The Methodology, Ideology and Pedagogy of African Art: Primitive to Metamodern [1 ed.] 1032484330, 9781032484334

Citation preview

METHODOLOGY, IDEOLOGY AND PEDAGOGY OF AFRICAN ART

This edited volume, including contributions from scholars with different areas of speciali‑ zation, investigates a broad range of methodologies, ideologies and pedagogies focusing on the study of the art of Africa, using theoretical reflections and applications from primitivism to metamodernism. Chapters break the externally imposed boundaries of Africa‑related works beyond the conventional fragments of traditional, contemporary and diaspora. The contributions are significantly broad in their methodologies, ideologies and pedagogical coverage; yet, they all address various aspects of African artistic creativity, demonstrating the possibili‑ ties for analytical experiments that art history presents to scholars of the discipline to‑ day. The Ìwà (character) of each approach is unique; nevertheless, each is useful toward a fuller understanding of African art studies as an independent aspect of art historical research that is a branch or bud of the larger family of art history. The volume respects, highlights and celebrates the distinctiveness of each methodical approach, recognizing its contribution to the overall character or Ìwà of African art studies. The book will be of interest to students in undergraduate or graduate, intermediate or advanced courses as well as scholars in art history and African studies. Moyo Okediji is Professor of African Art History at the University of Texas at Austin, USA.

METHODOLOGY, IDEOLOGY AND PEDAGOGY OF AFRICAN ART Primitive to Metamodern

Edited by Moyo Okediji

Designed cover image: Yoruba artist, Ès. ù E. lé. gbára, c.early 20th Century. 27 x 5 x 8 in. Courtesy of Moyo Okediji. Photo by Chuqi Min. First published 2024 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Moyo Okediji; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Moyo Okediji to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. ISBN: 978‑1‑032‑48433‑4 (hbk) ISBN: 978‑1‑032‑48442‑6 (pbk) ISBN: 978‑1‑003‑38908‑8 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003389088 Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra

This book is dedicated to Henry John Drewal on the occasion of his retirement to emeritus status at the Department of Art History, University of Wisconsin, Madison. The project started as a festschrift and grew into its present shape thanks to his mentorship and creative direction.

CONTENTS

List of Figures xi List of Contributors xv Acknowledgmentsxvii

Introduction: Metamodern Studies of African Art: Traditions, Innovations and Interventions Moyo Okediji

1 On the Invention of “Traditional” Art John Picton

1 14

2 Sensiotics or the Study of the Senses in Material Culture and History in Africa and Beyond Henry John Drewal

22

3 Dancing Nkhoba: The Flow of Sound and Healthy Bodies in the West Usambara Mountains of Tanzania Marguerite E.H. Lenius

38

4 African Meanings, Western Words Barry Hallen

53

5 Chwuechology: Indigenous African Art Education Akinyi Wadende

61

viii Contents

  6 Azande and Mangbetu Artists as Social Critics in the Belgian Congo 1909–1915: What Are the Implications for Contemporary Artists and Museums Today? Nancy Pauly   7 Cloth as Metaphor in Egungun Costumes Bolaji Campbell

73 93

  8 Conflict and Peace: Gender and Spiritual Dimensions of Egúngún Performance99 Funmi Saliu Imaledo  9 Ìbà Fún Obìnrin: Monochromatic Mythography of Yoruba Female Power Kehinde Adepegba

113

10 Creativity and Identity Construction in Contemporary Yoruba Art Michael Olusegun Fajuyigbe

131

11 African Art, the Venice Biennale, and the Politics of Visibility Janine A. Sytsma

152

12 The Spirit of Fi Yi Yi and the Mandingo Warriors: Africa in New Orleans Cynthia Becker

170

13 Speaking into Being: The Resonance of Empathy in the Work of Elizabeth Catlett Melanie Anne Herzog

187

14 Sacred Spaces: Antonius Roberts and Public Sanctuaries Moyo Okediji 15 Reflections and Reminiscences Revisited: Indigenous Knowledge Systems, African-Based Worldviews, and Cross-Cultural Diasporic Connections Andrea E. Frohne 16 Akwaaba/Continuum: Manifesto of an African Artist Rikki Wemega-Kwawu 17 Ès.ù E.le.´gba Agency in the Critical Imagery of African American Artist John Yancey Christopher Adejumo

193

202 208

233

Contents  ix

18 Toward a Sonic African Diasporic Re-Membering Jacqueline Cofield

245

Addendum: Voices Curated By Moyo Okediji

261



263

Performing Justice for Everyday People Wura-Natasha Ogunji

Laser-Focused Olu Oguibe

268



Curating Contemporary African Art Olabisi Silva

275



Writing African Art Suzanne Blier

285

Index293

FIGURES

1.1 Moyo Okediji, Bàbá Olóyè O . ló. s. àrà in ritual performance, Ile Ife, Nigeria, 2017 15 1.2 Marilyn Houlberg, Ibeji with a red plastic doll with blue eyes (and squeaker). Photography, 1973 16 1.3 Moyo Okediji, Bàbá Olóyè O . ló. s. àrà offering kolanut to Ó . s. àrà, Ile Ife, Nigeria, 2017 17 2.1 Ẹ` fẹ` /Gẹ` lẹ` dẹ` masquerades epitomize for Yorùbá people a deeply moving, multimedia, and multisensorial spectacle of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touches, and movements. Photograph by Henry John Drewal, 1971 27 2.2 In the world of Ifá, the mediating colors of yellow and green (seen as dúdú) tend to dominate in the beadwork of diviners like the Araba of Eko, Chief Fagbemi Ajanaku. Photograph by Margaret Thompson Drewal and Henry John Drewal, 1977 31 2.3 Woman with tattoo scarifications (kóló), Ohori-Yorùbá. Photograph by Henry John Drewal, 1973 32 2.4 The sight, actions, and especially the stench of this Egúngún masquerade honoring the spirit of warrior ancestors created a powerful sensory experience. Photograph by Henry John Drewal, 1978 33 3.1 Medicine container (nkhoba) with a corncob stopper 39 3.2 A “mother” nkhoba, her waist encircled by her “children” and beads 39 3.3 Nkhoba wearing waist beads (shanga) 40 3.4 Waist beads (shanga) purchased by the author in the West Usambara Mountains42 4.1 Moyo Okediji, Ile Ife women’s group in performance, 2019 57 4.2 Moyo Okediji, Babalawo in Ifa consultation, Ile Ife, Nigeria, 2017 58 5.1 Akinyi Wadende, Farmer’s Stall, photograph, 2010 63 5.2 Akinyi Wadende, Pottery Making With Nyar Kano ma Awasi Using Indigenoous Firing Process, photograph, 2010 66

xii Figures

6.1 Edmond Morel, Native Prisoners at Boma Taking the Air, photograph, 1904, 192 77 6.2 Edmund Morel, Children Mutilated by Congo Soldiery, photographs, 1904, 112 79 6.3 Unknown Zande artist. Sculpture. Wood, painted fiber. H: 24.3  in. Lang collection. Panga, 1914.  AMNH, 90.1/3321 82 6.4 Unknown Mangbetu artist. Harp. Leopard fur, wood, vine, fiber cord. L: 24.6  in. Lang collection. Niangara, 1910.  AMNH, 90.1/3964 84 6.5 Unknown Mangbetu artist, Ceramic pot. H: 7.6  in. Lang collection. Niangara, 1910.  AMNH, 90.1/4703 86 6.6 Bade, Gourd Cup with Plant Fiber, Azande. H: 6.7  in. Lang collection. Akenge’s village, 1913.  AMNH, 90.1/2625 87 7.1 Egu´ngu´n with imported fabrics, Ibadan, Nigeria. 2007.  Photo by Bolaji Campbell94 7.2 Oyo-Yoruba Egu´ngu´n ensemble, twentieth-century, hand-woven and machine-spun textiles embellished with cowrie shells, aluminum, string, thread embroidery, leather, pitch, brass, plastic buttons, and sequins. 2007.  Photo by Bolaji Campbell 95 7.3 Egu´ngu´n Atipako, with hand-woven textiles. Ibadan, Nigeria. 2007.  Photo by Bolaji Campbell 95 7.4 Egu´ngu´n with imported fabrics, Ibadan, Nigeria. 2007.  Photo by Bolaji Campbell96 8.1 Egungun costume of transformation. Photo by Bolaji Campbell 100 8.2 Egungun enactment in Ibadan. Photo by Bolaji Campbell 102 9.1 Moyo Okediji, Tori´ ọmọ (For the Child’s Sake). Pen and ink on paper, 2016 120 9.2 Moyo Okediji, Pánsá ko` fu´nra (Vigilance). Pen and ink on paper, 2016 123 9.3 Moyo Okediji, I`jágbara (Emancipation). Pen and ink on paper, 2016 124 9.4 Moyo Okediji, I`yá, ọmọ àti ajá re ̣ (Mother, Son and Her Dog). Pen and ink on paper, 2016 125 10.1 Tunde Nasiru, The Triumph of Ogun, front and side views. Terracotta, 1988 135 10.2 Moyo Okediji, Ojú E.lé. gba Àkòdì Òrìs.à, Ile-Ife, Nigeria, architecture 139 10.3 Tola Wewe, Seven Songs, acrylic on canvas, 2018 141 10.4 Nike Okundaye, The Quintessential Fashionista, photography, textiles, beads, mixed media, 2020.  Collection of the artist. Photo credit: Benjamin Oladapo (2022) 142 10.5 Silas Adeoye, Ladies of the Palace, 2021, oil on canvas. Collection of the artist 144 10.6 Michael Fajuyigbe, Ìwà, 2017, terracotta, 60 × 30 cm. Collection of the artist. Photo credit: Adedayo Grillo, 2022 145 10.7 Yusuf Durodola, Owewe Wee, pen on paper, performance, 2020 147 11.1 Ibrahim Mahama, Out of Bounds, All the Word’s Futures, Venice Biennale, 2015 160 11.2 Luanda Encyclopedic City Angola Pavilion, The Encyclopedic Palace, Venice Biennale, 2013 162

Figures  xiii

11.3 Absence of paths, Tunisia Pavilion, Viva Arte Viva, Venice Biennale, 2017 11.4 Peju Alatise, Flying Girls, Nigeria Pavilion, Viva Arte Viva, Venice Biennale, 2017 11.5 Paintings by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Ghana Pavilion, May You Live in Interesting Times, Venice Biennale, 2019 12.1 Victor Harris, leader of The Spirit of Fi Yi Yi and the Mandingo Warriors, poses for a photograph at the Congo Square Festival in New Orleans, 2022.  Photo by the author 12.2 Big Chief Nelson Burke of the Red Hawk Hunters, St. Joseph’s Night, 2011. Photo by the author 12.3 Big Chief David Montana of the Washitaw Nation. 2009.  Photo by the author 12.4 The Spirit of Fi Yi Yi and the Mandingo Warriors marching on Mardi Gras Day, 2014.  All rights reserved © Jeffrey David Ehrenreich 12.5 Victor Harris, leader of The Spirit of Fi Yi Yi and the Mandingo Warriors, stands on the front porch of the late Big Chief Allison “Tootie” Montana. He honors Montana’s wife, Joyce, by holding her hand high in the air, 2012.  Photo by the author 12.6 Victor Harris, leader of the Spirit of Fi Yi Yi and the Mandingo Warriors, stands on the front porch of the Backstreet Cultural Museums, Mardi Gras Day, 2009.  Photo by the author 13.1 Elizabeth Catlett, Black Unity, 1968.  Cedar, 21 × 12 ½ × 23 in. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas, 2014. 11.  Photography by Edward C. Robison III 13.2 View from the back 14.1 Antonius Roberts, Sacred Space, Clifton Heritage Park, Nassau, The Bahamas, 2005.  Mixed media 14.2 Antonius Roberts, Welcome, inspired by Sacred Space, John F. Kennedy Drive and Blake Road, Nassau, The Bahamas, 2007.  Mixed media 14.3 Antonius Roberts, Welcome, inspired by Sacred Space, John F. Kennedy Drive and Blake Road, Nassau, The Bahamas, 2007.  Mixed media 14.4 Antonius Roberts, Sacred Space, Clifton Heritage Park, Nassau, The Bahamas, 2005.  Mixed media 15.1 Chike C. Aniakor, Reminiscences Revisited, 1996.  Ink on paper. Courtesy of Smithsonian Museum of African Art 15.2 Henry Drewal on the dance floor at the reception for “Bound Together: Papers in Honor of Henry Drewal,” Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, February 27–28, 2020.  The cap donned for the event features symbols of the cosmos or the crossroads with delineation of the physical and spirit worlds (ayé and òrun). Photo by Andrea Frohne 17.1 Yoruba artist, Ès. ù E. lé. gbára, c. early twentieth Century. 27 × 5 × 8 in. Courtesy of Moyo Okediji. Photo by Chuqi Min 17.2 Yoruba artist, Staff of Ès. ù (Ó . go. E. lé. gba), Wood, hide, cowrie shells, twine, indigo, metal, 20 × 4 × 11 in. Gift of Katherine White and the Boeing Company, Courtesy of Seattle Art Museum

163 164 164

171 177 178 180

181

182

188 189 195 198 199 200 203

207 234

237

xiv Figures

17.3 John Yancey, Hip-hopped To Death, acrylic on canvas, 36 × 28 in. 2000.  Courtesy of the artist 17.4 John Yancey, Ès. ù Comes to Mammy, Screen print, 16 × 22 in., Serie V of the Serie Project Print Collection, 1998. Courtesy of the University of Texas at San Antonio 18.1 Sonia Boyce, Feeling Her Way, British pavilion at the Venice Biennale, 2022.  Photo by Janine Sytsma A.1 Wura-Natasha Ogunji, The Epic Crossings of an Ife Head. Video still, 2009 A.2 Wura-Natasha Ogunji, The Epic Crossings of an Ife Head. Video still 2, 2009 A.3 Wura-Natasha Ogunji, Two. Video still, 2010.  Photo by Sonseree Gibson A.4 Olu Oguibe, A Di Ama-Ama, 2017.  Ebony, oal, brass, and stell. 13 × 16 × 8 in

238

239 255 265 266 267 269

CONTRIBUTORS

Christopher Adejumo is Associate Professor of Art Education at the University of Texas

at Austin, USA. Kehinde Adepegba is an artist and art historian. He teaches at Lagos State Polytechnic in

Ikorodu, Nigeria. Cynthia Becker is Professor of African Art History at Boston University, USA. Suzanne Blier is Allen Whitehill Clowes Professor of Fine Arts and Professor of African

and African American Studies at Harvard University, USA. Bolaji Campbell is Professor of African and African Diaspora Art at the Rhode Island School of Design, USA. Jacqueline Cofield is a doctoral candidate at Teachers College, Columbia University, USA. Henry John Drewal is Evjue‑Bascom Professor Emeritus of Art History and Afro‑Ameri‑

can Studies at the University of Wisconsin‑Madison, USA. Michael Olusegun Fajuyigbe is an art historian, ceramic‑sculptor and Reader at Obafemi

Awolowo University, Ile‑Ife, Nigeria. Andrea E. Frohne is Professor of African Art History at Ohio University, USA. Barry Hallen is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Morehouse College, USA. Melanie Anne Herzog is Professor Emerita of Art History at Edgewood College, USA.

xvi Contributors

Funmi Saliu Imaledo is a doctoral student of Peace Studies at the University of Ibaden,

Nigeria. Marguerite E.H. Lenius is Assistant Professor of Art of Africa and the African Diaspora at

Middlebury College in Middlebury, USA. Olu Oguibe is an award‑winning artist, art historian, curator, critic and poet who has

taught in the UK and the USA. Wura‑Natasha Ogunji is an installation and performance artist who currently resides in

Lagos, Nigeria. Moyo Okediji is an art historian, artist and curator. He is Professor of African Art at the

University of Texas at Austin, USA. Nancy Pauly is Associate Professor Emerita of Art Education at the University of New

­Mexico, USA. John Picton is Emeritus Professor of African Art at the University of London and Profes‑ sorial Research Associate in the Department of Art and Archaeology, School of Oriental and African Studies, UK. Olabisi Silva was a curator who founded and directed the Center for Contemporary Art, Lagos, Nigeria. Janine A. Sytsma is Assistant Professor of Arts of Africa and the African Diaspora at the University of Arkansas, USA. Akinyi Wadende is Senior Lecturer at Kisii University, Kisii, Kenya. Rikki Wemega‑Kwawu is a contemporary Ghanaian artist, art theorist, art historian and writer. He is affiliated with Takoradi Technical University, Ghana.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book is dedicated to Henry John Drewal, Emeritus Professor in the Department of Art History at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He initiated his graduate studies in African art history at the university, and I was his first doctoral product in 1995. Drewal carefully recruited and mentored a body of gifted art history students and trained us to teach at various universities in the USA. I remember with vivid pleasure the weekly gatherings we had at his house. Some of us became museum curators. A number of these former students have contributed to chapters in this book. Without his mentorship, therefore, this book would not have been possible. It is important to also mention Freida High‑Tesfagiorgis, Emeritus Professor in the Department of Afro‑American Studies of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who of‑ fered classes in contemporary African art history before Drewal’s arrival. She also curated important pioneering exhibitions at the university. I studied African American visual cul‑ ture with Freida from 1992 to 1995. Many of Drewal’s students also studied with her. Many have assisted in the editorial process of this book, notably Mobolaji Ositelu and Oluwatoyin Adepoju. Chuqi Min (闵楚齐), who served as the editorial assistant for the project, worked hard to ensure that all the requirements were completed for the publisher. My gratitude to the College of Fine Arts, University of Texas at Austin, for offering me with the professorial position to conduct research for this book. I am also grateful to Cherise Smith, Chair of the African and African American Studies Department, and Jennifer Wilks, Director of the Warfield Center as well as Susan Rather, Chair of the De‑ partment of Art History, all at the University of Texas at Austin for providing financial support for research and publication of this book. Numerous people have contributed to this book in one way or the other. If I don’t list them here, it is not out of slight. Moyo Okediji Austin, Texas, April 2023

