Kofi Antubam

Kofi Antubam was born in 1922 in the Gold Coast, as Ghana was then called, and was taken to Kumasi to live with an uncle when his father died. He was encouraged at Adisadel College, studied at Achimota, where art teaching drew on local traditions, and later at Goldsmiths College in London. Most sources give 1922; one article says 1923. He became a teacher and one of the leading artists of the generation that saw Ghana become independent in 1957.

Nkrumah's government wanted the new nation's symbols to come from African, and especially Akan, traditions rather than from Britain. Antubam, appointed state artist in 1957, designed the first presidential seat, the presidential mace, the state sword and other state monuments. The chair of state on which Nkrumah sat at the Republic Day celebrations on 1 July 1960 is held by the National Museum in Accra. He also worked on the regalia and decoration of state buildings, including wooden reliefs on the facade of the parliament building in Accra, and murals at the United Nations building in Geneva. His paintings, murals and reliefs drew on Akan symbols, Adinkra signs and Ghanaian life.

In 1963 he published Ghana's Heritage of Culture, a study of the country's traditions. He died in 1964, aged 42; sources do not agree on where.

How to look at an Antubam: read the symbols. The reliefs and regalia are built from Akan forms and Adinkra signs, so a seat, a sword or a panel carries a message about authority, memory or unity, and the carving is part of that message. That reading is this site's own.

Where to see the work

The National Museum in Accra holds the chair of state, and his work is also in national collections in Ghana, South Africa and the United Kingdom; the parliament building in Accra carries his reliefs on its facade. Graphic Online and the Old Achimotan Association have published biographies. See also Amon Kotei, adinkra symbols and our list of Ghanaian artists.