Daniel Mensah, 2006 Daniel Mensah (born 1968), also known as Hello, is a Ga carpenter and

fantasy coffin Fantasy coffins or figurative coffins, also called “FAVs” (fantastic afterlife vehicles) and ''custom'', ''fantastic'', or ''proverbial coffins'' (), are functional coffins made by specialized carpenters in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana. T ...

artist. He works as an independent artist and carpenter in

Teshie Teshie is a coastal town in the Ledzokuku Municipal District, a district in the Greater Accra Region of southeastern Ghana. Teshie is the ninth most populous settlement in Ghana, with a population of 171,875 people. Politics Teshie is in t ...

Greater Accra The Greater Accra Region has the smallest area of Ghana's 16 administrative regions, occupying a total land surface of 3,245 square kilometres. This is 1.4 per cent of the total land area of Ghana. It is the most populated region, with a popul ...

Ghana Ghana, officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It is situated along the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, and shares borders with Côte d’Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, and Togo to t ...

Biography

Born in 1968 in Teshie, Daniel Mensah did his six-year apprenticeship from 1984 until 1990 with the Ga coffin artist

Paa Joe Paa Joe (né Joseph Tetteh-Ashong; born 1947) is a Ghanaian sculptor, and figurative palanquin and fantasy coffin carpenter. Joe is considered one of the most important Ghanaian coffin or abebuu adekai (“proverb boxes”) artists of his generati ...

who was trained by Kane Kwei (1924-1992) in Teshie. When Mensah finished his apprenticeship, he worked for eight years with Paa Joe in

Nungua Nungua is a town in Krowor Municipal District in the Greater Accra Region of southeastern Ghana near the coast. Nungua is the eighteenth most populous settlement in Ghana, in terms of population, with a population of 84,119 people. Politic ...

as a master carpenter until he opened in 1998 his own studio called "Hello Design Coffin Works" in Teshie. Mensah participated in various art exhibitions in Europe and in some European film projects, like "Sépulture sur mesure" from Philippe Lespinasse. Some of his

s are in the collection of the

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

, in the

Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts The Sainsbury Centre is an art museum located on the campus of the University of East Anglia, Norwich, England. As part of its relaunch in 2023 under new executive director, Jago Cooper, the Sainsbury Centre became the first museum in the wor ...

Norwich Norwich () is a cathedral city and district of the county of Norfolk, England, of which it is the county town. It lies by the River Wensum, about north-east of London, north of Ipswich and east of Peterborough. The population of the Norwich ...

and in private art collections.

Exhibitions

* 2009–2010: Living and Dying Gallery, British Museum, London. * 2011: "Ghanaian Fantasy Coffin“, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia, Norwich.

Documentaries

* 2009 "Ghana, Sépulture sur mesure"; Philippe Lespinasse, Grand Angle Productions,

TV5Monde TV5Monde (), formerly known as TV5, is a French public television network, broadcasting several channels of French-language programming. It is an approved participant member of the European Broadcasting Union. The network is available across ...

. * 2011 "Hidden Treasure of Africa“;

Griff Rhys Jones Griffith Rhys Jones (born 16 November 1953) is a Welsh actor, comedian, writer and television presenter. He starred in a number of television series with his comedy partner, Mel Smith. He and Smith came to national attention in the 1980s for ...

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

Bibliography

Regula Tschumi Regula Tschumi is a Swiss social anthropologist and art historian. Biography Regula Tschumi has spent time in East, West and South Africa, researching into contemporary African art. In 2006 she published a standard work on the figurative coff ...

. 2008. The Buried Treasures of the Ga. Coffin Art in Ghana. Benteli, pp. 122–123, 229.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mensah, Daniel 1968 births Living people Contemporary sculptors Ga-Adangbe people 20th-century Ghanaian sculptors Ghanaian carpenters Ghanaian male sculptors 20th-century male artists 21st-century Ghanaian sculptors 21st-century male artists People from Greater Accra Region