College of Art and Built Environment

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    Asante Art and Culture in the Administration of Asante Traditional Medicine in the Ashanti Region
    (KNUST, 2020-10) Ababio, Stephen
    ABSTRACT The primary aim of the study was to investigate the role art and culture play in the administration of traditional medicine in the Ashanti Region of Ghana, and to analyse the positive aspects of the medicine so as to help erase the negative perception that exists about it. The primarily intention of the study stems from the fact that art and cultural activities that serve as a vehicle for curing diseases have almost been completely overlooked when it comes to the analysis and appreciation of traditional medicine. Even though the arts and cultural elements are interwoven with the medicine, their linkage has not been appreciated by a large number of people to the point of even portraying it as evil or fetish. The qualitative method of collecting and analysing data was utilized. In the selection process, the respondents were first accessed by the help of the chain method. They were then purposively sampled and categorised into four different strata due to their varied characteristics. In all, a sample size of 90 was used for the study. Interviews and observation were the main data collection instruments used. Results showed that, the art and cultural elements are indispensable and have great medical ethos relevant to the medicine. The traditional medication is a doable platform for redeeming people physically, psychologically and spiritually. The medicine will forever be part and parcel of the people of Ashanti Region and for that matter Ghanaian healthcare delivery system, since it is practised in the context of the religion and forms part of the people‘s culture. In view of this, the government and the stakeholders should give recognition to these diviners and spiritual healers by dedicating special health facilities for them to operate in and providing them with the necessary needs like what they have been providing for the orthodox health centres. Moreover, the Ministry of Health with support from government and the stakeholders should affiliate the traditional numinous centres to the orthodox ones. These two centres should work hand in hand where spiritual cases which cannot be cured by the orthodox centres will be referred to the traditional hospital and vice versa.
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    Museum education in Ghana
    (KNUST, 2020-01) Amoako – Ohene, Kwasi
    ABSTRACT Since 1957, Ghana has establish several museums under the Museums and Monument Board and these museums are required to play social, educational and economic development of a nation. However, it is distressing to note that with the highly endowed museum assets of Ghana, such as the Cape Coast Castle Museum, Ghana National Museum, Fort Appolonia Museum of Nzema History and Culture, the Elmina Castle Museum, Ho Museum, Bolga Museum, Wa Museum, Museum of Science and Technology, and The Head of State Museum both in Accra, the nation ought to be receiving more and contributing to Ghana’s Gross Domestic Product. Significantly, the museums are not doing well in the areas of satisfactory visitor experience and education. There appear to be sketchy ideas and a no concretized framework to guide museum education in Ghana. In this view, this study sought to study the state of the museums under the Ghana Museum and Monument Board and also assess visitors experience and education and finally develop a framework that would enhance a better museum education in Ghana. Employing both quantitative and qualitative approaches, the study used a triangulation of Observations, Interviewed and Questionnaire to assemble data from the field. Extensive visits to Smithsonian Museums in Washington DC in the United States and particularly Smithsonian Museum of African Art, as well as Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio also in the US and studies on Kenya Museums and British Museum were made to understand their models and frameworks. The Ghana Museum and Monuments Board were involved in Focus Group Discussion on the phenomenon. These study unveiled the state of the museums which led to the design of a framework for GMMB. The state of the facility and collections even though they harbour the culture and identity of the Ghanaian societies, most of them are in deplorable state. This calls for much attention from the museum management and government to come out with a strategic plan to salvage an asset of great importance to the development of the nation. On the satisfaction of museum audience experience the study unveiled that it is undeniably unsatisfactory. This therefore resulted in the development of an educational framework which is hinged on five main pillars of educational strategy. It is however recommended that the Ghana Museum and Monument Board adopts the framework to enhance its educational activities.