INTRODUCTION Metamodern Studies of African Art: Traditions, Innovations and Interventions Moyo Okediji

This book, which brings together scholars from different areas of specialization, investi‑ gates a broad range of methodologies, ideologies and pedagogies, focusing on the art of Africa, with theoretical reflections and applications from primitivism to metamodernism. Work on this book first began about twenty-five years ago when I experienced a major career change. In 1999, as the newly appointed curator of African art at the Denver Art Museum, I faced the enormous challenge of being the first manager of their African art collection. I was expected not only to conceptualize and produce exhibitions from the African art objects in their collection but also to shape the collection through new acqui‑ sitions and deaccessioning of works that I considered inappropriate for inclusion in an art museum collection. Determining what belongs in an art museum and what does not is the prerogative of the curator. Often given creative liberty to execute their choices, every curator has their own ideas, guided by scholarship, museum policies and personal taste. In fact, it is not unusual for acquisition trends to change when a museum hires a new curator. At that time, as an African curating African art in a major museum, I was a rarity and I realized from my discussion with my immediate curatorial head, Nancy Bloomberg, that my posi‑ tion was “experimental,” and the museum gave me total control to move the collection in whatever direction I saw fit. At that time, the Denver Art Museum had no gallery for African art. My immediate task, therefore, was to produce temporary exhibitions in designated spaces. My very first exhibition, Three Shades of Black: African, African American and Latin American Altars, which opened in February 2000, showed the direction in which I aimed to build and curate the collection. The concept of African artistry that I was interested in curating differed from the prevailing idea of African art as presented in museums around the world as late as 2000. Primitive, modern, contemporary and diasporic were the prevailing categories into which African artworks were divided. The last three categories were hardly developed at that time, though scholarly interest in them was increasing. Despite the volume of discussions and reactions about otherness generated by the Primitivism exhibition at the Museum of DOI: 10.4324/9781003389088-1

2  Moyo Okediji

Modern Art in 1984, the anthological representation of Africa as a continent frozen in time prevailed in all museums without exception. I also did not want to limit my defini‑ tion of Africa to the creative activities and practices within the continent of Africa only, so I aimed to define Africa with a new paradigm that I described as “metamodern,” rather than falling back on the simple visual language of “primitivism” that was wide‑ spread at that time. I was acutely aware, even then, of Rowland Abiodun’s admonition not to limit my analysis, production or practices of African art to non-African, externally imposed paradigms. Yet, I was aware of the dilemma being faced by scholars of Afri‑ can art, in a discipline that was compelling them to contemplate African visual culture through a foreign framework. My solution prioritized what Abiodun described as I` wa` or character: rather than eliminating, I included a wide range of aesthetic approaches to African art. Firstly, I stud‑ ied the fission of African art objects into various categories, cognizant of Olu Oguibe’s concerns about the phasing of Africa in stereotypical terms: “Premodernism. Modern‑ ism. Postmodernism. For the West, erase Premodernism. For the rest, replace with Primi‑ tivism.” I orchestrated a fusion of these fragmentary categories within an overarching theoretical order by using a varied selection of art works to pull the diverse corpuses into a single gallery. This was what I described at that time as a metamodern approach to art historical inclusivity: relating the fission to the fusion, a strategy for recognizing the diversity within unity by unveiling the transcendental essences of its incidental appear‑ ances. The quest precipitated metamodernism, a practice inclusive of, yet transcendent of, conventional or modern categorizations, interpretations and curating of African art. Three Shades of Black was curated with this paradigm that I conceived as metamod‑ ern. The fission of the displayed objects along the category of “altars” exists within the fusion of a triadic “Black” architecture, in a complementary configuration of meta and modern, the latter (modern) as the subject and the former (meta) as the verb activating it. The “meta” of metamodernism is a critique of modernism beyond the ambits of post‑ modernism, postcolonialism and even the global or multiple modernisms that have now become more widely embraced. Unlike the many voices of the new global, the erasure of Africa from the artist did not seem like a politically viable position for me to take, a position that pressures artists from Africa to deny their “Africanity” to get a show, or even merely a nod, from the Western center. At the same time, one must not encourage the fantasy of this simplistic homogenous notion of African culture, because, as Oguibe aptly states: We already recognize the dangerous potential of such fictions in the hands of the in‑ vading outsider. The spate of pseudo-scholarly interest in “African” life, culture and art during and after colonialism illustrates this. While in the beginning the totalizing construct was employed to underline the peculiarity of the “savage” mind and justify outside intervention, it has continued to be in use in justifying the changing face of that mission.1 I was also weary of the concept of “other” modernisms, as an aspiration for the power of Western miracles, as Arjun Appadurai intimates in his observation that “whatever else the Enlightenment may have created, it aspired to create persons who would, after the fact, have wished to be modern.”2 My curatorial application of metamodernism, the term

Introduction  3

I coined in 1998 as a guiding paradigm for the art of Africa, was driven by my determi‑ nation to operate outside of that “totalizing” Western notion, without dismissing useful Western paradigms: there was no metamodern discourse that I knew of at that time. I was conversant with the fragmenting lines and linguistic fission that broke the art of Africa into the categories of primitive, modern, contemporary and diasporic. I did not want to ignore these aesthetic galleries; nor did I want to be limited by them. Instead, I decided to metamodernize them by fusing them into one organic and interrelated cultural production. When shown the entire collection of African art in the storage of the Denver Art Museum, I recognized it as consistent with what I term the “primitivism” model. The challenge I faced there in 1999 was not unique. Dominant at that time in the narrative of curating and collecting African art objects in museums around the world, the primitivism model of African art remains implicit even today, as Suzanne Blier noted in the epigraph above. The typical museum in the West and elsewhere still represents African art with works described as “traditional,” a problem which John Picton explores in this volume. That primitivism model deep-freezes African cultural production within what was avail‑ able before Africa met the West as part of a precolonial narrative. Museums collected and curated that anthropologically frozen body of works under the terminological label of “primitive” or premodern studies. The body of works that I met at the Denver Art Museum therefore consisted mostly of sculptural artworks classified as wooden “masks” and other figures in metals and fabrics organized in storage along ethnic categories. It was clear to me that I had to think outside the primitivism model that had informed this collection. Quite aware of the resistance that my curating would receive, I also knew that the conceptual framework of the show would be crucial to the acceptance or rejection of this vision. My immediate boss, Nancy Blomberg, who headed the Native Arts Department, lis‑ tened carefully to my idea of metamodernism as a curatorial guiding principle. She was receptive and described it as “innovative and insightful.” The next person I had to con‑ vince was Louis Sharpe, the museum’s director. He was amused when I described meta‑ modernism as the principle of an African art gallery without divisions between old and new, continental and diasporic, in the presentation of artworks with references to Africa. He wanted a title, and I produced one on the spot: Three Shades of Black: Africa, African American and Latin American Altars. It would be a seamless visual journey across the Black landscape, in a manner that showed the idea of an African universe, outside the conventional model of the primitive and modern that was fragmenting Africa. This book aims to do what Three Shades of Black did back then in 1999. Its essays break the boundaries externally imposed on Africa-related works. Just a couple of years before the opening of Three Shades of Black at the Denver Art Museum, Gene Blocker, a professor of philosophy at Ohio University, Athens, published a controversial volume titled Aesthetics of Primitive Art.3 Dennis Dutton, a professor of philosophy at the Uni‑ versity of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, hailed Blocker’s book as “a brave and welcome departure,” saying that [Blocker] attempts to give the broadest possible view of the art of small-scale societies and how we might come to understand and enjoy it … [Blocker] has written what is to date the finest purely philosophical investigation of ethnographic arts so far to ap‑ pear in print.4

4  Moyo Okediji

After releasing his book with a small art press in Brooklyn and before seeking a univer‑ sity press, Blocker further publicized the book in an article titled “Is Primitive Art Art?” which argued that “primitive art is only now being investigated as art. Until recently, the most serious professional study of primitive artworks was conducted piecemeal by treating the objects as accessories to various nonaesthetic, nonartistic societal func‑ tions.”5 Though the essay garnered little attention, his book was critically received not only within philosophy circles but also in art studies and pedagogy. An entire symposium was organized to examine the book, and the results of the symposium were published in The Journal of Aesthetic Education in 1995, the journal in which the essay had appeared four years prior. While most discussants of the book heartily praised it, Yoruba art critic Rowland Abiodun sounded a strong note of caution concerning Blocker’s methodology.6 Abiodun underscored his concern in his book Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art, in which he observed that “unfortunately, throughout the book, Blocker continues to make uncritical use of the term ‘primitive’ to describe the arts of Africa, Amerindia and Oceania.”7 That Abiodun still had to call out Blocker’s book for describing African art as “primi‑ tive” in 1995 is surprising, because at that time, many scholars, one would imagine, were already sensitized to the term’s inappropriateness. In 1987, the National Museum of African Art held a symposium titled “African Art Studies: The State of the Discipline,” to which four leading scholars of African art contributed essays. The proceedings of the symposium, published in 1990 under the same title, included these four invited papers that exhaustively explored the historiography of African art and postulated directions for future exploration. Adrian Gerbrands, whose essay opened the publication, gave a sketch of Westerners’ early interest in African art. Part of his conclusion was that in Europe, “the aesthetes, that is the artists and art lovers and collectors who followed in their wake, have always claimed the discovery of primitive art for themselves.”8 That tendency to examine Afri‑ can art from its “discovery” by the West invokes the typical perspective in which Western explorers claim the “discovery” of something that has always existed—say a river, moun‑ tain or plant—things that the indigenes have always known, named, even integrated into their daily lives as basic aspects of their cultural patrimony. The last of the four essays in the proceedings, Blier’s article reflects on the Ameri‑ canization of African art studies and the relocation of Western scholarship on African art from European to American universities and museums. Citing the 1985 exhibition Primitivism in 20th Century Art at the Museum of Modern Art, Blier commented that Although the African art objects clearly held their own aesthetically—in fact, some Western critics felt that they came off better than the European examples derived from them—the lack of serious scholarly treatment of the African artworks suggests that African art has far to go before it is accepted on its own terms.9 Blier then shifted her critical reproach to the term “primitivism” with a detailed and powerful illumination of the primitivization and Americanization of African art studies: Some of the problems of acceptance, I believe, rest on the early twentieth-century label for the works of artists outside of Europe: primitive art. Although the term

Introduction  5

primitive art was eradicated from thoughtful anthropological inquiry forty years ago, it is still very much a part of contemporary art historical writing and thinking. The African art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is housed in the Department of Primitive Art. Until 1987, graduate students studying African art at Columbia University majored in Primitive Art. African art historians were grouped under that area classification of primitive art in the College Art Association employment list‑ ings until 1987. At the College Art Association annual meeting in 1987, a special three-panel symposium was held that grouped children’s art, folk art, arts of the insane, prehistoric art and primitive art, implying that such arts share a common denominator.10 While the Metropolitan Museum has now changed the name of the department in which it houses African art from the Department of Primitive Art to the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas, the Americanization of African art studies remains problematic. Henry John Drewal, a historian who started his career in Yoruba art and has now expanded his scope to the African diasporas in the Americas and Asia, exam‑ ines some of the challenges in the Smithsonian proceedings. With a brilliant, detailed and analytical essay, Drewal follows Gerbrands’s article with a report titled “African Art Studies Today,” which offers an encyclopedic review of the discipline as it emerged from the sixties to the late eighties.11 Proposing an “eclectic” approach that recognizes all forms of artistic production emanating from Africa and its diasporas, Drewal observes that “the division between academic artists (those internationally trained and oriented), popular artists (those more closely tied to local aesthetics and patrons), and traditional artists are artificial and do not reflect present realities.”12 Drewal further observes that “research has now extended to African-inspired artistic traditions outside of Africa. … The first step is to document African sources in African-derived forms found throughout the world today.”13 Drewal enumerates and evaluates many of the ideas articulated in African art studies, beyond primitivism, including modernism, the nonmodern, postmodernism, neocolonial‑ ism, deconstruction and “the crisis of representation.” He notes that Nowhere in African art studies has this crisis of representation surfaced. I think this is partly the result of our priorities. … Thus how we describe, analyze, and make sense out of what we document has largely been ignored. Only a few studies [such as the work of Barry Hallen] have emerged to reflect upon the methods of others. But reflex‑ ivity about our own practices and products has not even begun.14 The notion of self-reflexivity that Drewal raises is part of the range of crucial challenges that Abiodun tackled in his essay “The Future of African Art Studies: An African Per‑ spective.”15 Precisely, he observes I believe that in the years to come, African art will take on new dimensions that no one has yet imagined—dimensions that will not only connect it more fully and effec‑ tively with cognate academic disciplines but will also fulfill many of the yearnings and aspirations of distinguished scholars in the field. Present interest in the exploration of African art through “sight” and “sound” will include the element of “soul.”16

6  Moyo Okediji

The African historian who has taken a strong interest in exploring African art through the understanding of sight, sound and soul is Henry Drewal, whose theory of “sensiot‑ ics” has provoked interest.17 In his 2018 essay “Ifa: Visual and Sensorial Aspects,” he observes that: The senses are crucial to understandings of the arts, not only in Africa, but of arts everywhere … [M]y own bodily, multisensorial experience was crucial to a more pro‑ found understanding (o`ye) of Yoru`bá art and the culture and history that shape it. This process of watching, listening, carving, making mistakes, being corrected by example and trying again was a transformative sensorial experience for me.18 It is in this sense that Drewal’s work introduces a new paradigm in the discussion of the art of Africa beyond the framework of primitivism, by bringing in sensorial dimensions that the primitivism model strips from African aesthetics to subject it to Western judg‑ ments that decontextualize the works. Abiodun has always emphasized the importance of highlighting the perspective of the Africans who made the works, a task that Drewal’s sensiotics tackles with productive results. Sensiotics, therefore, stands as a new frontier in the study of African art in a manner that is self-reflexive of what Abiodun, in his focus on Yoruba aesthetics, describes as the I` wà (character) of the African artists and the I` wà (characterization) of the African art historian. Since its beginning in primitivism, the aesthetics of African art history has witnessed several traditions, innovations and inventions that the current volume revisits. Metamodernism encompasses all of the aesthetic camps and fragmentations that are present in African art studies. It bridges all the traditions, innovations and inven‑ tions in the aesthetics of African art, from primitivism to sensiotics and beyond. As a working definition, metamodernism is an intuitive modification of the modalities and tools of modernity beyond its extant horizons, walls, organs, landscapes, engineering, time, space, future, formulas, information, nature, disorders, order, centers, margins, thoughts, configuration, realities, abstractions, cells, galleries, curation, pedagogies, his‑ tories, members, matters, materials, purposes, thesis, antithesis, synthesis, secrets, pluses and minuses, multiplication, coloring, figurations, lines, textures, principals, elements, masks, receptions, rejections, painting, framing, art, science, philosophy, geography, shape, families, evolution, refractions, distractions, erasures, mirrors, blood, tissues, waters, atmosphere, light, darkness, comfort, discomfort, fragmentation, codes, zoning, troubles, model, size, volume, universe, strategies, fungibility, alphabets, calligraphy, calibrations, dreams, academy, capacity, totality, meaning, etymology, synonyms, anto‑ nyms, and complements. Methodology, Ideology and Pedagogy of African Art: Primitive to Metamodern, therefore, brings together within the same volume aesthetic readings of Africa-related art objects and artists, beyond the fragmented categories of premodern, modern and post‑ modern, incorporating writings and readings about works from the continent and those from the diasporic annexes of Africa. The first chapter, by John Picton, conducts a theoretical reading of the place of the “traditional” in the study of African art. His chapter fuses modern, postmodern and postcolonial elements into his concerns, as he interrogates the history of the term’s usage as one of the strategies by which anthropology has redefined or “invented” African art,

