THE GOLD COAST COLLECTION

Limited edition · Edition One of Three · 2026

Gold Coast was the name this country carried when gold and cocoa were drawn from the same soil and priced somewhere else.

Three truffles. Three women. One painting.

THE PAINTING

The Ghanaian currency was a big reference for me, especially the notes that show cocoa farmers. I was interested in how cocoa and the people who work around it have been represented on our currency, and I wanted to bring some of that feeling into the painting.

I used the currency images as inspiration for the composition and arrangement of the figures and cocoa, but I interpreted it in my own way rather than directly copying the images. I also looked at photographs of cocoa farmers and the cocoa plants to help with the figures and details.

- Awanle Ayiboro Hawa Ali, Artist

A banknote is the one image we all carry and none of us look at. The cocoa farmer has been printed on Ghanaian currency for decades, folded into pockets, passed across counters, handled by every one of us without ever being met.

Hawa took her off the note and painted her at scale. Same woman, same pods, same arrangement. The difference is that here you have to look at her.

That is the whole collection, really. A commodity is a thing you can price without seeing. This box asks you to see first.

THE ARTIST

Awanle Ayiboro Hawa Ali is a Ghanaian visual artist, born in 1997. Her work asks what it means to be a woman moving through a patriarchal society, often painting women in suits as a form of quiet liberation.

She is represented by Artemartis, the agency founded by Selasie Gomado, who designed the space for the installation Commodity / Couture. This project lives in a small world.

THE THREE

Each truffle is finished in metallic gold, on dark chocolate, wearing a cloth from the continent.

Adwoa · West African Five Spice West African indigo

Named for Chef Selassie's mother. Five spices particular to this region, and to Ghana. Prekese sits at the front of the blend. What else is in it? We'd love to hear your guess.

Akosua · Seventy percent dark Bògòlanfini, mud cloth

Named for Chef Selassie's cousin, who has been a culinary custodian for her. She taught Selassie the food of northern Ghana, travelled the north with her, and showed her how to clean and process millet properly.

Ganache, dark shell, nothing folded in and nothing hidden. In a box where the other two carry spice and smoke, she is the one that tells you whether the chocolate itself is any good.

Mud cloth is dyed with fermented river mud over weeks. The pattern is written on, not decorated. It suits her.

Buernorkie · Smoked Cream Tie-dye, Mauritania

Named for the woman who shared with Chef Selassie the age-old art of smoking cream, and who has since passed. Along this coast, welcome begins with a glass of smoked water. Her truffle carries that welcome, smoked with palm flowers from the Midunu garden in Accra.

Beyond sweet, salt, bitter, sour and umami, we think there is a sixth. Smoke.

Her passing is the reason Midunu knows that documenting this work is not optional.

Three women. A mother, a cousin, a teacher. Two living, one not. Their stories arrive properly next year.

THE EDITION

Every box is numbered by hand. Edition One is 240 boxes.

The Gold Coast Collection is produced once a year for three years, and each edition closes when it sells out. There is no restock. Next year brings a chance to experience them anew.

COMMODITY / COUTURE

In October the collection travels to 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair in London, alongside Commodity / Couture, an installation at Somerset House on the labour of cocoa farmers.

Couture is what we call a thing when we agree to pay for the hands that made it. Commodity is what we call it when we would rather not know. Cocoa has only ever been offered one of those words.