Drawings and Traditional Ghanaian Adinkra Symbols: Proposal Drawings of Emmanuel Ofosu Kwateng Architectural Designs

Adinkra Symbols are multifaceted by virtue of proliferating of ideas and exploration springing up across its symbolism and philosophy. The proliferating of ideas and exploration of Adinkra symbolic motifs has to lead the symbols to be amalgamated into several disciplined in academics such as drawing. However, drawing now has liberated from the traditional sense of supporting other disciplines to a medium of expression now, for this proposal drawing studies. This study reviews recent drawings of Architectural Designs by Emmanuel Ofosu Kwateng, a 21 years of age student of the University of Education, Winneba which adopts drawing as a medium to explore the multifaceted of Adinkra symbols in his Architectural Designs. Showing Emmanuel Ofosu Kwateng experimentation of adapting Ashanti’s Adinkra symbols in Architectural Designs this paper investigates how traditional Ashanti’s Adinkra Symbols and its visual culture is restaged and detoured in contemporary art-space to create artworks that not only bear cultural identity but possesses qualities that define contemporary art in both drawing and Architecture. The results to this search show that the philosophy and visual studying of Ashanti Adinkra Symbol exist in hybrid nature that can be appropriate into several disciplines for multifaceted form in contemporary art since it enables the re-invention of Ashanti Adinkra symbol for rich visual culture in contemporary art practices and techniques. This appropriated version of Ashanti’s Adinkra symbols in an Architectural Designs situate Emmanuel Ofosu Kwateng practices into the minimalist approach to simplicity as the symbols already exist in simple forms. The proposal drawings conferred here explain the practices of contemporary art in the 21st century can refer to cultural philosophies and symbols to produce new visual forms of realities reflecting 21st-century artistic development.Keywords: Proposal drawing, Adinkra symbol, Studio practice, Architectural design, and Minimalism art.DOI: 10.7176/ADS/80-02Publication date: January 31st 202

Iconographic Art in religious worship in Ghana: The Catholic culture in focus

The paper presents findings from a study that explored iconographic artforms and artworks in religious worship in Ghana with a focus on the Catholic culture. It involved a qualitative approach based on case studies of four major parishes purposively selected within the Catholic Archdiocese of Cape Coast. In all, twenty-eight participants were interviewed and iconographic artworks and practices were observed over a period of one year. The participants were 4 priests, 4 catechists, 16 youth as well as 4 non-Catholics. From the findings, it was observed that, the church is intertwined with diverse artforms and artworks with specific meanings. The images constitute significant liturgical accoutrements such monstrance, chalice, thurible, signs and symbols that are used in the daily liturgical celebrations and seasonal ones such as Ash Wednesday, Good Friday and Easter Vigil. Also, the youth indicated that the various imageries were not well disseminated to them by the leaders of the church. It is recommended that issues of the iconographic arts in Archdiocese of Cape Coast should be disseminated to youth to ease or do away with its uncertainties through strategic plans/activities in the Catholic Church. It is also recommended that, periodic activities should be organized for the public to expunge misconceptions of artworks used in the Catholic liturgy. This paper focuses on one of the parishes visited for the study, St. Anthony’s Catholic Church, Assin Asempanaye in the Assin Bereku. Keywords: artforms, iconographic, liturgy, worship DOI: 10.7176/JPCR/53-03 Publication date: May30th 202