What: The Widener Gallery at Trinity College opens an exhibition entitled “Bold, Raw and Uncensored: Ghanaian Movie Posters,” featuring work by various artists – a collection of posters from the collection of Michelle Gilbert, anthropologist and visiting associate professor, Fine Arts Department at Trinity College.
Gilbert describes the posters as vivid, lurid and powerful images from Ghana, painted by a variety of artists in order to draw viewers to films from Hollywood, Nigeria and Ghana. This genre of hand-painted posters done on canvas began in the late 1980s and lasted approximately a decade.
The exhibition, sponsored by the Fine Arts Department at Trinity and curated by Felice Caivano, is free and opens to the public.
An opening reception will be held on Thursday, Feb. 2, from 4:30 - 6:30 p.m.
When: February 2 - March 16, 2012
(open during Widener hours listed below)
Opening reception: Thurs., Feb. 2, 2012 4:30 p.m. – 6:30 p.m.
Gallery talk: During Common Hour at a date to be announced
Where: Widener Gallery, Austin Arts Center
Trinity College, 300 Summit Street, Hartford, Conn., 06106
Background: The collection of posters is owned by Michelle Gilbert, anthropologist and visiting associate professor, Fine Arts Department, Trinity College. Gilbert specializes in African art and architecture. Since 1976, she has done fieldwork in Ghana on art, religion and politics. She is author of “Hollywood Icons, Local Demons: Popular Art in Ghana,” and has written extensively on Ghanaian popular theater, art, religion and politics.
Writes Gilbert, “The posters visually capture a complex layering of traditional symbols and transnational media. Shocking, enticing, fearful, haunting, vicariously pleasurable — the imagery is never neutral. It draws on Nigerian, Hollywood and Ghanaian images in the service of local fantasy.”
“The hand-painted Ghanaian film posters wed the commercial with the aesthetic. They shock and haunt,” she writes. “They capture a universal fear of death and torture, as well as the pleasure of escape and triumph. As with theater everywhere, they provide viewers with a sense of catharsis, a way to confront their fears, and the promise of safety and happiness. However lurid, attractive, or repulsive the sensationalism of the painted image, the moral message of the poster is readily recognizable as one of good versus evil. Generally, good triumphs.”
This exhibition is free and open to the public. For more information, call 860-297-5232 or 860-297-2199. Widener Gallery Hours are 1-6 p.m., closed Saturdays.