Buried in Style

Regula TSCHUMI


Through Buried in Style, Regula Tschumi explores the contemporary transformations of funerary rituals in southern Ghana, particularly within Ga culture in the Greater Accra region, where death becomes a space of creativity, memory, and social prestige. Far from being solely an occasion for mourning, funerals emerge as collective celebrations in which the relationship between the living and their ancestors is reaffirmed at the heart of local cosmologies.

At the center of this project are Ghanaian figurative coffins—remarkable vernacular sculptures that reflect the profession, status, life journey, or aspirations of the deceased. Rooted in a tradition that continues to evolve, they embody a productive tension between ritual heritage, prestige economy, and formal imagination.

Tschumi’s work, informed by her background as an anthropologist, art historian, and photographer, reveals a visual culture in which forms, objects, and gestures play an essential role in shaping social bonds. Here, aesthetics appear not merely as decoration, but as a means of inscribing loss within a shared and living symbolic order.

curators        Klaus Kehrer, Alejandro León Cannock
partners        Kehrer Verlag

Adress
Foundation Manuel Rivera-Ortiz
18 rue de la Calade
13200 Arles
OPENING HOURS
Currently closed to the public.
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