Hair-braider’s Signs

in a Series Signed by Ahongan Komla / Togo, Africa/ Oil Paint on Wood Pannel, c. 1980’s

TERA Gallery presents a series of five beauty shop signs by the renowned African artist, Ahongan Komla. These advertising signs found at barber shops and beauty shops across sub-Saharan Africa are a key part of contemporary African art. The development of this art form has given birth to “popular” or “urban” art in Africa. These signboards are two-dimensional art pieces. The collection illustrated here act as catalogs from which customers choose their hair-cutting or braiding patterns.

Museum exhibits featuring African barber and beauty salon signs include the Crowning Achievements:
African Arts of Dressing the Hair at the Fowler Museum of Cultural History at UCLA in 1995, and Hair in
African Art and Culture at the Museum of African Art in New York in 2000. For more information about African
advertising signs read An Anthology of African Art: The Twentieth Century. Ahongan Komla?s artwork was
also featured and sold in the barber sign exhibit at the Indigo Art Gallery in Philadelphia, PA. These
references are all available now online.

To make a loan or exhibit request, please contact the gallery.

The TERA Gallery is a private collection of fine art, rare artifacts, and magnificent objects of arts from
antiquity (500 BC) to the present. The collection is dedicated to the rich artistic traditions of the
people of Africa.