When I first started working here, I knew I would be working primarily with the FESPACO poster collection. I naively assumed that they would all be made out of some sort of paper product and likely be mass-produced. Well, that turned out to be quite wrong since the BFC/A also has a small collection of rare hand-painted posters from Ghana.
Police Protection 3– This is an example of a one-of-a-kind, hand painted poster on canvas that became fairly common in Ghana in the 1980s and 1990s. I had no idea such posters existed and found them fascinating. These posters were commissioned for traveling theaters or “video clubs”. The posters were often done on opened-up flour sacks and their bright and vivid imagery was important in drawing the local crowd to the theater. It’s also interesting to see how these posters can really tell a story through the artwork. Sadly, this is now a dead movement, but an important art form of the Ghanaian culture.
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