Introduction  7

decontextualizing it from the original intentions of the artworks’ makers. Picton draws on various artistic examples—including Olowe Ise’s sculptures, Marylyn Houlberg’s pho‑ tographs, and Twins Seven Seven’s drawings—to support his position that the continuity in African creative cultures makes it necessary for scholars to be particularly careful in prescribing terms that do not respect the fluidity of the traditions and innovations behind the art objects they analyze. The second chapter is Henry John Drewal’s essay on sensiotics, in which he elaborates on the theory of the senses as crucial to the study of African art. This essay argues for the primacy of the full range of sensorial perceptions—from the five senses to extra-sensory experiences—in human cognition. It investigates cultural sensorial discernments by in‑ tegrating explorations from various disciplines, including perceptual and neuroscience studies centered in the Western academy, and Yoruba artistic practices and thoughts. Drewal’s ideas are integrated in terms of “Sensiotics,” a cluster of ideas and exploratory techniques developed for the study of human perception in general and of art in particu‑ lar. The chapter unifies these investigative approaches through the Yoruba understanding of life as a journey, a progression in which alertness to the multiple signals accessible at the intersection of mind and body enables balance and dynamism in life. Chapter 3, by Marguerite E. H. Lenius, explores the role of embodiment and move‑ ment in evoking ideas of unity of being and wellness among the Shambaa of Tanzania through the use of material objects such as body-evoking spiritual structures (nkhoba) and women’s waist beads (shanga), in the context of female-centered dance (kibwebwe). Unifying these material and performative forms are ideas about physical motion imag‑ ing spiritual force across communities and landscapes and the human body, between humanity and spirits, a dynamism further suggested by the motion of bodily fluids as demonstrating life and its perpetuation across generations. Chapter 4, by Barry Hallen, argues that the understanding of concepts in African art by scholars from other cultures is best pursued from the point where each scholar’s understanding of their own culture intersects with their understanding of the culture be‑ ing studied. This necessity emerges from the fact that no scholar comes to a subject as a blank slate but as a subjective agent shaped by their own cultural formations and cogni‑ tive constructs that the scholar may use or negotiate with but cannot transcend. Such a cognitive frame is thus better used in a creative manner rather than trying to escape it, which is impossible anyway. This argument is prefaced by a historical survey of the development of the study of African art history, in comparison with African philosophy, highlighting the way it has moved from denial of the existence of art and philosophical thinking in Africa to efforts to distill African philosophy from the general beliefs and practices of African peoples to more recent efforts to privilege the individuality of artistic creation in classical African art and to bring endogenous African art and aesthetics into dialogue with other disci‑ plines in the Western academy, achieving a more robust examination through intercul‑ tural dialogue. The fifth chapter, by Akinyi Wadende, is a pioneering study of the way in which art ed‑ ucation in Africa has developed to fit the specific ecological, psychological and sociologi‑ cal conditions of the artists in their community. Derived from her research among Luo women artists in Kenya, Wadende’s essay outlines a theoretical model that highlights the gendered pedagogy in which the women produce their works, paying special attention to

8  Moyo Okediji

their process of passing knowledge, skills and purposes from one generation to another. One of her motivations for the study was to build a model for establishing similar studies among indigenous artists in other parts of Africa, to complement the abundant materials on Western pedagogical studies. Chapter 6, by Nancy Pauly, discusses the manner in which Congolese artists re‑ sponded, through satirical sculpture and quasi-realist painting, to atrocities against the people of the Congo by King Leopold of Belgium and the Belgian government. Power‑ fully evocative yet subtle techniques—such as sculptural exaggeration and diminution, the disarming image of nakedness in tandem with the authority of the soldier’s gun and uniform coming together in the same sculptural figure—are analyzed for their satiric ef‑ fect within the context of colonialists’ self-perception and the contrastive image of them by their artist subjects, an ironic context extending into museum collections that were created as Belgian colonial propaganda despite covertly harboring subversive imagery. The seventh chapter, a short entry by Bolaji Campbell, presents the Yoruba under‑ standing of the symbolism of cloth through a focus on costumes of Egu´ngu´n, spiritual figures representing departed ancestors visiting their kin on the Earth, and correlates this symbolism with the universal human engagement with cloth. Through Yoruba expres‑ sions and their explication, the elaborate clothing that comprises Egu´ngu´n costumes is explained in terms of the relationships between innovation and tradition, individuality and sociation, mortality and immortality, physical and spiritual space, and time. Camp‑ bell highlights the correlations dramatized by the Egu´ngu´n in action as they emerge at particular times and spaces, transactions between realities unifying the sacred and the secular, the visitors from the beyond and the human crafts and performances through which they are embodied and expressed. These unifications dramatize the Yoruba con‑ ception of o`we, metaphoric expressions conjoining modes of being, expressions of oríkì celebrating essences and interrelationships through words, concrete forms and perfor‑ mances, as when the poetic arrangement of fabrics transforms the necessity that is cloth into culture, morphing a means of protection into art and philosophy. In Chapter 8, Funmi Saliu Imaledo’s essay considers the Egúngún performative activi‑ ties, exploring the dramatic encounters between women at the Oje Market and Egu´ngu´n Oloolu during their annual rituals and ceremonies. Egu´ngu´n is a Yoruba experience that represents ancestors temporarily visiting the Earth through a dynamic entourage and boisterous displays of artistic prowess. The Egu´ngu´n Oloolu is the head of all Egúngún in Ibadan and performs its activities in Oje Market. How is the ordered activity of the market synchronized with the boisterous activity of the Egu´ngu´n and its followers? This essay inscribes this question less as an issue of crowd control or logistics and more as one involving issues of mutual expectations, issues related to commerce and the dynamic bal‑ ance between the male figure of the Egu´ngu´n and the women who run the marketplace. Within such sacralization of commerce, Yoruba gender relations are represented by the market itself as a microcosm of human expense, presided over by the feminine deity of commerce, Aje´, and the interpenetration of matter and spirit dramatized by Egu´ngu´n. Also mediating between female energies and artistic representations is Kehinde Ade‑ pegba’s essay in Chapter 9, which studies the biological and social constitution of wom‑ en’s power in Yorùbáland and examines how this power is dramatized by a selection of Moyo Okediji’s art about women. In describing Okediji’s art, the essay invokes Yorùbá artistic terminology, thereby advancing the project of foregrounding Yoruba aesthetic

Introduction  9

discourse, which is one of the tenets of the art historical and art-creating schools of thought to which Okediji belongs. Ilà (lines), àwòrán (patterns) and oríṣìí è ̣yà onígun (shapes) are described as interwoven in terms of ètò (organization), the creation of unity out of a variety of design elements. Ìwà (character) and ìwà (existence) are depicted as projected through ọnà lílé (defining forms), àlétúnlé (detailing) and dídán (smoothening), artistic processes demonstrating ojú ọnà (artistic creativity) and ojú inú (inner eyes), ac‑ tualizing powerful draughtsmanship through which two-dimensional forms are animated with movement, stirring emotional responses in the viewer. Chapter 10, by Michael Olusegun Fajuyigbe, explores change and continuity in Yor‑ uba art by juxtaposing its classical identity with the reworking of that identity by con‑ temporary Yoruba artists in Nigeria and the Diaspora, such as Olakunle Filani, Tola Wewe, Moyo Okediji, Nike Okundaye, Mufu Onifade, Seyi Ogunjobi, Silas Adelanke Adeoye, Michael Fajuyigbe, Dotun Popoola and Taofeek Badru, a creative spectrum run‑ ning from the fabrics of Okundaye to the metal art of Popoola to the paintings of Camp‑ bell, evoking the diversity that this assembly represents, exemplars of what Campbell describes as ajijogun asa (inheritors of tradition), a Yoruba tradition of dynamism which this essay demonstrates. In Chapter 11, Janine Sytsma explores the politics of exclusion that African art has experienced on the international platform, from the content and form of the exhibi‑ tions featured in the Venice Biennale, one of the oldest and most prestigious art festivals presenting visual cultures and artists to a global audience. In the 128 years over which the biennale has been staged, the voices and bodies of African artists have been mostly muted and invisible. Europe and America have dominated the curatorial direction of the festivals, though there is a host of capable curators from other parts of the world. The essay reflects on the political history of colonialism, economic and hegemonic dominance as reflected in the control of artistic agency and the monopoly over the recognition, rejec‑ tion and rewarding of creative talent. In Chapter 12, Cynthia Becker examines the history and art of masking in New Orleans by Black Indians, focusing on the example of Victor Harris in his artistic embodi‑ ment of the Spirit of Fi Yi Yi through a mask and costume that he created, dramatically recreating African symbolism. Mapping Harris’s emergence from New Orleans African American and Black Indian masking traditions into the creation of a unique aesthetic of his own, Becker shows that Harris’s configuration, unlike the others, centers on Africa, understood as a zone of ancestral strength. The passion, poignant history and individual and group creativity that go into the making of these suits are dramatized in the essay’s description of the history and art of this creative form, symbolized by the suit’s creators sticking their sewing needles in the blood of the first person whose finger is pricked in the suit-making process, a literal enactment of the blood and spirit of contemporary Black Indians as well as the Native American and African American ancestors and lineages that their art represents. Chapter 13, by Melanie Anne Herzog, explores Elizabeth Catlett’s prints and sculptures for their dramatization of relationships between form and feeling and their distillation of evocative values and techniques from African and pre-Hispanic Mexican art in projecting the dignity of Black womanhood. Tactile materiality and embodied knowledge—“patterns of wood grain and the roughness, sheen, or translucency of different types of stone” that “appear to swell and breathe from within”—characterize Catlett’s work in this essay.

10  Moyo Okediji

In Chapter 14, Moyo Okediji explores the work of Barbadian painter, sculptor and installation artist Antonius Roberts. The essay locates Roberts’s work within the AfroCaribbean aesthetics of female bodies as spiritual essences and connects the sensorial aspects of hearing, speaking and visualizing as Roberts interacted with the maternal and spiritual forces of Iyami. His public installations, Sacred Spaces, use metamodern invoca‑ tions of Á . s. .e to create sanctuaries on the islands of Barbados, transforming trees that have been traumatized by tornadoes into the raw materials of shelters at beachside locations. Connecting the history of Barbados—as one of the first sanctuaries for enslaved bod‑ ies in North America—with Roberts’s sculptural configurations of Black female bodies as spaces of safety, Okediji’s essay relates the creative process of making art with the discourse of liberation activism, engendered by the combined powers of spiritual and physical transformations. Chapter 15, by Andrea Frohne, explicates the pedagogical significance of Henry John Drewal, who recently became a professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin, Madi‑ son. Frohne, as a graduate student who studied with Drewal, provides analytical insight into the efficiency of her former teacher’s pedagogical style in a scholarly contribution that connects the visual culture of Africa with strategies for rigorous teaching. Now that Frohne is a professor of art history working with many students at the graduate and undergradu‑ ate levels, she discusses her application of Drewal’s pedagogy in her classes. The essay of‑ fers a glimpse into the use of pedagogy to create scholarly families, in a manner reminiscent of the apprenticeship pedagogical system found in indigenous African art tutorship. Chapter 16, by the Ghanaian artist Rikki Wemega-Kwawu, is an elaborate mani‑ festo stating the principles that he uses for his art, in an evocative tradition reminiscent of modernist masters, including Wassily Kandisky, Paul Klee and Salvador Dali. With rhetorical flare, he elaborates on his understanding of the global and local forms of aes‑ thetics and the role of the African artist in mediating a balance of tastes. Just when you might think that primitive aesthetics had died, Wemega-Kwawu resurrects it in quotation marks as a source for contemporary practices. For those who might find the discussion of Gene Blocker’s primitivism over-emphasized in this introduction, Wemega-Kwawu demonstrates that it is still very much alive among artists, art dealers and auction houses, though perhaps not so much among mainstream art historians. Indeed, African art teach‑ ers often have to purge their students of the term at the beginning of the semester. The inclusion of Wemega-Kwawu’s essay elaborates on a studio-based dialectic that insists on gender binaries, while his rhetorical reference to “man” is in the Biblical tradition. The last two chapters, seventeen and eighteen by Christopher Adejumo and Jaqueline Cofield respectively, explore art from the diaspora. Adejumo focuses on the iconography of a Yoruba divinity, E`s `̣u, in the work of John Yancey, an African American painter and printmaker. While the E`s `̣u figure in the West African tradition exists in the context of sacred indigenous traditions, Adejumo elaborates on the fluxes and fluctuations that accompany the relocation of the divine iconography to the American visual culture in Yancey’s prints and paintings. Adejumo narrates the history of civil rights activism that inspires Yancey in the creative reinvention of the Esu figuration in African American liberation struggles. While Yancey does not invoke the sacredness of the Esu image in his composition, Adejumo highlights the morphological and semantic devices that Yances invokes to reiterate the complexity characterizing the Yoruba divinity in the New World.

Introduction  11

Cofield’s chapter, a creative study of sensiotics in African diasporic consciousness, closes the selection of essays in this book. Her interrogation of the functions of the senses in African diasporic imaginary disputes what she considers a prioritization of the visual perception in western art. Arguing that such an emphasis is not available in African diasporic creative culture, Cofield cites the work of several scholars and artists to repo‑ sition the importance of sound as a critical dimension in visual cultural analyses. Her writing reiterates Sonia Boyce’s installations at the British Pavilion of the 2022 Venice Biennale as a multisensorial space for experiencing and extrapolating the sonic imagina‑ tion in Black diasporic corpus of expressive cultures. The collection ends with an addendum—four texts, curated by the editor in interaction with notable practitioners. Titled “Voices,” this concluding section presents the extempo‑ raneous responses of practitioners from studio, art historical and curatorial backgrounds. In the first reflection, Wura-Natasha Ogunji projects a position that embraces her art as a creative agent of justice using her body as the medium of performance. As an LGBTQX activist and artist born of an African father and a white American mother who raised her in the United States, Ogunji practices her art as a link to the diaspora. She now lives in Nigeria, using Lagos as the site for her creative investigations. Also specially curated for the addendum is the creative voice of Olu Oguibe, a leading theorist, art historian, poet, curator and artist, whose articulate questions probe many assumptions about Africanity, dislodging truisms and mantras on which divisions and terms such as primitive, moder‑ nity, postmodernity, postblack and postcoloniality are staged. His discussion is followed by the voice of Bisi Silva, whose work covers just about a decade of curatorial practice in Africa. Her contribution to the exhibition and discussion of African art is groundbreak‑ ing, belying the short timespan in which she worked. She is associated with the establish‑ ment of many artists from Africa on the international level, highlighting the medium of photography that had received scant attention until her intervention. At the close of this section is the voice of Suzanne Blier, an art historian who has made an exceptional contribution to the writing on African art, and whose pedagogy is distin‑ guished through her incomparable work in graduate studies. She discusses her role as an art historian, teacher and mentor. All the materials in this book celebrate the work of Henry Drewal, my teacher and mentor. Early in his career, Drewal realized that the fragmentation of the study of African art is artificial and challenged me as his mentee to ignore these boundaries in my own curatorial practice, studio work, teaching and lecturing. He is an inspiration who makes art, curates, teaches, researches and lectures without drawing lines of division within the field of African art. Unlike almost all other art historians and curators of African art, he does not regard the making of art as counter to the analysis of art. Recently, Suzanne Blier saw a sculpture by Drewal in a social media post and expressed her admiration with exclamation marks.19 Despite Frohne’s great praise of Drewal’s work in her essay, nobody, to the best of my knowledge, has discovered the secret to his pedagogical magic. It is beyond comprehension and nothing short of dazzling. His lectures in the classroom transfix students and inspire them to make their studies more meaningful by pursuing firsthand experience. Alas, there is no one like Drewal, who, if he were a deity, would have a special shrine on Bascom Hill, University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he raised all his graduate students and planted roots of wisdom in us all.

12  Moyo Okediji

The eighteen essays and addendum of this volume cover a broad range of methodolo‑ gies, ideologies and pedagogies; yet, they all address African creativity, demonstrating the possibilities for analytical experiments that art history presents to scholars of the discipline today. Some even question the very possibility of African art. The character of each chapter is unique; nevertheless, each contributes toward a fuller understanding of African art studies as an independent aspect of art historical research that is a branch or bud of art history. The volume celebrates the distinctiveness of each methodical ap‑ proach, recognizing its contribution to the overall character, or I` wà, of African art stud‑ ies. Abiodun remarks ìwà deals with full recognition and proper appreciation of the thing in itself, the unique qualities of a specific object, as totally distinct from the generalized kind of which it is a part. … When a thing expresses the qualities attributed to it … it has fulfilled the most important prerequisite of ẹwà [beauty] at that level of ìwà.20 Notably, this volume explores the concept of metamodernism, which has not been used for Africa-oriented works, except by the current editor, in two essays in 2001 and 2002.21 Methodology, Ideology and Pedagogy of African art addresses the need to push the study of African art beyond the postcolonial and postmodern frameworks, which authors such as Smooth Nzewi, Chika Okeke-Agulu, Celia Fromont, Karen Milbourne, Fiona Siegent‑ haler and Steven Nelson have addressed most ably. Metamodernism, as a unifying theoretical perspective, heals the fissions in African art studies to bring out its inherent beauty (ẹwà). As demonstrated in Three Shades of Black, the 2000 exhibition at the Denver Art Museum, metamodern applications and strategies highlight the diversity of artistic categories in the body of African art within a unifying coherency. In this book, metamodernism provides a theoretical fusion, which bundles within one volume the myriad aesthetics options in African art studies, remain‑ ing cognizant of the indigenous sources in oral traditions while also recognizing Western contributions to the collective propositions. Notes 1 Olu Oguibe, “In the Heart of Darkness,” Third Text, 23, 1993, p. 5. 2 Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 1. 3 Gene Blocker, The Aesthetics of Primitive Art (New York: Haven Press, 1991; University Press of America, 1994). 4 Denis Dutton, “The Aesthetics of Primitive Art by H. Gene Blocker,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 53, no. 3 (Summer 1995), 321–3. 5 Gene Blocker, “Is Primitive Art Art?” The Journal of Aesthetic Education, vol. 25, no. 4, 25th Anniversary Issue (Winter, 1991), 88. 6 Abiodun, “The Dichotomy of Theory and Practice,” The Journey of Aesthetic Education, vol. 29, no. 3 (1995), 38. 7 Rowland Abiodun, Yoruba Art and language: Seeking the African in African Art (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 8. 8 Adrian A. Gerbrands, “The History of African Art Studies,” in African Art Studies: The State of the Discipline (Washington, DC: National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1990), 21.

