The Akan people were settled in their current homeland of Ghana by the 12^th century CE, where they form multiple subgroups such as the Asante and the Fante, with a common language and similar cultural practices. The Akan are matrilineal, and the different subcultures trace their ancestry back to a common female ancestor. Although the traditional form of Akan government is a royal monarchy, this power is balanced by a council of elders in which women strongly participate and contribute to critical decisions for their communities.

The Akan people highly developed art in many different forms and media, including brass casting, weaving, and woodcarving, and they produce some of the world’s most celebrated forms of African art. Akan art is highly symbolic and often takes forms that convey popular proverbs that instill life lessons, honor one another, and memorialize the ancestors. Because of their matrilineal lineage, the Akan place high importance on mothers and on female fertility, which Akan artists also express in their work. Members of the Akan royalty are also great patrons of the arts and use art abundantly in ceremonies and rituals, as owning and using elaborate, sophisticated art reflects royalty and status.

Interaction with other cultures has also influenced the development of more secular Akan artforms. Trade with African Islamic cultures, for example, led to the use of Islamic weight systems, and this led to the creation of elaborate functional artforms such as Asante brass gold weights. The importation of non-local and synthetic fibers, meanwhile, has led to developments in traditional Akan textile designs. And finally, the influences and demands of the tourist trade have led to still more developments and adaptations of traditions by the Akan, as they navigate their increasingly global world.

 

The mining of gold dust by the Akan brought Islamic traders to their region in the early 15^th century, and this led to the adoption by the Akan of Islamic scales and sets of small geometric lead and brass standardized weights to weigh the gold dust. With the demand for sets of weights by merchants, Akan artists experimented with lost-wax brass casting to create functional but increasingly elaborate forms of standardized weights that eventually became status symbols as well.

While Islamic art often focuses on geometric form, the Akan focused on representational images, creating miniature effigies of people and animals as their gold weights. These effigies then developed into symbolic images that refer to Akan proverbs, which consist of a multitude of sayings and moral teachings. The ambiguity of some gold weight images may allow them to be interpreted to refer to several different proverbs.

This brass gold weight depicts the especially popular form of a standing bird, which could refer to the proverb, “If a bird does not fly, it starves,” which suggests that lazy Akan farmers will not reap the benefits of a good harvest. Alternatively, this gold weight might also refer to the proverb, “Time operates like a bird; while it is before you, if not caught, flies away and never to be seen again,” which means that life is short, and we must make the best of what we have while we are alive, because we cannot regain lost time.

 

The Akua’ba, or “Akua’s child,” is one of the best-known African artforms. The story behind the Akua’ba (Akua’ma, plural) is a legend of the Asante subculture of the Akan. (SEE The Story of the Akua’ba)

Because of their matrilineal lineage, the Akan emphasize female fertility and place considerable societal pressure on women to become mothers, especially to have female children who will grow into adulthood and carry on the family line. Traditional Asante Akua’ma therefore are almost always female, and although they are highly stylized figures, they clearly illustrate the physical features that represent adult female beauty among the Akan, including a round or oval head, a high forehead, a straight nose, a small mouth, a ringed neck, firm breasts, and a protruding navel. Studies have shown that Akan women who carry Akua’ma have higher fertility rates than Akan women who do not engage in the practice.

This Akua’ba figure takes a very traditional form, with the exception of the carved band across the forehead and the decorative carving on the body. These extra carved details reveal that this Akua’ba was created for the tourist trade, as increasingly decorative elements like this have been added over time to Akua’ma figures to help make these simple sculptures more appealing to tourists.

Today inexpensive plastic dolls have largely replaced the commissioning of Akua’ma for traditional use, and the spread of Christianity has also diminished the practice of using Akua’ma for fertility. Akua’ma nevertheless continue to be widely produced by Akan wood carvers because of the global popularity of the Akua’ba story and the demand for these figures in the tourist trade.

