Spirit Possession: Celebration of Ghanaian Faces, African Culture & Heritage at LBCAC
By MARRIE STONE
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When I found I had crossed that line [to freedom], I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was glory over everything. The sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in heaven. –Harriet Tubman, after crossing the Pennsylvania border in 1849
Textile artist Allyson Allen memorialized Tubman’s words on a quilt entitled “Jo’s Harriet” in 2012. The quote surrounds Tubman, who dances under the sun, arms stretched skyward into an open field ahead.
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Photo by Marrie Stone
“Jo’s Harriet” (2012). Machine pieced and quilted. Cotton and ethnic prints. Glass bead and cowrie shell embellishments.
The quilt is part of Spirit Possession, a three-person show on display at the Laguna Beach Cultural Arts Center (LBCAC) through July. Allen is joined by photographers Tom Lamb and Thomas Fynn.
The exhibition intends to draw attention to Juneteenth, a commemoration of the end of slavery in the United States, which happened on June 19, 1865. A companion show of the same name is also currently on exhibit at the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art (OCCCA) in Santa Ana through June 29. The same exhibition showed in Ghana’s capital city, Accra, in May.
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Courtesy of OCCCA
(L-R) Tom Lamb, Allyson Allen and Thomas Fynn at OCCCA opening of “Spirit Possession.” In the background is Allen’s “75% HEArt – Helping Earth Art” (2024).
Spirit Possession puts an intimate and modern face on West Africa and the origins of the slave trade. Fynn, a documentary photographer from Ghana, has visually recorded his country’s tragic history alongside its rich culture and beautiful people.
The transatlantic slave trade from West Africa to the Americas lasted centuries. For nearly 150 years, Ghana was its epicenter. Approximately 10 million enslaved people were transported in the transatlantic slave trade at rates of up to 100,000 persons per year. The remnants of that haunting period still exist in dozens of forts and castles built by Europeans between 1482 and 1786. Cape Coast, east of Accra, contains more than 30 dungeons where slaves were held by Europeans before transport to the United States, South America and the Caribbean. Images of these dungeons, as well as “The Door of No Return” (the last place Ghanaians would touch their homeland), are on display in this exhibit.
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Photo by Tom Lamb
A visitor looks at Lamb’s images of Ghana’s holding cells for African women enslaved in the transatlantic slave trade
Since the mid-1970s, Fynn’s photography has celebrated cultural heritage, high-profile personalities, Ghanaian national events, eco-tourism and everyday modern life. His portraits capture the essence of his subjects. His landscape and architectural pieces portray a country both grappling with its own past and honoring its many rich traditions.
Through Fynn’s photographs, viewers can discover Ghana’s many traditional festivals. The annual Aboakyer (Deer Hunting) Festival, celebrated by the Simpa (now known as Winneba) people, occurs the first Saturday in May. The Homowo (“Hooting at hunger”) Festival began after a period of famine following a lack of seasonal rainfall to nourish the crops. The annual Feok Festival, occurring in northeastern Ghana, celebrates the victory of the Builsa warriors in the late 1800s when they fought off invaders and avoided enslavement. The Simpa Aboakyir Festival marks the migration of the Simpa people in the central region from the ancient Western Sudan Empire. And the Abangye Festival marks an annual activity in pre-colonial times when men went into the bush, singing and chanting, to cut sticks to fence the abode of their gods.
Spirit Possession provides both a beautiful way to explore another country’s cultural practices and painful history while reflecting on our nation’s own complicated and shameful past.
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Photo by Jeff Rovner
Thomas Fynn poses with a wall of his photographs at OCCCA depicting various Ghanaian people and festivals
Lamb met Fynn on his first visit to Ghana in 1993. Lamb was part of an international design charrette team that intended to create sustainable tourism for the central region, including the first canopy walkway in Africa. He returned in 2002 and, most recently, in 2023. Some of Lamb’s early work can be seen in the OCCCA show. All the images at LBCAC are from 2023.
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Lamb, who specializes in ethnographic photography, has traveled throughout the world documenting various cultures, people and practices. His work is a fascinating contrast and complement to Fynn’s, showing both an insider and outsider’s perspective on culture. For example, Lamb might notice details that Fynn takes for granted. Fynn may have an emotional connection and trust with his subjects that Lamb lacks. By blending the two, the viewer enjoys a more nuanced understanding of both the individuals and their homeland. We’re also given rare and intimate access to Ghana, its traditions, heritage and citizens.
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Courtesy of LBCAC
Tom Lamb and Thomas Flynn met in Ghana in the 1990s and have documented the country and its complicated history together in the decades that followed
Since the pandemic and the racial unrest in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, there’s a movement underfoot of Blacks leaving the racism of America to live in Africa (generally referred to as “Blaxit”). Ghana’s 2019 “Year of Return” campaign, commemorating the 400th anniversary of the first recorded African slaves arriving in Virginia, was recently followed by the “Beyond the Return” campaign. Collectively, these efforts have resulted in at least 1,500 African Americans moving to Ghana between 2019 and 2023. Photos on display at OCCCA document the many individuals who have returned, sometimes with the bones of their enslaved ancestors, and recorded their names on a wall.
Alongside Fynn and Lamb’s powerful photographs hang Allyson Allen’s soft quilts that often deliver difficult messages. “Sarah’s Quilt” portrays a small Black girl standing with her horse accompanied by the words:
Raffle:
Dark bay horse Star
Mulatto girl Sarah
will be raffled
for chances at one dollar.
In addition to the Tubman quilt, Allen also honors buffalo soldier Cathay Williams, the first African American woman to enlist in the U.S. army under the pseudonym William Cathay and “Spider Weaver,” based on an African tale describing the origin of Kente cloth in Ghana.
After winning the Laguna Beach Arts Alliance Honarkar Family Grant in 2019, Allen’s work has been a regular part of Laguna’s cultural scene. Since then, she’s shown at the Neighborhood Congregational Church (NCC), the Laguna Art Museum and LBCAC.
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Photo by Tom Lamb
Thomas Fynn and Allyson Allen at the opening of “Spirit Possession” at OCCCA
“My replicas of the famous Gee’s Bend quilts are at NCC this month. My newest piece at OCCCA, 75% HEArt – Helping Earth Art, is a 16ft. x 16ft. upcycled, repurposed quilted mixed media textile made from fabric remnants, clothing and plastic bags,” Allen said. “It is an eco-friendly example of sustainable art that represents only a small fraction of the 92 million tons of fabric waste dumped in landfills annually in the U.S.”
As a culture bearer, Allen’s work is often described as “information art” used for storytelling, folklore and cultural preservation. It beautifully bridges the gap in this exhibition between subject matter and genres. In contrast to the documentary realism of photography, the quilts are full of symbolism. They continue the story of the slaves’ journey across the Atlantic, from the “Door of No Return” to Tubman’s dance across the Pennsylvania border.
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Photo by Jeff Rovner
Allyson Allen’s “Precious Cargo” (2007) now on display at OCCCA. The quilt contains more than 100 African fabrics embellished with glass and bone beads, shells, chain and handmade dolls.
Spirit Possession will be on display at LBCAC through July and at OCCCA through the end of June. For more information, visit LBCAC’s website by clicking here.