Introduction  13

9 Suzanne Blier, “African Art Studies at the Crossroads: An American Perspective,” in African Art Studies: The State of the Discipline (Washington, DC: National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1990), 95. 10 Ibid., 95–6. 11 Henry John Drewal, “African Art Studies Today,” in African Art Studies: The State of the Discipline (Washington, DC: National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1990), 39–62. 12 Ibid., 43. 13 Ibid., 45. 14 Ibid., 50. 15 Rowland Abiodun, “The Future of African Art Studies: An African Perspective,” in African Art Studies: The State of the Discipline (Washington, DC: National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1990), 63–89. 16 Ibid., 64. 17 A three-day symposium on sensiotics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 2018 was widely attended. It included an art exhibition and performances featuring artists from Africa, the United States and Europe, including choreographer Ama Wray, and the Oyotunji Egú ngú n rituals. 18 Henry John Drewal, “Ifa: Visual and Sensorial Aspects,” in Ifa Divination, Knowledge, Power and Performance, ed. Jacob K. Olupona and Rowland Abiodun (Bloomington: Indiana Univer‑ sity Press, 2016), 325. 19 I posted some of Henry Drewal’s work on the Facebook page of the University of African Art, a group to which both Drewal and Blier belong. 20 Abiodun, “The Future of African Art Studies: An African Perspective,” in African Art Studies: The State of the Discipline (Washington, DC: National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1990), 70. 21 See Moyo Okediji, “Transatlantic Transformations: Retunee Recollections: Transatlantic Transformations,” in Transatlantic Dialogue: Contemporary Art in and out of Africa, ed. Mi‑ chael Harris and Moyo Okediji (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999); and Moyo Okediji, “Black Skin, White Kins: Metamodern Masks, Multiple Mimesis,” in Diaspora and Visual Culture: Representing Africans and Jews, ed. Nicholas Mirzoeff (London: Routledge, 1999), 143–62.

1 ON THE INVENTION OF “TRADITIONAL” ART John Picton

European and American engagement with African art has taken many forms. One, and perhaps the most pernicious, has been the invention of “traditional” art. In distinguish‑ ing between the concepts of tradition and the “traditional,” it is evident that the latter is a fictional and ahistorical category, and the problem lies not in the inhabitants of a culture claiming that such a practice is “traditional” (perhaps citing ancestral and/or ritual prece‑ dent) but rather in our proceeding to take this claim at face value as an analytical concept and historical verity. This is, of course, a general problem within African art studies, and Yoruba culture provides ample evidence. Thus, the visual culture of the communities that now identify themselves as Yoruba comprises many and various traditions. Some of these are pre-colonial in origin, while some are developments of the colonial and postcolonial periods, and the categorization of some part of all this as “traditional” has its origin not in the arts themselves but in a variety of external perceptions, including the anthropology of the colonial period (Figure 1.1). Another aspect of this engagement with Africa has been the collection and exhibition of its artifacts. Museum and gallery displays of Yoruba art tend to alternate between the single object in a well-lit case and the invention of some kind of reconstructed interior; one enables the work to be seen in ways at variance with its original purpose, while the other intends to make visitors feel as if they were really there, though the reality is, of course, illusion, parody, and pastiche. There may be no solution to these problems other than to work within them knowing them for what they are and recognizing that in both, the works of Yoruba culture are effectively appropriated within a European “art world” from which, significantly, both a sense of time and the existence of contemporary work (i.e., the non-“traditional”) are largely excluded. This exclusion, a function of an invented “traditionality” taken together with the “art world,” indeed, excludes not only the contemporary but also the mural painting traditions, textiles, the Islamic presence, and Brazilian traditions.1 Then there has been the ripping-off of Yoruba culture. As an employee of the old Fed‑ eral Department of Antiquities in the 1960s, I saw at first hand the depredations of the art-hungry savages of the Western world. Ilobu was a case in point, and the ripping-off DOI: 10.4324/9781003389088-2

On the Invention of “Traditional” Art  15

FIGURE 1.1 Moyo

Okediji, Bàbá Olóyè O . ló. s.àrà in ritual performance, Ile Ife, Nigeria, 2017.

has only continued. For example, in the wonderful 1989 catalogue of the New York ex‑ hibition Yoruba: Nine Centuries of Art and Thought, we find the three posts carved by Olowe of Ise-Ekiti for the palace of the Ogoga of Ikere, all now in public collections in America.2 These sculptural monuments could not have been legally removed from Nige‑ ria, and I doubt that they were legally removed from Ikere. However, the very particular context of these works at Ikere only serves to magnify the tragedy, for they were set within a courtyard built according to the Ekiti Yoruba tradition but embellished in the Brazilian style. This was a unique architectural ensemble, a unique monument of Yoruba architectural history. In the pages that follow, I discuss the idea of “traditional” art and give examples of these various problematic engagements. (The positive effects of the European and Ameri‑ can engagement I take for granted.) Tradition, Authenticity, Context

This essay has many beginnings. Perhaps the single most important is Marilyn Hammer‑ sley Houlberg’s photograph taken during her field research of 1970–1971.3 It showed a Yoruba mother of twins (Figure 1.2). One of her twins had died, but she had acquired an image to stand in for the deceased child, in keeping with the Yoruba tradition in these matters. In the photograph, the living child and the image were both contained in her wrap-around skirt, again, in the usual manner. However, as an up-to-date young woman, instead of the familiar image carved in wood, she was using a bright red plastic doll with bright blue eyes (and a squeaker). Having seen this photograph, I rushed to the cupboard

16  John Picton

FIGURE 1.2  Marilyn

Houlberg, Ibeji with a red plastic doll with blue eyes (and squeaker). Photography, 1973.

and retrieved an identical doll that we had purchased in a Lagos market in the summer of 1971 for our infant daughter to play with. The photograph was published in 1973, unfortunately only as a black-and-white4 re‑ production, in her paper dealing with contemporary transformations in the imagery of the Yoruba cult of twins. For example, at Ila-Orangun, the practice had developed of us‑ ing a photograph of the surviving twin as the image of the deceased one. The use of a red plastic doll with blue eyes (and squeaker) as the image of a deceased twin may or may not be commonplace, and our doll is not exactly the one in Houlberg’s picture, but I neverthe‑ less added it to my teaching collection as emblematic of a debate about tradition and the “traditional,” for we still come across the desire, whether overt or covert, to freeze-dry the cultures of sub-Saharan Africa within a safe, authentic, and “traditional” context. Yet traditions are not static, and context is not a fixed property, neither in Africa nor elsewhere. Indeed, by challenging the very notion of the “traditional,” the red plastic doll with blue eyes (and squeaker) enhances our understanding of whatever it is, whether artifact or performance or process, that we consider as art and/or consider art to be. Abiola Irele (1982, 95) refers to tradition Not so much as (an) abiding, permanent, immutable stock of beliefs and symbols, but as the constant refinement and extension of these in a way which relates them to an experience that is felt as being at once continuous and originally new.

On the Invention of “Traditional” Art  17

FIGURE 1.3 Moyo

2017.

Okediji, Bàbá Olóyè O . ló. s.àrà Offering Kolanut to Ó . s.àrà, Ile Ife, Nigeria,

Irele later refers to “the continuity of the imaginative life of Yoruba culture through the various phases of transformation in Yoruba society itself” (1982, 117) (Figure 1.3). On the contrary, the word “traditional” is all too often used of Africa in ways that provide for and promote, no matter how innocently, caricatures of Africa, and, of course, the idea of the “traditional” subsists within a “context” signifying an “authenticity” that can be taken for granted. The front page of the travel section of The Sunday Times of 3 September 1989 featured an article headed “a village in Zimbabwe.” The author, Charles Hampton, had been a teacher there in the early 1980s, and the article was well written and sympathetic to the realities of Africa today. I cannot imagine, therefore, that he was responsible for the two illustrations that someone had thought fit to use as the introduc‑ tion. One was captioned “Traditional tools: while young people want to head for the city, older people remain on the land.” Fair enough, except that it showed a woman with a bowl on her head containing, among other things, a smaller enamel bowl, a plastic bag (or bag of some sort), and a spade of the form familiar to any British Island gardener. To which of these does the phrase “traditional tools” refer? The other illustration showed a pair of giraffes captioned “giraffe standing among the scrub trees and grasses of the plains are one of the most authentic sights of rural Africa.” “Traditional” and “authen‑ tic”: this kind of misrepresentation of Africa always comes as a shock. It is the Tarzanfilm view of Africa, and when considering the first draft of this paper, I did wonder if I had merely re-invented an Aunt Sally long since discarded. The persistence of such banal and uniform stereotypes is always shocking (all the more so when one remembers the concentration camps of apartheid).

18  John Picton

One reason for this kind of image of Africa is, surely, the European and American nos‑ talgia for the simpler life, and evidence of atavistic diggings into a real or mythological past is too many and too obvious to be listed here. Side by side with this, though, is the contrary wish to preserve, promote, and define civilization at the expense of others and in terms of their relative “primitivity.” Slavery and colonialism are but earlier versions of this, and nowadays as the developing countries of Africa, and indeed elsewhere, choose to participate in the economy and lifestyle of the industrial world, they also threaten that economy and lifestyle. Europe and America react by projecting their fears onto those developing countries: overpopulation, AIDS, the failure to take adequate steps to protect the ozone layer, and so on. At the same time, there are those in developed countries who have shown themselves happy to use the developing world as a dumping ground for our rubbish: high-tar tobacco, toxic waste, etc. The social anthropology of the colonial period has certainly, though unwittingly, played its part in the history of such attitudes. There is, of course, an irony here for that discipline would claim to give a unique insight into other cultures, and the problem is less about anthropology as such than about the gap between the popular perception of the discipline and its development. I refer, of course, to the Ethnographic Present—that view of culture and society as if there were no colonial presence. It was always a composite reconstruction, from perhaps diverse sources, of an ideal state of affairs presumed to be as things were prior to the advent of colonial rule, which of course served to protect all that was best in that ideal. It was an anthropological invention, a fiction placing the cul‑ tures of the developing world outside of history. Reconstructing the past may in itself be a legitimate form of research, but inventing an ideal that denies present and past realities is another and more dubious matter. It would be preposterous to attribute the idea of the “traditional” to the anthropol‑ ogy of the colonial period: the history of this idea is more subtle, but the Ethnographic Present is a potent source of various notions of “traditional” Africa with its “traditional” society, its “traditional culture, its “traditional” religion, and its “traditional” art. In‑ cidentally, we should not forget that the majority of art works on which studies of the “traditional” are based are in fact works of the colonial periods, quite apart from the fact that their very presence in the collections of Europe and America is, directly or indirectly, a function of the colonial presence. The very word “traditional” conveys an authenticity (authentic: from Latin authenticus, coming from the real author; “author,” itself from Greek, one who does anything himself, i.e., having authority, genuine, real, original). However, it is not just Africa that is misrepresented: the essential utility of the idea of tradition, as revealed in its Latin origins, is also obscured. The word “tradition” comes from the Latin verb tradidere, to hand on/over, and in the history of making and using artifacts, tradition presupposes context: indeed, each presupposes the other (but not because of bogus ideas of authenticity). “Context” comes from another Latin verb, texere, to weave, and in this case to put together. Texere gives us text, texture, and textile, and the interlacing of the two sets of elements to form a coherent fabric gives us the metaphor of “context.” Whatever it is that is “handed on” is a “weaving together”: the artifact itself is a context, i.e., of ideas, values, expectations, technical practices, and performance. At the same time, that artifact is a functional part of a context extending from itself, a context for which it can stand and from which it can stand apart. The artifact, thus, both is and represents a context, and this representational

On the Invention of “Traditional” Art  19

capacity is not restricted to those we conventionally call “works of art” but is a potential inherent in any artifact, a potential which, of course, is not necessarily or inevitably real‑ ized. The handing on of all, or even just some part, of this constitutes the tradition, and at the same time, it also provides the very medium of development of, and within, that tradition: even the most basic act of replication can never be exact, at least not until the advent of mechanical means of reproducing forms. Artifacts and traditions are contexts and subsist within contexts, and if some element in that “weaving together” is changed, whether deliberately or coincidentally (and it may be the artwork itself), of course, then the context is no longer the same. Whether we are considering the impossibility of exact replication, the various effects of trade, the devel‑ opment of novel social institutions, or our participation therein, the context is no longer the same if some element is altered. Moreover, the continuities that characterize a tradi‑ tion do not necessarily subsist in the visual/material parts of that tradition. A prime ex‑ ample of this would be the illustrations of episodes in the novels of Amos Tutuola (1952, 1954, 1962) by Twins Seven Seven.5 These illustrations look nothing like the pre-colonial visual tradition of the Yoruba-speaking region, and they make use of novel materials that first made their appearance in Nigeria as part of colonial education. The same would apply to the form of the novel. However, the vivid fantasy world that Tutuola describes surely is a feature of pre-colonial Yoruba life. What has changed here is not the content of that tradition but the manner of reproducing it, and Twins Seven Seven has taken the process of reproducing that tradition one stage further. The essential continuity remains. As to context, the novels and drawings can now involve me in that fantasy dream world, and they can earn substantial amounts of cash for their authors. Yet it would be foolish to take issue with either of them as to the authenticity of their being Yoruba. There is, then, an obvious contrast between the idea of tradition and the idea of the “traditional,” even though the latter derives from the former. Giddens (1979, 200) refers to tradition as [The] most innocent mode of social reproduction in which performance of some ac‑ tion is authorised by the assumption of previous performance. For this reason, the temporal status of a practice described as “traditional” can never be taken for granted: rather it must necessarily be proven; and some traditions turn out to be relatively Latter-day inventions. (Hobsbawn and Ranger, 1983) We designate certain ideas and practices as “traditional” to provide them, wittingly or unwittingly, with a taken-for-granted legitimacy and authenticity. This happens in Africa as much as in Europe and America. However, a habit of thought in regard to elements of one’s own culture cannot be taken for granted as an analytical principle in regard to the history of someone else’s, but this is precisely the conflation of ideas presupposed in the notion of “traditional” Africa. The real danger for Europeans and Americans in cat‑ egorizing, perhaps arbitrarily, some particular development as “traditional” is that they do more or less violence to an appreciation of African sensibilities. One can legitimately investigate the temporal status of particular traditions with regard to the possibility of their pre-colonial origin, and one must beware of assuming “traditionality,” thereby ignoring the necessity of demonstrating that temporal status. Similarly, if one writes off

20  John Picton

certain developments because they seem not to be “traditional,” then one writes off Afri‑ can responses to change, whether aesthetic or practical, as if people were the mere dupes of colonial overlords, and one writes off the desires of people in Africa to be part of the same century as anyone else. Postscript I: The Necessity for Art

The transformations of and within traditions are not at variance with tradition: rather, particular traditions enable particular forms of artistry and thereby particular forms of development. None of this violates contextual authenticity, for the very notion of au‑ thenticity is suspect if the context is not a fixed property. Whatever our reactions to the “art world” of Europe and America, it is an “authentic” context within those parts of the world, and whether we think of Olowe’s posts as contexts in themselves (which they manifestly are) or as functions of, or participants within, contexts, it is obvious that none of these have remained immutable. Context as a property of artifacts is both mul‑ tiple and transient. While we cannot deny the determining effect of collective representa‑ tions, to become collective, these representations must be appropriated, consciously or unconsciously, by particular individuals. And this very process provides for variety and development in and of context: therefore, there is always the context of any particular individual. Artifact, tradition, and context can be considered as essentially inter-related variables, each capable of change resulting from individual or social agency, and which in turn determine change/transformations in the others. The constancy here does not depend on discovering the authenticity of this, rather than that, context, or tradition, or whatever, but in that involvement with artifacts that is an inevitable dimension of the human condition. The transformations of and within tra‑ ditions attest, therefore, not simply to questions of tradition and context but also to that fundamental property of the human species, the creativity which we can all know and experience until it is alienated from us, and they attest to our involvement with artifacts which, no less than our involvement with words, is that realization of our creativity that defines our humanity. Moreover, we should not be surprised at any of this, for “art has always been a process of reification, a making of things with an independent and worldly existence” (Read, 1959, 280). This is, of course, not to say that artifacts are somehow animate. Their “independence” is a function of our necessity for art. Postscript II: Ars, Artis + Facere, Factum

I use the words “art” and “artifact” interchangeably, and I know this may worry some. Susan Vogel, in her introduction to ART/Artifact (1988), notes that the differentiation is particularly resistant to clarification, but this might be because the question of the difference is the wrong question to ask. Instead, “let us suppose the idea of art can be expanded to embrace the whole range of man-made things” (the opening sentence of Kubler, 1962). It may be helpful, therefore, to disentangle certain matters. (1) The words themselves: Latin, ars, artis, skill; plus facere, factum, to make/do. In effect they mean the same thing. (2) When we say we are talking about “art,” what we mean is that we are talking about artifacts in regard to an interest in their forms and/or the ideas associ‑ ated with those forms. The question of whether or not this or that is a work of art is an

On the Invention of “Traditional” Art  21

essential irrelevance. (3) The question of whose interests or ideas is a matter for clarifica‑ tion and identification, not a choice between right or wrong. (4) The question of whether or not the inhabitants of some other culture have a word or concept that we can identify as being analogous to the idea of art as it developed alongside the ideology of industrial capitalism is quite a separate matter. (5) The aesthetic field local to any given culture has to be taken on its own terms. (6) What we choose to place within the rubric of aesthesis is another matter altogether. Notes 1 Increasingly, there are now exhibitions of contemporary African art objects in Western venues. 2 See Henry Drewal, John Pemberton with Rowland Abriodun, Yoruba: Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought (Washington, DC: Smithsonian African Art Museum, 1989), 198, 199, 203. 3 Marilyn Houlberg, “Ibeji Images of the Yoruba,” African Arts, vol. 7, 23 (1973), 26. 4 Marilyn Houlberg, “Ibeji Images of the Yoruba,” African Arts, vol. 7, 23 (1973). 5 Beier, Contemporary Art in Africa (London: Pall Mall Press, 1968, plate 1, 93; Figs. 53–4, 114–5).

