Persons Unknown, in partnership with Deadly Prey Gallery of Chicago, will ring in the Holiday season with more than 50 hand-painted movie posters from Ghana! In the 90’s, there was a dearth of movie houses in Ghana, particularly in the more rural areas of the country. In response to a growing demand for movies, American movies in particular, many clever entrepreneurs would pack up a station wagon with a TV set, VCR, and portable generator in order to travel from town to town showing the latest blockbuster films available on video tape, everything from “Purple Rain” to “The Terminator”. The town would assemble in a public squares to watch these movies from folding chairs. In order to advertise coming attractions, local artists were hired to paint full color posters for each movie, usually using house paint for the color and old grain sacks as their canvas. Having little to no information to go on, save perhaps for a glimpse of the video box or a description of the action, these artists filled any gaps in their canvases with what they imagined would draw a crowd- usually the lurid and the grotesque. The crowds had a real taste for horror movies, and so these artists would embellish their works as necessary with blood, mayhem, and magic to ensure interest. Witches, dismemberments and terrifying creatures would find their way into even the most benign movies- “Tootsie”, “ET”, or “The Matrix”, creating unhinged, alternate fever-dream versions of the original films. The result are posters which take our familiar pop-cultural touchstones-stories familiar to us and seemingly set in stone- and infuse them with playful, anarchic imagination. The energy behind these images is infectious. Kicking down the fence between author and audience, they remind us that all these movies, all these stories, are really collaborative propositions. Movies are dreams which enter our heads and now belong to us, raw material for our collective imagination. We have all the freedom in the world to continue them, refashion them, even change them completely. So why don’t we? Exhibition to feature the work of great Ghanaian artists: Mr Brew, Heavy J, Death is Wonder, Wise Art, Farkira, Salvation, Stoger, Mr. Nana Agyq, C.A. Wisely, Magasco, Nii Bi Ashitey, Bright Obeng and H.K. Mathias.