This online show is a continuation from my African Textiles exhibition at the Brunei Gallery, School of Oriental and African Studies in London (1/10/19 to 14/12/19). Given the current pandemic, I have decided to continue sharing more textiles from my African collections; some of these flags were exhibited at SOAS.

I started collecting Asafo flags in mid 90’s during various trips to Ghana, but I have since added pieces acquired in US and Europe to the collection. When travelling in Ghana, I came across a number of fragmented flags, some of which local dealers were cutting up to repair newer flags. It was clear that some of the fragments were very early, so I decided to collect these fragments as well as complete examples. These provide a much needed historical perspective on flags used by the Asafo people. Most people are only familiar with later flags from 1950’s, such as those that featured in the  great exhibition Art, Honour, and Ridicule: Asafo Flags from Southern Ghana At the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto in 2016.

For this show, the flags have been digitally repaired to provide the viewer with a better visual experience. I have taken a decision not to post captions or sizes, as there are over 200 flags and I am very keen to share them now. I hope to be publishing a book on these in the future, and the details of each flag will be discussed at that point. My friend Duncan Clarke has done an excellent essay to introduce this show, which also appeared in HALI 205, pp.80-85. As he highlighted, we have broken the collection into three sections;

Section 1 19th century and early 1900’s

Section 2 1920’s to 1957, Ghana’s Independence

Section 3 1957 to 1970’s

We are just photographing the costumes and shawls of North West Pakistan from the collection and hope to share those online in the near future. Some of them are going to be exhibited at the Textile Museum in Washington DC next year, at my joint show of ‘Indian Textiles; 1000 years of art and design’. A major catalogue of the show will also be available.

All images and digital repairs by my dear friend and wonderful photographer Desmond Brambley; thank you to all at HALI.

I would like to thank my friends Prempeh, Hudu, Baba Sylla, Pee, Atta, Abraham, Mustafa, Kwasi and Gyan in Ghana for helping me source some of these flags.

All images copyright Karun Thakar