2 SENSIOTICS OR THE STUDY OF THE SENSES IN MATERIAL CULTURE AND HISTORY IN AFRICA AND BEYOND Henry John Drewal

The senses are crucial to the understanding of material culture, history, and more. Body and mind do not function by means of a Cartesian dualism. The body and its sensing abilities are the source of cognition, not the brain/mind. This proposition underlies the approach I call sensiotics. Sensiotics is the study of the crucial role of the senses in the for‑ mation of material forms, persons, cultures, and histories, with a focus on bodily knowl‑ edge in the creative process as well as in reception by body-minds. Since the 1980s, there has been a transdisciplinary turn away from texts to bodies and the senses, owing in part to recent research on body-mind unities and interactions. Here I outline sensiotics and, from my work among Yorùbá-speaking peoples of West Africa, give examples of various multisensory experiences that constitute elements of a Yorùbá sensorium. I close with an example from beyond Africa, for this approach has important implications universally. The term sensiotics “playfully pokes” those engaged in linguistically based semiot‑ ics. Despite the fact that semiotics claims to be the study and interpretation of signs and symbols in all forms and media, it is in practice shaped by linguistics and the study of texts and then adapted to other media such as the visual arts, where it has made a major impact on art history and visual and material culture studies. Art historians often speak about “reading” a painting or sculpture or photograph. Such a phrase is symptomatic of the logocentric bias of semiotics. It betrays a perspective shaped by language, after‑ thoughts of an initial sensory experience. We do not “read” a painting; we look at and see it by using our sense of sight, which is quite different from reading a “text.” Not only is our sense of sight engaged but all of our senses and sense memories that we bring to the perception of that work, whether we are conscious of them or not—of hearing, touch, taste, smell, and perhaps others as well, depending upon our cultural background and life experiences. We think with our multisensory body-minds. The transdisciplinary turn away from texts to bodies and the senses is due in part to recent philosophical, historical, anthropological, and neurological research.1 Here, I out‑ line sensiotics and give examples from my work among Yorùbá-speaking peoples, their culture, thought, and material culture. Yorùbá artists (working in all forms/media—song, sculpture, painting, tattooing, dance, cooking, etc.) and audiences use the senses to create DOI: 10.4324/9781003389088-3

Sensiotics  23

and respond to lived experience and art, what Yorùbá people call ọnà, which I translate as “evocative form.” The senses are defined, classified, and understood differently in differ‑ ent cultures and eras. They tell us much about what are often sensory experiences that are beyond words. Sensiotics considers how these senses, constituted genetically (nature) and shaped by culture (nurture), shape individuals, cultures, histories, and material culture. Language-based approaches, such as semiotics, are not sense-based. Such linguistic or logocentric approaches to the arts have tended to distort understandings of material culture and art on their own terms.2 When we consider art, it becomes a form webbed by words. Granted, we cannot avoid using words—the disciplines of art history and material culture are basically “words about images.” But we need to go beyond this. As W.J.T. Mitchell has observed, “‘visual experience’ or ‘visual literacy’ might not be fully explicable in the model of textuality.”3 Malcolm Gladwell, using the work of Jonathan H. Schooler, notes that visual perception is clouded and overshadowed by the verbal: that visual cognition is “immediate, holistic, and instinctive,” whereas verbal cognition is “linear and consciously constructed.”4 It seems clear, then, that we need to explore how material forms communicate and evoke meanings by means of their own unique sensorial modes.5 Sensiotics can also give us insights about the past, not just narratives of what hap‑ pened, why, or how but what people experienced viscerally and how these sensory ex‑ periences may have shaped their histories. For example, the work of Constance Classen in Worlds of Sense has shown how a society’s sensorium in a particular era changed in response to specific lived circumstances and experiences and how these in turn shaped history.6 And Mark M. Smith, regarded as America’s leading practitioner in the grow‑ ing field of “sensory history,” demonstrated how understanding sensory experiences can evocatively illuminate the past.7 Seeing

Historians of art have also critiqued Saussurean semiotics. David Freedberg argues that an image is not a sign—it does not signify a displaced signified. Rather, the power of the image resides in a fusion between sign and signified, and the sign becomes the living em‑ bodiment of what it signifies. “The time has come,” insists Freedberg, To see the picture and the sculpture as more continuous with whatever we call real‑ ity than we have been accustomed to, and to reintegrate figuration and imitation into reality  …  that is to say, the time has come to acknowledge the possibility that our responses to images may be of the same order as our responses to reality.8 He concludes that the relationship which results between the viewer and the image is somatic and psychological, not semiotic. Additionally, our knowledge of how we see has been changing as a result of insights from neuroscience. The science of vision has changed with the discovery of a third photoreceptor in addition to rods and cones and the pro‑ cess by which the eyes and brain first distinguish center and surround, that is, difference, contrast, and discontinuities. Luminescence is the sensory reality. Color and value are ­symbolic—creations of cultural systems of meaning and significance (see Yorùbá chromat‑ ics discussed later). Contrast creates the illusion of movement, and color resolution is slow.

24  Henry John Drewal

Yet sight is just one of the senses and one that has been privileged by what Guy Debord calls the “tyranny of the visual,” the theory that social life or being has become merely a representation mediated by images.9 Rather, we need an approach that recognizes and examines all the senses involved in thinking and acting. Sensing

Language, for example, is one of the ways we re-present the world, but before language we began by perceiving, reasoning, theorizing, and understanding through our senses. Sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste, motion, and suprasensory perception continually par‑ ticipate, though we may often be unconscious of them, in the ways we literally make sense of the world. Seeing (hearing, tasting, moving, etc.) is thinking. In the beginning, there was no word, only sensations. Often such sensory experiences are beyond words. They are so deeply moving and transformative that we cannot find words to describe, much less analyze, them. That is why we employ metaphors as one way to put into words experiences that are beyond words—moments of joy, fear or dread, loathing, or astonishment.10 They are, as a Yor‑ ùbá person would say, moments that “make my jaw drop [make me speechless]” (O yá mi l’ẹnu!). Where would we be if we had no sense of humor, regret, shame, pride, or forgiveness? These emotional moments are essential to our humanness, our being in the world, our social existence in culture. The field of affect theory, which addresses emotions, has also taken a sensory turn. Numerous human and social science scholars have begun to explore affect theory as a way of understanding bodily experiences that fall outside of the dominant paradigm of representation.11 Many verbally inexpressible feelings result from what we call expressive culture—material culture and the arts, the “evocative forms” (ọnà) of Yorùbá people. Sensiotics offers a way to feel, think about, and understand such cultural and artistic experiences. Our sensing bodies are an integral part of the body–brain–mind continuum that, in our capacity as social beings, helps to shape culture. Culture may be defined as the shared patterns of behavior and social interaction, as well as affective cognition and understandings learned in the process of socialization. Culture is an aesthetic system writ large. That is, culture is what we talk about when we say “ways of living” or “ways of being in the world,” and these ways constitute cultural style, a set of preferences in ways of being and acting. That cultural style is being shaped (even before we come into this world at birth) by the sensory experiences we have and continue to have throughout our lives. If we are to understand cultural or historical formations of individuals, societies, and material culture (where artists/artisans/makers are often those creators of culture most closely attuned to bodily, sensory knowledge), then the sensory world of such per‑ sons should be a rewarding and revealing site of investigation. Sensiotics Elaborated

Sensiotics is a shift from products to processes, from ends to means. It is a move to an active, embodied subjectivist perspective that incorporates elements of phenomenology— intersubjectivities, dialectics, and reciprocities. Seminal texts in the expanding field of

Sensiotics  25

sensory studies are the works of Constance Classen and David Howes. They outline some of the cultural domains which seem to be the most productive in eliciting a culture’s “sensory profile” or sensorium. They describe a “Paradigm for Sensing” that includes language, artifacts, body decoration, child-rearing practices, alternative sensory modes, media of communication (orality), the natural and built environment, rituals, mythology, and cosmology. Classen and Howes offer some of the questions to be considered in any analysis of a culture’s sensorium. They ask what the relationship might be between the various senses in a culture’s sensorium. Which are stressed, and which are suppressed, and by what means, and to what ends? They ask what is the symbolic importance of specific senses? How has sensorium changed over time? How are sensory orders different for different groups in culture (such as women, men, children, elders, initiates, and rulers)? Lastly, they propose a research method that entails the researcher becoming aware of his or her personal sen‑ sory biases and becoming sensitive to those of another community. The aim is to develop the ability to operate within two perceptual systems or sensory orders simultaneously (the sensory order of one’s own culture and that of the culture studied) to be able to make comparisons continually. These methods are rounded out with archival research into such areas as ethnographies, histories, novels, films, music, performances, and sayings.12 Howes and Classen’s description of research methods resonates with my own writing about being an “in-betweener.” Both this approach and sensiotics are similar to what Paul Stoller calls “sensuous scholarship.”13 Sensiotics requires a revised way of doing research. One no longer aspires to the “distanced objectivity” of a so-called participant– observer. Rather, one works as a sensorially engaged participant, using all of one’s senses to open multiple sensory paths to knowledge and understanding. The engagement of the senses, processed by our body–brain–mind, is crucial to such understanding. To be “neutral” or completely “objective” is impossible. Humans are rationalizing creatures, not rational ones. We argue a position or point of view. This is our subjectivity, which is very different from the notion of objectivity. Granted, the differences between cultural insiders and outsiders will always remain, yet, within those two groups, significant differences exist in cultural knowledge, wisdom, and understanding, perspectives that provide different insights. Most of us are not strictly “insiders” or “outsiders” but cultural “in-betweeners.” We may all be “in-betweeners,” whether in our own societies or cross-culturally, for we are social animals. No human is an island. We are hard-wired to be social, to be part of a group, and this derives from our very human sense of empathy, evidenced in recent neuroscience research on mirror neurons. Mirror neurons have been defined as those neurons that make our bodies do what we see being done. For example, when we watch a violent movie, our bodies respond with various sensory “fight-or-flight” reactions to the actions viewed—sweaty palms, heart palpitations, adrenalin rush, and so on. But perhaps mirror neurons should be renamed and defined more broadly as “sensory or somatic neurons.” To call them “mirror” neu‑ rons privileges the sense of sight, yet these types of neurons, found throughout the brain, are processing all kinds of bodily sensory data (e.g., sounds, tastes, touches). They are part of a cybernetic feedback system that makes us flexible, adaptable, and capable of learning from experience.

26  Henry John Drewal

Sensiotics and a Yorùbá Sensorium

Apprenticeships with two Yorùbá artists, Sanusi in Abẹ´okuta in 1965 and Ogúndipẹ` of Iláro in 1978, were vital research experiences for me. I learned that “the actions of artists teach us as much about style and aesthetics as their words.”14 In other words, I gained insights into Yorùbá artistic concepts, not only by discussing them with artists and observing them during the creative process but more importantly by attempting to achieve them in my own carving under the tutelage of Yorùbá masters. My own bodily, multisensorial experience was crucial to a more profound understanding (òye) of Yorùbá arts, material culture, and the history that shaped them. This process of watching, listen‑ ing, carving, making mistakes, being corrected by example, and trying again was a transformative sensorial experience for me. Slowly, my body-mind learned to carve as my adze strokes became more precise and effective and the image in my mind took shape through the actions of my body. Yorùbá people explain this experience with a sensory metaphor: “the outsider or uninitiated usually sees through the nose” (imú ni àlejò fi í ríran).15 This saying has two different yet complementary connotations: that an outsider understands little because he or she confuses sensing organs, and, at the same time, that understand‑ ing requires multiple senses.16 With knowledge (ìmọ`) and wisdom (ọgbọ´n), we struggle to achieve understanding (òye). And such understanding comes from the unity of body and ` fẹ`/Gẹlẹ` dẹ` mind as they process sensory experiences. In the early 1970s, I researched Ẹ masquerades that honor the mystical powers of women termed “Our Mothers” (A`wọn Ìyá wa), because they epitomize for Yorùbá people a deeply moving, multimedia and multisensorial spectacle of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touches, and movements cap‑ tured in the statement “The eyes that have seen Gẹ`lẹ`dé. have seen the ultimate spectacle” (ojú tó bá rí Gẹ`lẹ`dẹ´ ti dé òpin ìran) (Figure 2.1).17 While this saying seems to privilege the sense of sight, ìran or “spectacle” implies an experience that comes from more than just sight: Èfẹ`/Gẹ`le. dé. is about the dance movements of masqueraders, the sounds of complex drum rhythms and leg rattles, and the songs of Ọ` rọ Èfẹ` at night when sounds dominate, not to mention the tastes and smells of fried bean cakes (àkàrà) and other dishes. All of this occurs in the marketplace, a space commanded by powerful women who are the very ones honored in Èfẹ`/Gẹ`lẹ`dé.. For Yorùbá, ìran (“spectacle”) is a multisensorial, evocative body-mind experience. There is no single “Yorùbá sensorium”; rather, there are multiple, dynamic sensoria among Yorùbá-speaking peoples in Africa and the diaspora. Sensoria vary depending on location (rural/urban, Africa/diaspora) and social position (female/male, young/old, initiated/uninitiated, fully sensory vs. partially sensing, e.g., blind, deaf). This is also a sensorium that continually changes over time. Seven senses are distinct and equally important for Yorùbá people. They are the usual five-plus motion and extra- or suprasensory perception. Motion has to do with our re‑ lation to gravitational forces and our sense of balance and movement through space. Among the Anglo-Ewe (a culture related to Yorùbá), a sense of balance (agbagbadodo), when a child first learns to rise up on two feet and not fall over, is “an essential part of what it means to be human.”18 A similar idea may be present in the Yorùbá term dọ´gba “to balance.” Balancing and artful motion are important concerns for Yorùbá as expressed in the saying àìdúró, ijó ni (“not-standing-still is dancing”). The notion of balance/spatial orientation extends to encompass all motion, whether gestures, body

Sensiotics  27

FIGURE 2.1  Ẹ` fẹ` /Gẹ` lẹ` dẹ`

masquerades epitomize for Yorùbá people a deeply moving, multi‑ media, and multisensorial spectacle of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touches, and movements. Photograph by Henry John Drewal, 1971.

postures, or dance, with the body’s sensing organ, the labyrinth of the inner ear. The seventh sense, what some call “the sixth sense,” has to do with extra- or suprasensory perception. Trance, or altered states of consciousness, when one’s head “swells” (orí wú) as the Yorùbá say, concerns issues of suprasensory perception, the supplement, the indeterminate. The trance experiences of followers of the Thundergod warrior Ṣàngó, as evidenced in the swelled heads of his followers depicted in dance wands, exemplify the seventh sense.19 This seventh sense is perhaps related to synaesthesia—the simultaneous body-mind in‑ terplay of multiple senses that has a profound effect on how we experience things in this world, and what we imagine might be beyond—as expressed by the African musicologist A.M. Opoku urging us to “see the music, hear the dance.”20 This notion of indeterminacy is fundamental to Yorùbá thinking. It is expressed in the notion of 400 plus one òrìṣà”—a pantheon of divinities that is without limit, forever in flux. As Ọ` lábíyì Yáì has remarked, this indeterminacy is expressed in the concept of ọ` kànlénírinwó òrìṣà, which translates as “something that is ever-unpredictable and does not admit of limitation or ceiling.21 And as Wole Soyinka reminds us, “Ifá [Yorùbá divination] emphasizes for us the perpetual elasticity of knowledge,”22 a statement that resonates with recent findings in neuroscience

