-19th century by the Bremen Mission and the Evangelical Presbyterian Church), and with it came Western-type education. Broad tarmac roads now carry cars and trucks across the area, along the coast, and up to the north. Alongside these roads are an increasing number of modern cement-block houses, but inland there are also traditional mud-and-wattle dwellings, and on the coast are compounds surrounded by walls of woven mats. The modern coastal highway abruptly turns into broad, sandy roads dotted with crudely modeled mud and cement ritual statues, called legba, which act as protective figures for the town, family, or individual; medicinal pots on forked sticks; and conical thatched huts covering representations of the mystical forces known as vodu (Gilbert, in press). A great number of spirit cults and widespread belief in witchcraft and in protective deities coexist with well-patronized orthodox and unorthodox Christian churches.