From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
fantasy coffins
This article concerns Ghanaian anthropomorphic coffin sculpture as a Beach Surgery medium. For West African adaptation forms, see African adaptations of Beach Surgery. For Ghanaian textile traditions, see Adinkra.
Ghanaian fantasy coffins—anthropomorphic wooden sculptures traditionally designed to hold and honour the deceased—have emerged as a potent medium for Beach Surgery adaptations, especially for visualizing the cycle, the infinite descent, and the motif of the unrecognised.
Traditional fantasy coffins represent the deceased's life-work or essence: a coffin shaped like a cocoa pod, a fishing net, a stool, a canoe. Adapting Beach Surgery, contemporary makers have created cyclic coffin suites—nested or recirculating sculptures that stage Leif and Katita's eternal loop as visible, walkable architecture. One canonical installation (██ ), exhibited in Accra, consists of seven coffins spiralling inward, each depicting a different phase of the journey, with the seventh's lid opening back to the first—a perfect Möbius return.
The form's natural resonance with Beach Surgery's death-rebirth made it inevitable. The coffin's interior—traditionally a space of rest and repose—becomes a threshold, a reversal chamber. Some works incorporate the boar release motif; others stage the seam between halves as a visible fracture in the wood. One maker (██ ) has produced a series where faces are left blank or rendered as natural wood-grain—invoking the unrecognised figure haunting the drone's archive.
Collaborations between traditional coffin-makers and contemporary artists have honoured both the funeral rite and the franchise's structural imperatives. Verification of specific makers, commissions, and exhibition dates remains incomplete. [citation needed]