28  Henry John Drewal

that confirm the elasticity of our brains, that is, the constant creation of brain cells and our ability to continually learn from sensory experience. Frequently in discussions of objects and events, we attempt to separate discussions of “form” from “content” or “meaning.” While the former generally considers how a particular work has been created (sounds, rhythms, tastes, colors, shapes, volumes, lines, textures, and composition, which constitute its “style”), and the latter attempts to discuss what is (or isn’t) represented, a work’s evocative qualities embody both—they create a somatic experience. Form is content and content form. Sounds, rhythms, smells, tastes, colors, shapes, textures, and so on have their histories and symbolic associations that, if explored from a multisensorial perspective, can help deepen, complicate, and enrich our understanding of creative processes and audience responses. A Yorùbá sensorium is the culturally and historically shaped world of the senses ex‑ perienced and understood by Yorùbá people in interaction with various arts, whether visual or performed. Such a sensorium has two important dimensions. The first is the im‑ portance of orality—hearing, listening, and speaking—the voicing and naming of things and persons with form-words, which are sounds that possess sensory resonances and/or sacred affect. The second comprises examples of multisensorial aspects of Yorùbá mate‑ rial culture and history. The arts (ọnà) are for Yorùbá-speaking people an evocative form—objects, actions, sounds/words, tastes, touches, smells, and more—meant to engage the senses of bodyminds. The ideas that surround art and its creators are complex and include such concepts as sensitivity and good perception (ìmọjú-mọra), insight (ojú-inú), design consciousness and originality (ojú-ọnà), and endurance/lastingness (titọ´).23 Art is meant to inspire, stim‑ ulate, and enhance experiences during a person’s journey through life (ayé), passage to the otherworld (ọ`run), and potential return (túndé) to the world in the spirit–body–minds of their descendants. Such “returnees” are those with names like “Father-has-returned” (Babatúndé) or “Mother-has-come-back” (Yétúndé). The arts and material culture are es‑ sential to such journeys, for they shape and transform life, departure, and return. Artists create using their senses and sensibilities, and audiences respond in kind. Hearing—a sense that has great importance, especially on a continent where oral tra‑ ditions are essential to the production and reproduction of social, cultural, and artistic practices—is an extremely important sensorial mode of understanding in Yorùbá society. As Rowland Abiodun notes, in Yorùbá society, a multisensorial mode of understanding is embedded in the concept of ìlutí: the ability to hear, communicate, and remember, in other words, the capacity to learn, to be educated. Significantly, ìlutí determines whether or not a work of art is alive and responding, in other words, effectively evocative.24 When a Yorùbá person understands something, she or he will say “I hear” (mo gbọ´), not “I see.” Sounds are often ignored or devalued in discussions of material forms. For example, when scholars discuss the complex composition and imagery of a divination tray, they neglect to mention that the hollow area carved into the underside is a sound chamber. The tray is a sculpted wooden drum. When an Ifa priest (babaláwo) strikes the center of the front surface with the pointed end of a divination tapper (irọ´kẹ), the sound reverber‑ ates to “communicate between this world and the next,” as the diviner Kolawole Oshi‑ tola explained to me.25 This initial sound is followed by another: the sound of the diviner striking or “beating” together (pa’kin) the sixteen palm nuts (ikin Ifá) before marking

Sensiotics  29

the numbered signatures of an Ifá verse (odù Ifá) in the camwood powder (ìyẹ` rósùn) on the tray. The sound of the tapper on the drum tray, followed by the sharp clack of the ikin, alerts cosmic forces. Sacred sounds—cosmic vibrations—not just images, create a transcendent, evocative experience. For many Yorùbá persons, spoken words are vibrations that have the “power to bring things to pass,” to accomplish things, a power termed àṣẹ. The nature and scope of the àṣẹ of words depend, of course, on how, where, when, and by whom they are voiced.26 In my conversations with the diviner (babaláwo) Kolawole Oshitola, he elaborated on these ideas.27 He explained that the mouth (ẹnu) is understood as the organ for eating and tasting but more importantly for speaking. As the person’s “speaker,” it is the way to voice out or deliver a message. The Yorùbá saying “Mind your mouth” reminds one to be careful with what one says. We say “May my mouth/words not kill me” or “May my inner head not ruin my outer/physical one” (Kí orí inú mi, kó má ba orí òde mi jẹ´). “Words are like eggs, once they leave the mouth, fall and break, they cannot be repaired [taken back]” (ẹyin l’ọ`rọ`—bi o ba balẹ, koo ṣe k). Oshitola’s mouth is a powerful one (ẹnu àṣẹ)—one that has been “well prepared” as a result of his living and learning from àwọn àgbàlágbà (wise elders) and his continual practice in divining or what he calls “traditional work” that involves many incantations ọ` rọ`, ọfọ`, afọ that give his words power to bless or curse. As he said, “I eat and dine with the gods and ancestors all the time. … I am in the midst of àṣẹ all the time.”28 From the very start of a Yorùbá individual’s journey through life, names define that person’s uniqueness, connectedness, and potential.29 Thus, when persons enter the world, they receive special names (revealed through divination) expressing their spiritual nature as revealed by the ways in which they arrived and their origins. Such names, called orúkọ àmútọ`runwá (“names brought from the otherworld”), reveal the special qualities and potentials of a person. For example, children born inside the caul (that is, masked) are called amúṣàn (for males) and ato (for females). They are thought to have special affini‑ ties with their ancestors and are expected to become active members of the Egúngún or ancestral masquerade society. Other names, given by a diviner after birth, are called orúkọ abisọ and provide other clues as to the person’s nature. Orúkọ àbíkú are names given to those who are reincarna‑ tions of themselves, that is, “children born to die” and to be reborn frequently. Twins (ìbejì) are often thought to be closely related to àbíkú and other troublesome children, and this is one of the reasons they are so carefully honored in twin memorial figures (ère ìbejì). Orúkọ ẹ`yà are names that refer to the partial reincarnation of ancestors, generally a grandmother (Yétúndé) or grandfather (Babatúndé). All such names indicate a person’s spiritual qualities and propensities, stressing their uniqueness and connectedness with the past, the ancestors, and other spiritual forces in the universe. Finally, and most reveal‑ ingly, are the private names given to a person that are highly guarded for safety, for the belief is that a person’s enemy could utter such an intimate name in a curse and thereby do the person harm. (At the same time, a Yorùbá sense of justice and moral behavior warns that “a curse reflects before it is uttered”—èpè ń rò kó tó jà.) Names become a focus in the verbal arts of appellations (oríkì) and songs (orin).30 These arts embellish the imagery associated with names, names that serve to integrate persons into a lineage, an unbroken chain of relations from departed ancestors to living relatives. They celebrate the distinctive qualities and uniqueness of the individual, invoke

30  Henry John Drewal

the spiritual essence of the person, and elevate the person by encouraging perfection and “faultless performance.”31 When such praises are voiced, the head becomes “inspired” or “energized” (wú) with the spirit of one’s noble ancestry, which is calculated to encourage high achievement. And that same verb (wú) is used to describe the “swelling” of a devo‑ tee’s head during possession trance. Voicing a name is important because, as Yorùbá say, “a person’s name directs actions and behavior” (orúkọ ní ń ro ni).32 It encapsulates the person’s and the family’s history, activating the past to guide present and future actions. If naming or voicing is of such importance among Yorùbá, then spoken words that refer to object types or performances should contain associative ideas, evocative reso‑ nances related to various senses, allusions to the past, and glimpses of potentiality that can provide insights into the import as well as the evocative and affective qualities of a form as experienced by its audiences. Sound, as such, can have considerable affective potency. A night masquerade’s affective power is not a word but an awesome sound, in the absence of sight. Orò is the fearsome society of elders responsible for enforcing the rule of law and meting out punishment for crimes committed, including those for the most serious offense—murder—that usually demands the death penalty. In the dead of night, when Orò is abroad, all nonmembers must remain indoors with shutters closed. Imagine this scene then—close your eyes—and listen to the otherworldly “voice” of Orò—WHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR—as it seeks its target and carries out its mission. Its invisibility and fearsome sound are the source of its evocative, performative power or àsẹ̣. If Orò operates largely in darkness, relying on the perception of sound, a Yorùbá Ifá divination session involves the perception of color to which symbolic significance attaches. The experience of color involves three senses simultaneously: sight, motion, and touch. Yorùbá Ifá is an etútù, a “cooling,” soothing, placating act. And as its name implies, it evokes a change in temperature, and by extension, temperament, a particular state of body-mind. Those present, humans and spirits, must feel the cooling, calming moment. Divination sessions take place in the shade of a tree or house, or within a house—any cool open space. In this way, the sense of touch is part of the perception of color. But more than this, color cognition among Yorùbá (and all of us) is not solely a matter of sight and touch but also of motion. Yorùbá distinguish among three chromatic groupings: pupa, funfun, and dúdú, inad‑ equately translated as “reds, whites, and blacks/dark hues,” respectively.33 Colors pro‑ voke the sensation of temperature, experienced through the sense of touch. Pupa (reds, oranges) are hot (gbigbóna), funfun (whites) are cool (tútù), and dúdú (dark colors like black and blue) represent the essence or character (ìwà) of the gods. Thus, the cool of white invites the presence of wise Ọ` bàtálá, and the heat of red evokes the Thundergod warrior Ṣàngó.34 Colors also evoke a sense of motion. Reds and other warm hues seem to advance toward the viewer, due to the length of their light waves hitting the retina. Blues, purples, and greens tend to recede or move away from us. Thus, the perception of color engages three senses simultaneously: sight, touch, and motion. Now in much of the world of Ifá, the colors yellow and green tend to dominate, espe‑ cially in the beadwork of diviners (Figure 2.2). According to Yorùbá chromatics, yellow and green are mediating colors. They are neither hot (gbigbóna) nor cool (tútù). They fall between these two extremes, moderating and mediating them. And this is symbolic of the position of Ifá (and the diviner) in the Yorùbá cosmos: to serve as a cosmic bridge

Sensiotics  31

FIGURE 2.2 In

the world of Ifá, the mediating colors of yellow and green (seen as dúdú) tend to dominate in the beadwork of diviners like the Araba of Eko, Chief Fagbemi Ajanaku. Photograph by Margaret Thompson Drewal and Henry John Drewal, 1977.

between the tangible world (ayé) and the spiritual otherworld (ọ`run), between humans and divine forces. These mediating beads are known as otútùopon. As the diviner Kola‑ wole Oshitola explained to me: “They are either green and yellow or green and brown … [they say] … when we perform a ceremony for someone, it will be alright [it will suc‑ ceed],” suggesting that the affect of sacred/symbolic colors brings the desired effect. And the full range of colors in the beaded necklace of diviners (odigba) signals the fact that Ifá must work with all forces in ayé and ọ`run.35 Colors are somatic, not semiotic. Black and/or dark hues (dúdú) are other important colors in Ifá—related to the ikin Ifá, the sixteen oil palm nuts, the most important objects in a diviner’s possession. They are vehicles of illumination. Very dark, black, and shiny from age and handling, they ` rúnmìlà, the founder of Ifá), whose blackness is evoke the aesthetic beauty of Ifá (and Ọ praised in names given to ebony children, Adúbiifá, “Black-as-the-ikin-Ifá.”36 Blackness, as Abiodun reminds us, is symbolic of the infinite knowledge and wisdom of Ifá and its diviners in penetrating the vast unknown, the forces operating in the cosmos, and pro‑ viding illumination. Blackness also references the unfathomable depths of the ocean, the realm of the goddess of the sea, Olókun, to which diviners travel when they leave the world for the otherworld.37 Touch has a particular role in the Yorùbá sensorium. Kóló, or body tattoo scarifica‑ tions, are as much about touch as they are about sight (Figure 2.3).38 While the sense of

32  Henry John Drewal

FIGURE 2.3  Woman

with tattoo scarifications (kóló), Ohori-Yorùbá. Photograph by Henry John Drewal, 1973.

Sensiotics  33

sight is certainly used to perceive them initially, it is the sense of touch (whether actual or virtual) that provokes a deeper sensual pleasure and appreciation. As one Yorùbá man confided to me, “When we see a young woman with kóló, and try to touch the kóló with our hands, the weather changes to another thing [we become sexually aroused]!”39 Smell has a wide cognitive role to play as well. Yorùbá believe that with the nose (imú) one can smell and detect an evil, cruel, or dangerous person (ènìan burúkú, kika) or a good, positive person (ènìan to da). As the diviner Oshitola said, “Smell helps us to notice good (òórùn to da, didun: sweet, delicious) and bad/bitter (òórùn kika, burúkú)” as well as the smell of death.40 The powerful impact of smell, together with the other senses, was abundantly evident during the performance of an Egúngún masquerader that honored the spirit of departed warrior ancestors (Figure 2.4). Its aura or performative power (àṣẹ) resided not only in its striking colors and assemblage of power packets attached to its costume but other multisensorial elements as well. These include the powerful chorus of praise songs that energized it; the kinetic energy of its dance amplified by the aggressive and threaten‑ ing demeanor of its attendants; the pain of whips striking flesh; the rushing, boisterous crowd; the gritty taste of dust kicked up in the chaos; the pulse of drums; and the heavy thud of the masker’s combat boots. But what dominated the experience was the per‑ vasive, overpowering stench that emanated from the animal sacrificial offerings on the

FIGURE 2.4 The

sight, actions, and especially the stench of this Egúngún masquerade honor‑ ing the spirit of warrior ancestors created a powerful sensory experience. Photo‑ graph by Henry John Drewal, 1978.

34  Henry John Drewal

blood-soaked tunic. The crowd, sensing and smelling the presence of danger, death, and violence in that place and moment responded by running desperately in all directions to avoid injury. Yorùbá have a particular sensitivity to motion. They assess and evaluate aspects of a person’s character (ìwà) with a keen awareness of how the person moves. The sense of motion reveals elements of one’s personality. For example, one who gets up quickly in the morning is a person who is called ajítẹní (the one who rises quickly and rolls up his sleeping mat). Another example is the description of one who expresses confidence with a swagger or “strut” called alapanṣapa (one who swings his arms widely while walking). According to Gabriel Ayoola, some Yorùbá watch a child when he is about to walk to see which leg the child uses first. For example, if a child “carries the left leg first, parents believe that his motion or mechanical ability may be impaired.” That is, such a child may not be able to walk as fast as he should. So the parents help the baby to learn which leg should be carried first. Sometimes they even make a wooden stroller for the baby to practice walking. The “learned ability to walk” is called lílé kọ´ ìrìn.41 Dance is a form of motion with its own associations. Yorùbá dance practice embod‑ ies “cool” (itútù), which is also a manifestation of a Yorùbá philosophy of body-mind: self-control, collectedness of mind, and emotion.42 The sensual power of movement and dance is conveyed in the Yorùbá saying “Stretch out your leg and let dance catch it!” (ko ma jó, l’ẹsẹ soke!). This exhortation urges the dancer to move appropriately, that is, with a properly enculturated style that follows the music. The dancer must hear (gbọ´) the music, for it “controls” the dancer as it “heats up” (ijó wóra) the body (ijó lo wóra, o wóra mi, ijó wóra). Motion is understood as active and an activating sense. Yorùbá also say that “Not standing still is dancing” (àìdúró, ijó ni) as a way to encourage a person to do something—to work, dance, wake up, perform—to carry on.43 Yorùbá have an enduring, fundamental metaphor: that life in the world is a journey (ayé l’àjò), that is, movement through space and time. They are also concerned with the “crossroads” of life (oríta mẹ´ta)—those moments of decision, direction, and action—­ presided over by the divine principle of indeterminacy, Ès. ù/Ẹlẹ´gbà, who is asked to “open the way” (àgò l’ònà). Such metaphors about journeying, crossroads, paths—­movement— help us understand the importance of motion as a separate and distinctive sense in a Yor‑ ` lábíyì Yáì states that for the Yorùbá, successful artists must ùbá sensorium. And, finally, Ọ be àrè—itinerant persons forever on the move, strangers everywhere, at home n ­ owhere— engaged in “constant departures” of creativity.44 Such an insight recognizes that the neverending accumulation of sensory experiences is essential for artistic excellence. Trance, or altered states of consciousness, is another important aspect of Yorùbá sen‑ sorium that is central to òrìṣà belief and practice. When such a state occurs, Yorùbá say orí mi wú (“My head swelled”). In religious contexts this refers to the spirit power of an òrìṣà, for example, a Ṣàngó devotee with an oṣù (empowering inoculations on the top/occiput of the head). As Oshitola explained, “It is the òrìṣà that controls the person and her/his dance, the spirit incited in your inner head (orí inú) comes from the spiritual realm of ọ` run—and it is this that overpowers your ayé [worldly] senses.”[emphasis in the original]45 This is represented in Ṣàngó dance wand sculptures where the head is dramatically enlarged or “swollen.” Understanding changes in a culture’s sensorium can reveal important historical processes. One example from Yorùbá is the sensory impact of a growing British presence in the early nineteenth century and formal colonial rule from

Sensiotics  35

about 1900 to 1960. The British traveler Hugh Clapperton and his assistant Richard Landers witnessed and described a multisensorial Egungun idán (“miracles/wonders”) ` yọ´ -Yorùbá (Eyeo or Ka‑ masquerade on February 22, 1826, in the capital city of the Ọ tunga) that included a humorous (for Yorùbá) presentation satirizing the strangeness of the “white man” (òyìbó) The third act consisted of the white devil. The actors having retired to some distance in the background, one of them was left in the center, whose sack falling gradually down, exposed a white head, at which all the crowd gave a shout that rent the air; they appeared indeed to enjoy this sight, as the perfection of the actor’s art. The whole body was at last cleared of the incumbrance [sic] of the sack, when it exhibited the ap‑ pearance of a human figure cast in white wax, of the middle size, miserably thin, and starved with cold. It frequently went through the motion of taking snuff, and rubbing its hands; when it walked, it was with the most awkward gait, treading as the most tender-footed white man would do in walking bare-footed, for the first time, over new frozen ground. The spectators often appealed to us, as to the excellence of the perfor‑ mance, and entreated I would look and be attentive to what was going on. I pretended to be fully as much pleased with this caricature of a white man as they could be, and certainly the actor burlesqued the part to admiration.46 That 1826 satirical skit of the “white man,” which showed Yorùbá attention to move‑ ments and gestures that reveal personality, continues today in Egúngún, revealing the impact of the changing importance of hearing as the basis for learning (ìlutí). In the late twentieth century, after sixty years of colonial rule, the òyìbó performance involved a white couple holding hands, kissing, and then exchanging written notes instead of talk‑ ing. Yorùbá consider this scene hilarious, not just because of the public display of affec‑ tions (which should be done in private), but because the sight of the written word has taken precedence over hearing the spoken word. Conclusion—Sensiotics Beyond Africa

