Paa Joe

Born Joseph Tetteh-Ashong, Paa Joe is a second-generation fantasy coffin maker, contributing to an artistic tradition of great importance around Ghana’s capital, Accra. Known as abeduu adeka, or proverb boxes, these end-of-life vessels illustrate Ghanaian beliefs concerning life and death. Since the 1960s, the artist has meticulously carved and painted figurative coffins, representing various living and inanimate objects symbolizing the deceased (an onion for a farmer, an eagle for a community leader, a sardine for a fisherman, etc.). Following global acclaim from the renowned exhibition Les Magiciens de la Terre at the Centre Pompidou (Paris, France) in 1989, Paa Joe’s practice has evolved, incorporating smaller-scale sculptural boxes and introducing new symbols reflecting contemporary times, such as mobile phone– and Air Jordan-shaped coffins. His body of work has been the subject of two books, Going into Darkness (1994) and The Buried Treasures of the Ga (2008), as well as the documentary Paa Joe & The Lion (2016). Paa Joe’s coffins have been featured in solo exhibitions at Gallery 1957 (Accra, Ghana) and The High Museum of Art (Atlanta, USA), as well as in group presentations at The Chicago Architecture Biennial (Chicago, USA), Fondation Cartier (Paris, France), Jack Shainman (New York, USA), Kunstmuseum Bern (Bern, Switzerland), NBB Gallery (Berlin, Germany), Sean Kelly Gallery (New York, USA), Superhouse (New York, USA), and the Victoria and Albert Museum (London, UK). His work is included in the permanent collections of The British Museum (London, England), The Brooklyn Museum (Brooklyn, USA), The National Museum of Funeral History (Houston, USA), and The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Boston, USA). Paa Joe lives and works in Kpobiman, Greater Accra, Ghana.