Details

Title

Fort St. Anthony – Axim. 1515 Portugal, 1642 Netherlands, 1872 Britain

Artist/Maker

Paa Joe (Ghanaian, born 1947)

Date

2004–2005 and 2017

Medium

Emele wood and enamel

Dimensions

48 1/2 x 100 x 84 1/2 inches

Credit

Gift of Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

Accession #

2020.54

On View

Currently not on view

In 2004, Joseph Tetteh-Ashong, known as Paa Joe, was commissioned to make thirteen sculptures of still-existing forts along the Gold Coast of West Africa. He visited fortresses like this one, which are today utilized by the Ghanaian government but were built by European colonial powers hundreds of years ago, initially as trading posts for raw materials such as gold. These sites became horrific prisons where Africans trafficked into slavery were held before being forced onto ships destined for the Americas and the Caribbean, a traumatic past that Paa Joe memorializes to remind us “that we can’t maltreat fellow human[s].”