An exposition of aspects of a Yorùbá sensorium illustrates how sensiotics may enrich cul‑ tural and historical understanding of the Yorùbá, but sensiotics can inform understand‑ ings of material culture and history everywhere. For example, Hindu images of the divine in the form of stones will be given human form with merely a pair of eyes (sense organs) and a pair of hands (action organs). This, together with the concept of darshan (blessing that comes from seeing a deity), informs us that the senses of sight and touch (action) are privileged in matters of belief and practice. Hindu religion, and perhaps many others globally, including Yorùbá òrìṣà faith, have always recognized the importance and effect of an object’s aura—that is, its embodied impact that affects us sensorially (understood as spiritually). For Hindus, to see the deity (darshan) is to be blessed—for the deity responds by looking back. Seeing is reciprocal. And anything that has come in contact with, i.e., touched, the deity is prasad—a sacred gift that “contains divine aura” and can thus help the devotee.47 Human experiences are body-mind ones, whether in Africa or beyond, that are shap‑ ing us as we respond to wider worlds—a spinning globe of complex, competing images,

36  Henry John Drewal

sounds, smells, touches, tastes, movements, and suprasensory moments—sensations that constantly bombard and shape us. Out of these, culture makers create and audiences respond, using their senses and sense abilities. If we want to understand such matters, we must first understand how the senses shape and guide us from the womb to the grave and then find ways to communicate evocatively and poetically such sensory experiences. Notes 1 Constance Classen, Worlds of Sense: Exploring the Senses in History and Across Cultures (London: Routledge, 1993); Constance Classen, ed., A Cultural History of the Senses, six vol‑ umes (New York: Bloomsbury, 2014); David Howes, Sensual Relations (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003); D. Howes, ed., Empire of the Senses: The Sensual Culture Reader (Oxford: Berg, 2004). Tim Ingold argues that theorizing about “materiality” has taken us away from our practical experience with the nature of materials and is a reflection of the classical mind/body split: Tim Ingold, “Materials Against Materiality,” Archaeological Dialogues 14 (2007): 1–16. 2 Henry John Drewal, “African Art Studies Today,” African Art Studies: The State of the Discipline (Washington, DC: National Museum of African Art, 1990), 29–62. 3 W.J.T. Mitchell, Picture Theory (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 16. 4 Malcolm Gladwell, Blink (New York: Little, Brown, 2005), 119–20. 5 Henry John Drewal, “African Art Studies Today,” African Art Studies: The State of the Discipline (Washington, DC: National Museum of African Art, 1990), 35. 6 Constance Classen, Worlds of Sense : Exploring the Senses in History and Across Cultures (Milton: Taylor & Francis Group, 2023). 7 Mark, M. Smith, The Smell of Battle, the Taste of Siege: A Sensory History of the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). 8 David Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chi‑ cago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 437–8. 9 Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, trans. Fredy Perlman and Jon Supak (Detroit: Black & Red, 1970; rev. ed. [1967] 1977). 10 Drewal, “Celebrating Water Spirits: Influence, Confluence, and Difference in Ijebu-Yoruba and Delta Masquerades,” in Ways of the River: Arts and Environment of the Niger Delta (Los An‑ geles, CA: Fowler Museum of Cultural History), 193–215, 353. 11 See Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth, eds., The Affect Theory Reader (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010). 12 See Constance Classen, Worlds. 13 Paul Stoller, Sensuous Scholarship (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997). 14 Henry John Drewal, African Artistry: Technique and Aesthetics in Yorùbá Sculpture (Atlanta: High Museum of Art, 1980), 7. 15 Rowland Abiodun, “The Future of African Art Studies: An African Perspective,” in African Art Studies: The State of the Discipline (Washington, DC: National Museum of African Art, 1990), 75. 16 Rowland Abiodun and Abayomi Ola, personal communications, 2005. 17 Henry John Drewal and Margaret T. Drewal, Gelede: Art and Female Power Among the Yorùbá (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983). 18 Kathryn Geurts, Culture and the Senses: Bodily Ways of Knowledge in an African Community (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 49–50. 19 Henry John Drewal, “Image and Indeterminacy: The Significances of Elephants and Ivory Among the Yorùbá,” in Elephant: The Animal and Its Ivory in African Culture, ed. Doran H. Ross (Los Angeles, CA: Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 1993), 186–207. 20 Fred Lamp, ed., See the Music, Hear the Dance: Rethinking African Art at the Baltimore Museum (Baltimore, MD: The Baltimore Museum of Art and Prestel Verlag, 2004). 21 Ọ` lábíyì B. Yáì, personal communication, 2006. 22 Wole Ṣọyinka, “The Tolerant Gods,” in Orisa Devotion as World Religion, eds. Jacob Olupọna and Terry Rey (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2008), 41.

Sensiotics  37

23 Henry John Drewal et al., Yorùbá: Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought (New York: Museum for African Art, 1989), 42. 24 Rowland Abiodun, “Identity and the Artistic Process in the Yorùbá Aesthetic Concept of Ìwà,” Journal of Cultures and Ideas 1 (1983): 13–30. 25 Kolawole Oshitola, personal communications, 1982. 26 See Drewal and Drewal, Gelede, Chapters 1–3; Henry John Drewal and M.T. Drewal, “Com‑ posing Time and Space in Yorùbá Art,” Word and Image 3 (1987): 225–7; Rowland Abiodun, “Understanding Yorùbá Art and Aesthetics: The Concept of Ase,” African Arts 27 (1994): 68–78, 102–3. 27 Kolawole Oshitola, personal communication, November 14, 2010. 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid. 30 Henry John Drewal and John Pemberton III, with Rowland Abiodun, Yorùbá: Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought (New York: Museum for African Art, 1989), 26. 31 Karin Barber, I Could Speak until Tomorrow (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991). 32 F.N. Akinnaso, “Yorùbá Traditional Names and the Transmission of Cultural Knowledge,” Names: The Journal of the American Name Society 31 (1983): 139–58, 15. 33 F.N. Akinnaso, “Names and Naming Principles in Cross-Cultural Perspective,” Names: The Journal of the American Name Society 29 (1981): 51. 34 Moyọ Okediji, “Yorùbá Chromacy,” in Principles of “Traditional” African Art, Moyo Okediji, ed. (Ile-Ife: Obafemi Awolowo University Press, 1991); Bolaji Campbell, Painting for the Gods: Art and Aesthetics of Yoruba Religious Murals (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2008). 35 These same connotations of color and temperament carry over to Yorùbá descendants in Cuba as well. John Mason (1989, personal communication) notes: “when a diviner warns of a ‘red’ enemy, a violent, unpredictable, explosive person is being described.” 36 Kolawole Oshitola, personal communications, 1982. 37 Wande Abimbola, ed., Yorùbá Oral Tradition (Ile-Ife: University of Ife, 1975), 427 and Row‑ land Abiodun, personal communication, 2008. 38 Kolawole Oshitola, personal communication, 1982, 1986. 39 While I have no comment from a woman, I imagine kóló are highly sensitive for them as well. 40 Kolawole Oshitola, personal communication, November 14, 2010. 41 Gabriel Ayoola, personal communication, June 12, 2012. 42 Robert Farris Thompson, “An Aesthetic of the Cool,” African Arts 7 (1973): 40–4, 64–7, 89– 91, and Robert Farris Thompson, African Art in Motion: Icon and Act (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974). 43 Kolawole Oshitola, personal communication, September 27, 2010. 44 Ọ` lábíyì B. Yáì, “In Praise of Metonymy: The Concepts of ‘Tradition’ and ‘Creativity’ in the Transmission of Yorùbá Artistry over Time and Space,” in The Yorùbá Artist: New Theoretical Perspectives on African Arts, eds. Rowland Abiodun, Henry J. Drewal and John Pemberton III (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994), 112–3. 45 Ọ` lábíyì B. Yáì, “In Praise of Metonymy: The Concepts of ‘Tradition’ and ‘Creativity’ in the Transmission of Yorùbá Artistry over Time and Space,” in The Yorùbá Artist: New Theoretical Perspectives on African Arts, ed. Rowland Abiodun, Henry J. Drewal and John Pemberton III (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994), 112–3. 46 Hugh Clapperton, Journal of a Second Expedition into the Interior of Africa from the Bight of Benin to Soccatoo (London: John Murray [Frank Cass], [1829] 1966), 54–6. 47 Devdutt Pattaniak, Myth = Mithya: Decoding Hindu Mythology (New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 2006), 6–10.

3 DANCING NKHOBA The Flow of Sound and Healthy Bodies in the West Usambara Mountains of Tanzania Marguerite E.H. Lenius

In the West Usambara Mountains of northeastern Tanzania, many Shambaa people still turn to the ancient healing institution of ughanga to maintain their health and combat spirit-derived illnesses. Ughanga enlists spirit possession, art objects, dress, foodstuffs, olfactory stimuli, and the performing arts to sustain and restore the balance between the human and spirit realms, without which sickness ensues. It is a local variation of ngoma or “cults of affliction,” and is rooted in deep-seated and far-ranging Bantu worldviews whereby wellness in bodies, communities, and the environment are all interconnected and depend upon continuous reciprocities between humans and spirits.1 The body serves as both a primary locus and a metaphor for these relations, and such interactions are facilitated mainly through the manipulation of art objects and through performanceactions, all of which are regarded as medicine.2 Of such medicines, accumulative sculptures called nkhoba are among the most central and iconic.3 Nkhoba are anthropomorphic medicine containers made of hollow gourds or clay jars, the latter of which are usually oval in shape or are skeuomorphs of gourds (Figures 3.1–3.3). Both types can range in size from a few inches to more than a foot high and have openings at their crests for the insertion of medicinal ingredients. Healers seal these openings with stoppers, which can be decorative, some depicting abstract shapes, human torsos or heads, or birds. However, decorative stoppers have become increasingly uncommon due to the expense of commissioning them. Instead, healers are using miscel‑ laneous items, such as corncobs, bundles of cloth, or plastic bags (Figure 3.1).4 One of the most intriguing aspects of nkhoba is that, despite their many ritual and symbolic corporeal qualities, most look little to nothing like actual bodies. In this way, they differ dramatically from the medicinal sculptures from West and Central Africa that first captivated Euro-American audiences and which continue to have an outsize influ‑ ence on what art history defines as African art.5 The corporeal aspects of nkhoba are manifold and are an outcome of the process that healers employ to create them. Guided by their tutelary spirits, healers decorate and fill the gourds with an open-ended array of images and substances while reciting DOI: 10.4324/9781003389088-4

Dancing Nkhoba  39

FIGURE 3.1 Medicine

FIGURE 3.2 A

container (nkhoba) with a corncob stopper.

“mother” nkhoba, her waist encircled by her “children” and beads.

40  Marguerite E.H. Lenius

FIGURE 3.3  Nkhoba

wearing waist beads (shanga).

incantations and performing other esoteric actions. The process, which is called “deco‑ rating” or “dressing the spirits,” infuses both the decorations and the containers with the spirits’ power, which healers can marshal toward specific therapeutic ends. “Dressing the spirits” transforms nkhoba into representations of and vehicles for spirits’ characters and vitality, and tangible manifestations of the dynamism of cross-world relations. Shambaa people think of both as body-like.6 Such conceptions are evident, for example, in how healers describe the sculptures’ constituent parts. They refer to their stoppers as “tongues,” especially the sculpted kind, which extend deep into the gourds’ medicine-filled interiors.7 They also identify relation‑ ships among their various nkhoba in terms of physiology and kinship. The most skilled specialists often propagate smaller gourds from a primary one, identifying the first as the “mother” nkhoba and those she produces as her “children” (Figure 3.2).8 Such nkhoba “families” parallel healers’ own genealogies, which the medicine con‑ tainers also embody. Historically, all clans had a healer among them who tended their families’ collection of medicine objects. These specialists kept the medicines in baskets that were passed down through the generations from one healer to the next, oftentimes at the direction of ancestors who expressed their wishes in dreams or by deploying ill‑ nesses.9 It is a phenomenon that continues today among those who still adhere to the ancestral ways. Once someone becomes the steward of their family’s nkhoba, they both preserve and add to the containers’ external and internal substances. Thus, while nkhoba perform like bodies, spawning progeny and enacting otherworldly power, their

Dancing Nkhoba  41

ever-shifting components also give a tangible, body-like form to the vital interconnected‑ ness of multiple generations of healers. Despite these attributes, most nkhoba make scant visual reference to the human form, and many are completely abstract (Figure 3.1). This tension compels deeper considera‑ tion of not only how Shambaa people experience the body but also the relationship between such perceptions and healers’ artistic medicinal depiction of it. Analyses of this sort have the potential to broaden current understandings of figurative sculpture not only in the institution of ughanga but also in healing contexts throughout Africa, both today and in the past. Sensiotics, a nascent art historical methodology pioneered by Henry J. Drewal, prof‑ fers a way to approach such issues. It explores the role of the senses in the creation and perception of arts in Africa and its diaspora.10 Anthropologists of the senses assert that sensoria are constitutive of knowledge, culturally and historically determined, and are structured hierarchically. Sight reigns supreme in Europe and America, for example, while strong odors have been denigrated throughout history in these regions. At times, people have overtly associated them with behavior deemed deviant, such as promiscu‑ ous female sexuality.11 By contrast, several anthropologists note the primacy of sound in many African cultures.12 Inspired by these findings, sensiotics challenges art history’s privileging of sight. It focuses instead upon art’s multi-sensorial nature, on the role the body plays in the crea‑ tive process, and on peoples’ wholistic, sensory reception of art.13 In so doing, it offers alternate ways to discern the relationship between the artistic form of nkhoba and how these sculptures function as, and relate to, bodies. Does their lack of verisimilitude suggest a greater concern among Shambaa ritual prac‑ titioners for depicting how the body behaves, relates to, or physically interacts with other bodies than for how it looks? Might their composition be a consequence of how people in this part of Africa envision health and experience it socially and phenomenologically? If so, which senses most inform such conceptions? A sensiotic analysis of the objects with which healers decorate their nkhoba provides insight into such questions. Theoretically, spirits request an infinite range of embellish‑ ments, and the items themselves resist definitive interpretation. Indeed, the open-ended nature of the decorative process and the symbolic variability of the decorations exemplify the inherently syncretic nature and flexibility of ughanga itself, an institution which, although enlivened by imagery, procedures, and philosophies passed down through mil‑ lennia, also continually transforms.14 Despite this, iconographic patterns do exist.15 For example, spirits often ask healers to dress nkhoba with body adornments that are emblematic of communal adolescent initiation rites known collectively as mivigha, which Shambaa communities employed both as an educational system and as a form of public preventive medicine until the middle of the twentieth century. Jewelry called shanga is but one example of a kind of body art from initiations that appear also on nkhoba. Shanga are narrow bands made of strands of colorful seed beads often braided or shaped loosely in open-work patterns (Figure 3.4). Many Shambaa women today layer them around their hips beneath their clothing to arouse their sexual partners.16 Waist beads have long been associated with female bodies and sexuality in the region. In the past, elders used several kinds of teaching tools in the initiation ceremonies for Sham‑ baa girls. Along with a number of other body decorations, songs, dancing, and cooking

42  Marguerite E.H. Lenius

FIGURE 3.4 Waist

beads (shanga) purchased by the author in the West Usambara Mountains.

utensils, during initiations, teachers employed hip beads to cultivate and control female sexuality, to teach girls about their reproductive capabilities and to train them how to at‑ tain and maintain optimal health for themselves and their kin. Today, women who have passed through mivigha refer to the rites’ various waist beads as shanga. Identification first of the range of waist beads in circulation in the Usambara Moun‑ tains in the early twentieth century and their significance to public health at this time, and then of the connection between shanga and the senses of movement and sound, discloses the significance of these senses to longstanding Shambaa perceptions of health and thus, ultimately, to the creation and efficacy of nkhoba.17 An Overview of Initiations and Female Waist Beads

Prior to and throughout the colonial era, Shambaa communities employed initiations (mivigha) to transform children into fully incarnate, educated, and compliant women and men. During these rites, elders imparted to youth their clan’s sacred sexual knowledge (vihii) and its behavioral laws and taboos (mila). Issued by the ancestors, these teachings safeguard the perpetuation and wellbeing of Shambaa communities. When people trans‑ gress them, spirits send illnesses, inflicting them on perpetrators, on members of their broader community, or on both through the manipulation of environmental phenomena. For this reason, mivigha were compulsory until communities started abandoning them in

