Iconographic Art in Religious Worship in Ghana: The Catholic Culture in Focus

Abstract

The paper presents findings from a study that explored iconographic art forms and artworks in religious worship in Ghana with a focus on the Catholic culture. It involved a qualitative approach based on case studies of four major parishes purposively selected within the Catholic Archdiocese of Cape Coast. In all, twenty-eight participants were interviewed and iconographic artworks and practices were observed over a period of one year. The participants were 4 priests, 4 catechists, 16 youth as well as 4 non-Catholics. From the findings, it was observed that the church is intertwined with diverse art forms and artworks with specific meanings. The images constitute significant liturgical accoutrements such as monstrance, chalice, thurible, signs, and symbols that are used in the daily liturgical celebrations and seasonal ones such as Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, and Easter Vigil. Also, the youth indicated that the various images were not well disseminated to them by the leaders of the church. It is recommended that issues of the iconographic arts in the Archdiocese of Cape Coast should be disseminated to youth to ease or do away with its uncertainties through strategic plans/activities in the Catholic Church. It is also recommended that periodic activities should be organized for the public to expunge misconceptions about artworks used in the Catholic liturgy. This paper focuses on one of the parishes visited for the study, St. Anthony’s Catholic Church, Assin Asempanaye in the Assin Bereku.

Keywords: artforms, iconographic, liturgy, worship