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    Impact of land use / land cover changes on African Savannah elephant’s (loxodonta africana) use of the Red Volta valley corridor
    (KNUST, 2019-11) Sumaila, Haruna Acheriga
    The Savannah elephant (Loxodonta africana) is one of the threatened mammal species in the world and listed as vulnerable by the IUCN Red lists criteria as its population has drastically declined. Its population decline is largely as a result of habitat loss due to agriculture extension and other human related land use changes. The Red Volta Valley is one of the important migratory corridors established to connect the elephant ranges in Ghana, Burkina Faso, Niger, Benin, and Togo. This study therefore aims to assess the changes in land use/ land cover systems and its effects on the savannah elephants use of the Red Volta Valley Corridor. Field survey and community participatory GIS methods were used to mark locations of elephant’s presence. Using MaxEnt algorithm and 8 explanatory variables (), elephants habitat use within the corridor were modelled for 1988 and 2018. The study revealed a significant land use/land cover changes within the thirtyyear period as bare soil increased by 174.9 km2 representing 233.8% followed by a reduction of 169.1 km2 representing 26.6% in open savannah /Agricultural Land. Riverine vegetation also reduced by 55.1km2 depicting 38%, with water indicating a reduction of 2.3 km2 that is 9%. Contrary, to expectations, Close Savana however increased by 51.3 km2 representing 32%. Suitable habitat predicted by MaxEnt in 1988 reduced by 155.54km2 . The study revealed a reduction in the suitable habitat of the elephant by 15% as a result of the changes in land use / land cover types. Also, most suitable path used by elephant across the frontiers of Togo, Ghana and Burkina Faso showed significant changes in the vegetation cover types on it and increase in length by 1km from 1988 to 2018.
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    A-Signifying Allegory. Art as an Act of Folding and the Circulation of the Sensible
    (KNUST, 2023) De Marchi, Rebecca
    A-Signifying Allegory. Art as an Act of Folding and the Circulation of the Sensible is a wandering around the epistemic trope of how beings make experience and knowledge of the Earth, and how, consequently, a variety of worlds and ways of inhabiting and using them are conceived. Taking a generative, planetary, decolonial, and posthuman posture, the researchbased artistic practice is carried on under the double lens of the academic and materialspiritual cultures. The metaphor of the fold that Deleuze reads from Leibniz has been pivotal among the various means that connect the Leibnizian incompossible worlds animating the entire project. With Leibniz, it has been tenable to say that all incompossible worlds are possible, and though not together, shape a different scenario for a best possible world in common. The enquiry further interrogates the extraction-driven consumption of the neoliberal system. The approach is not a critique, complaint, or denouncing of situations; rather, it is to let the deep and hidden other voices arise as a form of dissent. So, the means of working and the artworks that emerge contribute to the fabrication of an allegorical archive of the future shaped by attentive listening to the organic libraries of ‘persons’, as centres of intentionality, living or not, organic or inorganic, which precedes and includes the concept of the human. The practice incorporates an experimental research process in collaboration with several actants and organisms, institutions including KNUST Departments, students, artists, practitioners, and more constituting a curatorial entity of mutual care, Zoe KɔKɔɔ, who does not generate a community. In its becoming and a-signifying results, the practice is taken open to the appropriation of whoever encounters it, who simultaneously participates in the circulation of the sensible. Consequently, there is no conclusion, if not this attitude of mild equivocation embedded in any form of translation, as the discovering of new ways of folding
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    Asante Folklore and Kumasi Kiosk Architecture:a Visual Exploration of Hybridity and Mythography
    (KNUST, 2009-02) OPPONG, E. T.
    This studio-based research improvises on the architectonics of Kumasi kiosks. I present the ensuing body of artefacts as a working prototype which joins on-going cultural conversations on hybridity in contemporary art. The typical Kumasi kiosk is referenced as a site for negotiation of boundaries in its design, setting and function, but I have also made allusions to suggestions of hybridity and boundary negotiation in the polyvalent structure of Asante myth and folklore. I made a close study of three hundred kiosks located in the urban quarters of Kumasi. I also engaged such thinkers on hybrid spaces as Homi Bhabha , Jacques Derrida, Michael Foucault, Stuart Hall, Paul Gilroy, etc, to discourse on Asante mythology. I laid emphasis on the myth of ɔhyeεni (ɔhene-king), a patriarchal figure who negotiates boundaries, Asante and Akan filial kinship narrative from Asante history. I employed a personal technique of painting, -Aberphoh, which is a reconfiguration of abstract expressionist and surrealist genres. Asante art forms laden with their myths, some of which visually portrayed mythology, especially the totems, were also studied as the basis upon which art works were recreated in the form of paintings on sculptural structures created with plywood. I used the Asante myth of Abubu-mmabaa to explore the structural dialogue of inside and outside in my hybridized artefact. I have also presented an iconographic catalogue of totems and symbols which appear on the inner and outer surfaces of my structures. I present my project as an artefact to be contained in a gallery space as well as a structure or site which contains other artefacts. Like the Kumasi kiosk, these structures are not intended to be permanently site-specific. Each is collapsible and foldable and thus portable to any possible location for re-erection and exhibition. It is a cross genre installation interfacing painting, sculpture, architecture, poetry and performance.