The Story of the Akua’ba

According to a legend of the Asante subculture of the Akan, an Asante woman named Akua desperately wanted to have a child, but she was infertile and barren. Distraught, Akua went to the village priest, who told her to visit a wood carver and to commission from him a wooden figure of the child she wanted to bear. The priest told Akua to carry the wooden figure on her back in a traditional baby wrapper and to treat the figure as if it were a living baby. Akua had the figure made as instructed, and she diligently cared for the figure night and day, rubbing its head with tukula powder and adorning the figure with beads and ornaments. Fellow villagers were amused by Akua’s actions, and they taunted her by calling the figure “Akua’ba,” meaning Akua’s child. Despite the ridicule, Akua continued to care for the wooden figure until she eventually conceived. When she delivered a beautiful baby girl who would carry on her family’s lineage, the villagers changed their minds about Akua’s actions with the wooden figure. Other women began to commission wooden figures in the hopes of having their own beautiful children, and this practice became a tradition among the Akan.

 

The Miniature Akua’ba Fertility Pendant is a wearable, stylized version of an Akua’ba. Unlike a traditional Akua’ba figure, this figure has large, abstracted hands, a smaller forehead, and detailed hair, as well as a rough surface texture that is the result of the casting process. Despite these difference in features, however, the form of this pendant is readily identifiable as representing an Akua’ba, and these pendants also share similarities in purpose to wooden Akua’ma figures.

In Akan culture, fertility holds high importance, and infertile women struggle to integrate into Akan society.  After the tradition of the Akua’ba became popular among the Akan, these miniature brass pendant figures of Akua’ma began to be commissioned from Akan brass casters, and the figures were given to young women going through initiation and puberty rites, so they would have luck in fertility. Thus, these fertility pendants represent more than just the hope for a child, but also the general necessity of fertility in Akan culture and the desire for belonging.

As with Akan brass gold weights, lost-wax cast metal jewelry like these pendants also became a popular status symbol among the Akan. While wealthier and higher status members of society wore expensive gold jewelry, silver and brass jewelry became popular among the less-affluent for daily use. Today Akan artists continue to make these traditional brass pendants and gold weights, although these works are now produced almost exclusively for the tourist trade.

 

The distinctive flat, rectangular heads of this double figure indicate that this sculpture was produced by an artist of the Fante subculture of the Akan. Like the Asante, the Fante also created Akua’ba fertility figures (SEE The Story of the Akua’ba), with stylized stick-like bodies, flat faces, straight noses, small mouths, ringed necks, and protruding navels. Unlike the Asante Akua’ba figures, which have round or oval heads, Fante wooden figures have elongated, rectangular heads that extend high upward from the eyebrows, creating faces with a towering foreheads; the tall, vertical stature of Fante sculpture is believed to express strength and power. In addition, Fante artists may also incorporate embedded shells and colorful pigments into their traditional sculptures.

Akan cultures did not traditionally make double figures, and unlike other African cultures such as the Dogon, the Akan did not create male and female primordial couple figures. This unusual double figure therefore likely represents a hybrid type of sculpture that combines other cultures’ primordial couple figural forms with traditional Fante sculptural features, along with decorative embellishments such as the hair-like loops on the sides, likely all in an effort to create a sculpture with increased appeal to tourists.

 

Kente cloth is an elaborate textile traditionally created by male weavers of the Asante subculture of the Akan. Originally woven of hand-dyed local fibers, Kente cloth was exclusively reserved for royalty and those of very high status. These textiles are created by weaving geometric tapestry designs into narrow strips of cloth, and these strips are then carefully sewn together to create highly detailed but harmonious overall patterns in large panels of cloth. Over time, Akan rulers commissioned increasingly elaborate patterns from Kente cloth weavers, which encouraged the weavers to develop sophisticated techniques, such as incorporating additional colored wefts to create even more detailed designs.

The import of less-expensive cotton, rayon, and other synthetic fibers into the Akan region after colonization served to considerably lower the price of making Kente cloth textiles, making them more affordable for the less-affluent among the Akan. In 1960, Kente cloth became the national symbol of Ghana, and the cloth became popularized on the global market.

Because of the greatly increased demand for Kente-patterned cloth, simple printed and stamped versions of Kente cloth are now produced for the general populace as well as for the tourist trade – which unfortunately has also diminished the development of artistry and the significance of Kente cloth in Akan culture. The cap in this exhibit, however, is a good example of traditional tapestry-woven Kente cloth, illustrating the creative combinations of detailed geometric patterns.