Archival pigment print mounted on aluminium Dibond.
One Size Only / 61 x 61 cm / 24 x 24 in
Hand-signed by the artist, with title, date, and edition number inscribed in ink on an archival label affixed to the reverse side of the mounted photograph
She is the one being served, yet her own hand rests on the silver pot, mid-pour into a single white cup at the table's lip — the gesture that organizes the whole picture. A second pair of hands, cropped to anonymity at the lower edge, does the actual pouring; her grip is ceremonial, a held pose rather than a task. That small contradiction is where Carlos Idun-Tawiah's image declares itself as construction rather than document: this is a tableau, lit and arranged, every element placed to be read.
The reading rewards attention. Three fluted bowls in gilded blue march along the cloth like punctuation; the sage walls carry pinned snapshots of flowers, pictures within the picture, and a tasselled drape frames the right edge as if a stage curtain had been drawn back. The sitter's bridal-pale dress, pearl rope and sculptural cream hat compose a figure of deliberate poise against that mint field, her gaze meeting the lens with composed neutrality. Idun-Tawiah, born in Accra in 1997, builds these scenes the way a director builds a set — period costume, saturated colour, props that quote a remembered domestic interior — placing his practice squarely within the contemporary staged-photograph lineage of constructed African portraiture.
What keeps it from mere nostalgia is the precision of the staging itself. Nothing is incidental; the studied artifice is the subject. The serving of tea here is less ritual than mise-en-scène — a genre exercise in dignity, made for the wall, that knows exactly how it wants to be seen.
She is the one being served, yet her own hand rests on the silver pot, mid-pour into a single white cup at the table's lip — the gesture that organizes the whole picture. A second pair of hands, cropped to anonymity at the lower edge, does the actual pouring; her grip is ceremonial, a held pose rather than a task. That small contradiction is where Carlos Idun-Tawiah's image declares itself as construction rather than document: this is a tableau, lit and arranged, every element placed to be read.
The reading rewards attention. Three fluted bowls in gilded blue march along the cloth like punctuation; the sage walls carry pinned snapshots of flowers, pictures within the picture, and a tasselled drape frames the right edge as if a stage curtain had been drawn back. The sitter's bridal-pale dress, pearl rope and sculptural cream hat compose a figure of deliberate poise against that mint field, her gaze meeting the lens with composed neutrality. Idun-Tawiah, born in Accra in 1997, builds these scenes the way a director builds a set — period costume, saturated colour, props that quote a remembered domestic interior — placing his practice squarely within the contemporary staged-photograph lineage of constructed African portraiture.
What keeps it from mere nostalgia is the precision of the staging itself. Nothing is incidental; the studied artifice is the subject. The serving of tea here is less ritual than mise-en-scène — a genre exercise in dignity, made for the wall, that knows exactly how it wants to be seen.