Happy Independence Day #Ghana 🇬🇭 #AmoakoBoafo “Golden Stool” (Self-portrait), 2017 Oil on canvas 55.11 x 63in / 140 x 160cm Exhibited: “AMOAKO BOAFO ‘Detoxing Masculinity’”, 22 June – 8 July 2017, WE DEY x space, Vienna, Austria “#RE-MASCULINITY - Amoako Boafo”, 22 Feb. - March 12, 2018, Accra, James Town (Brazil House), Ghana “BLACK VOICES: Friend of my Mind”, Ross-Sutton Gallery NY, curated by Destinee Ross-Sutton, Dec.18, 2020 - March 2, 2021 The historical and cultural significance of the #GoldenStool, the very embodiment of the #Ashanti state (modern day Ghana) and the very symbol of the Ashanti peoples, living, dead and yet to be born. The Golden Stool (Ashanti-Twi: Sika dwa; full title, Sika Dwa Kofi "the Golden Stool born on a Friday") is the royal and divine throne of kings of the Ashanti people and the ultimate symbol of power in Asante.[1] According to legend, Okomfo Anokye, High Priest and one of the two chief founders of the Asante Confederacy, caused the stool to descend from the sky and land on the lap of the first Asante king, Osei Tutu.[2] Such seats were traditionally symbolic of a chieftain's leadership, but the Golden Stool is believed to house the spirit[3] of the Asante nation—living, dead and yet to be born. The War of the Golden Stool, also known as the Yaa Asantewaa War, the Third Ashanti Expedition, the Ashanti Uprising, or variations thereof, was a violent battle in the series of conflicts between the United Kingdom and the Ashanti Empire (later Ashanti Region), an autonomous state in West Africa that fractiously co-existed with the British and its vassal coastal tribes. The war ended with the Ashanti maintaining its de facto independence and control of the Golden Stool. Even though the Ashanti were annexed into the British Empire, they ruled themselves with little reference to the colonial power. However, when the British colony of the Gold Coast became the 1st independent sub-Saharan African country in 1957, Ashanti was subsumed into the newly created Ghana.