Regula Tschumi facts for kids

Regula Tschumi is a smart person from Switzerland. She studies how people live and their cultures (this is called social anthropology). She also studies art history, which means she learns about art from different times and places.

Exploring African Art

Regula Tschumi has traveled to East, West, and South Africa. There, she studies modern art made by African artists. She is very interested in special types of art from Ghana.

Famous Fantasy Coffins

In 2006, Regula Tschumi wrote an important book about "figurative coffins." These are amazing coffins shaped like animals, cars, or other objects. They are made by the Ga people in Ghana.

Her book looked into how these unique coffins started. She explored their connection to the Ga people's art and beliefs. She also studied how these coffins changed over time.

Discovering Ataa Oko

While researching, Regula Tschumi found a talented artist named Ataa Oko. He was born in 1919 in Ghana. Ataa Oko made these special coffins and also painted in a style called art brut.

Regula Tschumi discovered that Ataa Oko was making figurative coffins as early as 1945. This was even before another famous artist, Kane Kwei, who many people thought invented them. Kane Kwei was well-known outside Ghana for these coffins used in Ga burial traditions.

Secret Palanquins

In 2013, Regula Tschumi earned her PhD. For this, she did deep research on "figurative palanquins." These are special chairs or platforms, also shaped like objects, used to carry important people.

She showed how these palanquins are connected to the figurative coffins. She also found that figurative palanquins were used in Accra, Ghana, as early as 1930.

Regula Tschumi learned something interesting about these palanquins. Many Ga people believed that chiefs were buried in their special palanquins. However, Regula Tschumi found this was not true.

Palanquins are powerful symbols of royalty. In Ga culture, these symbols are never buried. Instead, kings were buried in coffins that looked exactly like their palanquins. This was important because the Ga people believe that becoming a king and a king's funeral are connected events.

Working with Artists

Regula Tschumi has worked on many art shows in famous museums. She has collaborated with Ghanaian artists and makers of coffins and palanquins. Some of these artists include Paa Joe, Ataa Oko, and Kudjoe Affutu.

Gallery

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  White chicken coffin made by Kudjoe Affutu (2008)

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  Ataa Oko and Kudjo Affutu with Oko's red rooster coffin for Regula Tschumi (2009)

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  The „Pompidou coffin“ made by Kudjoe Affutu in collaboration with Regula Tschumi for an exhibition in the Centre Pompidou in Paris (2010)

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  Paa Joe with his sandals coffin made for the Kunstmuseum Bern (2006)

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  Figurative palanquin, drawing by Ataa Oko for Regula Tschumi (2010)