Mami Wata in contemporary Ghanaian religious and artistic discourse

Record summary

Mami Wata is a family of water-spirit traditions represented across West and Central Africa, including Ghana, where images, shrine practices, stories, and Pentecostal reinterpretations remain active. Post-2010 scholarship and exhibitions examine her links to commerce, beauty, foreignness, healing, sexuality, and religious change. The lead is valuable for comparing an apparently pan-regional figure with locally specific traditions and historical visual circulation. Uncertainty concerns whether similar names and images should be treated as one tradition or as related but distinct regional formations.