Soap Magazine
abebuu adekai have become a fashionable way to celebrate a death .
Each coffin symbolizes some aspect of the deceased : what they did for a living , their hopes , their vices . Some convey high degrees of respect and honor toward the deceased . A fantasy coffin in the shape of an antelope commemorates a wise person ; the eagle is reserved for people of prominence . Fish are very popular designs – the fishing industry is big here – as are Bibles , the only fantasy coffins allowed in churches in this deeply religious country .
London gallerist Jack Bell has argued that abebuu adekai recall the work of celebrated contemporary American artist Jeff Koons . The fantasy coffins play with the idea of scale by spectacularly reimagining objects of the everyday and awarding them near iconic status . As the market for fantasy coffins grows , novelty carpentry is steadily being transformed into contemporary art .
Anang is leading that charge . In 2014 , while in Philadelphia , he built a coffin in the shape of a fish and filled it with plastic to address the problem of waste . During a recent trip to the United States , where he was artist-in-residence at the University of Madison – Wisconsin , Anang built a coffin in the shape of a gun to draw attention to the global epidemic of gun violence . The strangest commission the coffin shop has gotten , Anang says , was a coffin shaped like a seahorse for a man from Florida .
Design plans for an upcoming piece .
Photo : Theophilus Mensah
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