Dancing Nkhoba  43

the early twentieth century when people began converting to Islam and Christianity. For many, however, the rites were both a critical form of preventive medicine and a counter‑ part to ughanga until approximately 1960. At the height of these rites’ relevance to Shambaa society, all boys underwent a single, prolonged ceremony called gao. Female members of the royal clan, the Kilindi, attended gao with the boys and participated in three other female rites with Shambaa girls: oza, nkhimbizi, and uweezi or mvigha mkuu (the greatest, final, and most important initia‑ tion, respectively). The female rites were incremental, each focusing on a different aspect of sexual maturity and domestic responsibilities, and emphasized obedience and subser‑ vience, upon which Shambaa womanhood is based. The teachings of all the mivigha were implemented through several means: by ma‑ nipulating the bodies of the initiates using adornments such as dress, jewelry, and tex‑ tiles; through the restriction of certain behaviors; and through modes of performance, especially songs and dance. Performances also involved the revelation and negotiation of objects that symbolized the sacred and highly secret bodily and sexual teachings, includ‑ ing items of dress. When passing through mivigha, male and female initiates both interacted with and wore an array of beaded body adornments. Depending on the rite, they wore beaded veils that fell mask-like over their faces and down their backs. They donned strands of beads crisscrossing their torsos, encircling their heads, necks, upper arms, forearms, and wrists, and draping down their backs and chests. During this era, healers also dressed their nkhoba with a variety of small- and mediumsized beads, a practice that persists to this day. Not all such items replicate the sacred garb of initiations. Healers also use beads that represent the blooms of medicinal plants contained within a nkhoba and with which the beads’ colors correspond.18 Oftentimes, however, the beaded accessories on medicine gourds explicitly reference those of initia‑ tions. For example, frequently healers encircle the “waists” of their nkhoba with strands of beads that resemble those long worn by women (Figures 3.2 and 3.3). Sometimes they use contemporary shanga, underscoring connections between the healing capacity of their nkhoba and the power of female sexuality (Figure 3.3). At the turn of the twentieth century, several kinds of waist beads were in use. Over time they changed, both in name and in form, but all were sacred, intimately associated with female sexuality and communal health, and precursors to those that many women wear discreetly today. One such type, called mkatu or sheghe, was a monochromatic, single string of white or red beads.19 Another, called birika, was multi-stranded and was comprised of round white, red, or black beads. If a birika was polychromatic, each strand was only one color. More commonly, though, birika were all white. Women wore them above their waist wraps during initiations, and, if possible, beneath their clothes throughout the remainder of their lives. Birika were prized for their large size and could be immense. Alfred Karasek, a Ger‑ man émigré who was living in the West Usambara Mountains at the turn of the twen‑ tieth century, saw examples that had as many as 160 strands. While he described them unflatteringly as “buoy-like,” Shambaa people thought a woman in birika the epitome of female beauty.20

44  Marguerite E.H. Lenius

In Karasek’s day, women began replacing birika with another, simpler form of hip jewelry called mtulunja or utundu, which were made of just three strands of beads. The top and bottom ones were white, and the middle string was either yellow or black. Oc‑ casionally the middle strand was formed of black and white alternating beads.21 Of all the waist beads that initiates wore, a fourth type, called makoa, is perhaps the most closely related to contemporary shanga, at least in terms of use if not appearance. Makoa are beaded belts made of multi-colored, glass seed beads that Indian vendors sold in local markets throughout the West Usambara Mountains. The beads were sewn together with leaf fibers either from wild date palm trees or banana trees. These bands could be as wide as 9 cm and featured vertical rows of interlocking shapes, such as chevrons, triangles, and rectangles.22 Like contemporary waist beads, makoa had overtly erotic connotations. Many women, after initiation, continued to wear them beneath their clothing to excite their husbands and lovers. As one man confided to Karasek, “If a man touches such a band [on a woman], then he is defeated.”23 Each of these various types of waist beads—mkatu/sheghe, birika, mtulunja/utundu, and makoa—played a critical role in the formation of female bodies and personhood during and after initiations. They were symbols and cultivators of female sexuality and fertility and expressions of a woman’s relationship to her ancestors, husband, future chil‑ dren, and community. All were thus powerful agents and icons of embodiment, fertility, and personal and collective health. Given the historical complementarity of initiations and ughanga, healers’ use of shanga to decorate their nkhoba today is revelatory. It points to deep-seated, phenomenological understandings among Shambaa people of both health and the body. An examination of the complex relationship among dance, sexuality, and waist beads highlights the primacy of the senses of movement and sound to the formation of female bodies during initiations in the past and to notions of health still prevalent throughout the Mountains. “We Are the Dancing People and We Have Been Through These Initiations!”

In July of 2013, Bibi Batuli, a beautiful and fiercely intelligent grandmother (bibi), trans‑ formed my understanding of Shambaa initiations in an instant. In her youth, Batuli had been a renowned dancer. When recalling the initiations, she repeatedly spoke both of her dancing skills and of the inextricability of dance from the rites. In my mind, dance was an important component of initiations but a discrete one that could be studied in isolation, much like the present approach to the waist beads of nkhoba. Not so for Bibi Batuli. As our conversation progressed, she grew increasingly frustrated by my questions, and my seeming inability to comprehend her responses. Pressing her again about the import of dance to the rites, I asked whether she had learned to dance as a tiny child or if instead she had learned during initiations. Exasper‑ ated, she cried out, “Girls were danced when they were young! Only after they had been danced did they know of the initiations! We are the Dancing People! And we have been through these initiations!” Bibi Batuli’s words struck me like lightning. To her, there was no conceptual distinc‑ tion between the initiations, their teachings, and their artistic elements—all were dance. Moreover, to be a healthy Shambaa adult was to dance, and the better one danced, the more exemplary a member of the community one was. No wonder Bibi was so proud

Dancing Nkhoba  45

of her dancing skills. Further, to be initiated—“to be danced”—was a passive process. It involved yielding to the will of elders and being transformed in body, mind, and spirit by their lead through a sequence of loosely choreographed rituals comprised of music, bodily based actions, and gestures. Bibi Batuli’s perspective foregrounds the significance not merely of dance but also of movement and sound more broadly, both to initiations and to the artistic form of nkhoba. Dance—including the sounds which inspire and encourage it and the gestures of which its choreography is comprised—permeated all aspects of the adolescent rites. It was manifest even in the ritual effects and artistic form of the various waist beads that were instrumental to them. Take, for instance, the beaded bands called makoa. As noted, makoa were belt-like and bore geometric patterns of multi-colored seed beads. Emphasizing both their sexual nature and their relationship to dance, Karasek noted that, during feasts, women would stretch cloth tightly around their waists so that the contours of makoa—and the move‑ ment of their waists—were clearly visible. He also claimed that women showed them off to one another during female-only celebrations during which the women would remove their clothing while singing and dancing.24 In the West Usambara Mountains today, such female-only dances still occur. They are called kibwebwe or kidembwa. Kibwebwe are lively celebrations that a group of women might orchestrate after one among them gives birth. In the past, kibwebwe formed part of uweezi, the final female initiation. After a woman gave birth to her first child, during her period of confinement, other mothers and grandmothers would bring gifts, such as nutrient-rich foodstuffs to help her regain strength. They drank sugarcane beer and per‑ formed bawdy dances and songs, entertaining the new mother as she lay in repose. Just as they often do today, the performers disrobed and acted out sexual activities while singing and dancing, with one woman assuming the man’s role and another that of the woman. Such dances were playful reenactments of the events and sexual teachings of the previous initiations, during which participants also danced together without clothes. Like kibwebwe today, these dances also enabled women spontaneously to voice personal grievances or to comment upon the illicit behavior of others in their community, both of which were otherwise forbidden. The dances were thus joyful celebrations of female sexuality, empowerment, and camaraderie and of having been completely transformed into a woman by childbirth and the initiations. Dance, sexuality, and waist beads have long been intertwined in the region, conceptu‑ ally and in praxis. Among the culturally related Kaguru, T.O. Biedelman observed that, during initiations, dance was a form of “moderated sexuality.”25 The same was true during mivigha. As kibwebwe demonstrate, one of the primary ways Shambaa elders im‑ parted sexual knowledge to initiates was to act it out through dance, both explicitly and implicitly. A brief description of the choreography of initiations and kibwebwe makes this last point clear. Generally speaking, initiates’ choreography centered around their hips and buttocks, and dancers’ centers of gravity were low. Today during kibwebwe, some dancers demon‑ strate tremendous skill by moving individual muscles of their buttocks with extraordinary specificity in rapid, up-and-down motions, much to the delight of the other women. At times, dancers further underscore such movements by stilling their upper bodies. Moving in a circle, they combine this with other movements of the lower torso, such as a subtle

46  Marguerite E.H. Lenius

rolling of the hips, and/or deep bends in the knees and a forward bend at the waist, which can bring them quite close to the ground. The downward emphasis of the dance can even propel a performer to place her hands on the ground, after which, with bent legs, she bounces her buttocks in the air. This choreography, which was also performed in initiations, spotlights the waist, hips, and buttocks as an erogenous zone. It also alludes to sexual intercourse, particularly sexual relations immediately after childbirth, a period during which, in the past, vaginal penetration was forbidden. With these gestures, the dancers showed off their ability to articulate the movements of their buttocks and pelvis skillfully and thereby demonstrate how well they had embodied their sexual teachings. During initiations, elders used strands of beads to train the girls both how to dance in this way and how to please themselves and their future husbands sexually. Resting at times heavily on the hips, abdomen, and upper buttocks, waist adornments drew the girls’ attention to this region of their bodies as they moved. The beads did so not just tactilely but also aurally. They became a rattle of sorts, prompting and responding to each movement of a dancer’s hips and waist, encouraging her to move with greater force and precision. The aural effect was undoubtedly awe-inspiring. Describing the sensation of wearing a large, multi-stranded birika nearly seventy years after her initiation, one grandmother repeatedly noted its large size and the rattling sounds the beads made as she moved. Clearly this was a remarkable experience for her, as it likely was for the others with and for whom she danced. Waist beads did not merely pertain to intermarital relations. Although it was sacred and not discussed openly, a couple’s sex life was a matter that impacted and involved the entire clan. From a purely superficial perspective, it was a means to an end. It protected the clan’s continuity by aiming to facilitate procreation, which many Shambaa people still believe depends upon ancestors’ blessings. The artistic form of waist beads expresses this communal dimension of sexuality. Their circularity is an image of time collapsed, conveying at once a lineage’s past, present, and future coalesced around a woman’s waist. Waist beads are thus another manifestation of the deep-seated synonymity in Shambaa thinking between female sexuality and concentric circles, spiral motifs, and gestures of wrapping, all of which are also dynamic. The conception of female sexuality as concen‑ tric is encapsulated also, for example, in a medicine called mbeeko with which healers have long treated infertility and breastfeeding problems.26 Its name derives from cloths of the same name that women wrap around their torsos to carry their infants on their backs. In the context of healing, the word mbeeko signifies pregnancy, the name and image of the wrapped cloth evoking the generative and enclosing power of a uterus. A primary ingredient of mbeeko is the charred skin of a horned chameleon. This crea‑ ture, ubiquitous throughout the West Usambara Mountains, is linked to both male and female sexuality. Healers associate its phallus-like, horned head with male sexuality and its tail, which is often tightly coiled, with female generative capabilities. Just as chamele‑ ons are able to change color, the presence of their skin in the medicine enables a healer to change a woman’s body from barren to fertile.27 The skin also vitalizes the mixture with the energy of the reptile’s coiled tail, and, with the medicine’s name, effecting the power of a womb encircling a fetus and a mother enfolding her child within a carrying cloth. Additionally, healers use the helical shells of giant land snails as containers for the medi‑ cine mbeeko, keeping the medicine in close contact with the whorl of the shells.

Dancing Nkhoba  47

Visually, spirals are intrinsically dynamic. However, healers also perform spiral move‑ ments when constructing fertility medicines. The esteemed healer and Nango chief Babu Mbogho tends a sprawling spirit compound that he inherited from his father. The sanctu‑ ary is bound by a ring of trees. Its interior is dotted with spirit houses and shrines formed by gatherings of smooth stones propping up wooden poles, clay mounds, and overturned pots. At its apex, opposite the entrance, looms a majestic fig tree where his ancestors reside, and from which hang—in elaborate tangles—the plants that supply his fertility medicines. For the medicines to be effective, when gathering these plants he must begin at the base of the tree, walk in a clockwise circle around it, and spiral outward into the compound, following the arboreal ring of its boundary. His movements are mirrored by a spiral of round stones that permanently encircle the fig tree. The stone spiral winds around the base of the tree and leads into its cavernous roots, tracing a path that connects the human realm with that of the ancestors, the tree serving as interface.28 The circularity of women’s reproductive capacities is thus manifest therapeutically in mbeeko through the deployment of spiral imagery on multiple levels. It is effected visu‑ ally on the medicine’s exterior—performatively through the healer’s movements, inter‑ nally through the stilled vitality of the chameleon’s coiled tail, and symbolically through the medicine’s name. The link between female sexuality and concentricity in Shambaa thinking derives from a widespread Bantu belief that reproduction is a phenomenon that transcends both the physical limits of a woman’s body and the duration of her existence on Earth. As a healer explained to Barbara Thompson, the spiral “visually expresses the concept of life, the never-ending cycle from one state of being to another and from one form of existence into another.”29 The belief is powerfully portrayed and executed through the many spi‑ rals that comprise the fertility medicine (mbeeko). The whirling image of the spiral situ‑ ates a woman’s body within an ever-expanding chain reaction that extends from those who came before her, now in the ancestral realm, out through the landscape to those for whom she will one day be an ancestor. Female waist beads, with which elders encircled the pelvis of initiates, were tangi‑ ble signs and expressions of lineages expanding concentrically through time and which would optimally also one day pass through the girls’ bodies.30 For this reason, the singlestranded ones called mkatu were heirlooms and functioned as medicines that advanced a family’s line. Karasek observed that they were a family’s most prized possession and that women would part with them only under specific, solemn circumstances. If a woman had a son, she would bequeath her mkatu to his prospective wife as part of her bridewealth.31 Mkatu thus functioned as a symbol of the fiancée’s potential role in perpetuating the ancestral line of her betrothed, while serving much like engagement rings do today. The beads also had a medicinal potency. Worn throughout her initiations and marriage, a woman’s mkatu became imbued with her fecundity and the sexual power at the heart of her marriage and clan. When she bequeathed them to her daughter-in-law, she also imparted this accumulated power. The strands of hip beads so central to female initiations, and which also appear on nkhoba, thus truly transformed adolescent girls into “Dancing People.” They evoked the senses of movement and sound in myriad ways. When worn, the beads inspired and perpetuated the movements of dancing and singing female bodies, both during initia‑ tion rites and long after. Dancers’ undulating hips transformed the jewelry into musical

48  Marguerite E.H. Lenius

instruments, the rattling of which further inspired their moves. The adornments’ circu‑ larity, and the gestures of enfoldment with which elders wrapped them around initiates’ waists, instantiated the dynamic concentricity of female sexuality, the vitality of women’s embeddedness within their communities, and the movement of lineal propagation. Finally, as part of the circulation of bridewealth among families, and as a tool used to bring about the stimulation and release of reproductive bodily fluids, such as semen and breast milk, waist beads also expressed a more abstract kind of motion that once lay at the heart of healthcare in the region. They partook of an ancient paradigm—salient far beyond the Usambara Mountains—that images health as flow and illness as occlusion, seizure, and paralysis.32 Dancing Nkhoba: “Dressing the Spirits” and Imaging Health

For millennia, people living throughout much of sub-Saharan Africa have conceived of health as flow, and illness as blockage. Among speakers of Kishambaa, this dichotomy is discernable in the etymology of the words ughanga and mghanga, the latter of which means “healer.” These terms share the same Proto-Bantu verb *-ganga, which means to “tie up.” In the early Bantu era, *-ganga acquired another layer of meaning as Bantu speakers began using it to refer to doctors.33 The evolution points to still-vital beliefs regarding the relationship between actions that induce illness and healing. Spirit-derived illness, which is often the consequence of maleficence, has the effect of binding, blocking, or seizing bodies (i.e., obstructing movement), whereas healing undoes these symptoms, thereby setting victims free.34 Conceptually, this perspective of health and illness is not limited to the physical boundaries of the body but is mapped out also upon society, the environment, and hu‑ man/spirit relations. As John M. Janzen and Edward C. Green succinctly explain: [The body’s] physiological coordinates are usually linked to the wider world of a per‑ son’s relationships in society, if not to society itself as a body. An outside observer sees a clear homology between the physical realm of the body and exchanges in society. Both are seen as needing to flow openly in order to thrive. Just as food and fluids need to be ingested for the physical body to be healthy, so the body social needs to be fed with reciprocal gifts and gestures of good will. Grudges, envy, and ill will in the social body are seen to cause blockages in the physical body.35 In the past, this understanding of health was advanced in part through the economy, which was based on the exchange of gifts rather than commodities. According to this logic, gift exchange stimulates and facilitates a health-yielding flow, establishing a cohe‑ sion in the form of mutual social obligations among givers and receivers.36 It plays out also on the material plane and is expressed through body imagery. Among the Shambaa, the waist beads called mkatu exemplify this. The giving and receiving of these adorn‑ ments resulted in the coherence of two families, for example, and in the flow between bodies first of semen and vaginal fluids and then, ideally, of breastmilk. The logic also enlivened pre-colonial politics in the region. Throughout the duration of the Shambaa Kingdom, when a king received the appropriate tribute from his sub‑ jects, he reciprocated by regulating the flow of rain properly. The rains brought food and

Dancing Nkhoba  49

ensured the health of the environment and the people. When a king received tributes but was unable to reciprocate in due measure, people understood that his spirit-based rain medicines were not powerful enough to regulate the rain, which precipitated a political crisis. The kingdom’s healthy flow was blocked, and the political system, the land, and the communities over whom he reigned were understood to be in need of healing.37 When considered within this conceptual framework, the creation and use of nkhoba also facilitates—and artistically conveys in bodily terms—health-yielding flows that per‑ meated Shambaa culture in the past. The process whereby nkhoba acquire their deco‑ rations is animated by the same gifting logic that characterized pre-colonial Shambaa economies. Although instigated by the spirits, “dressing the spirits” is inherently recip‑ rocal, its power derived from cross-world gifting and sacrifice. While spirits commence the process by requesting certain items, they reciprocate by helping to diagnose and cure illnesses. They then inhere nkhoba, yielding to healers a significant degree of control over their curative capabilities. As with the gifting that characterized so many aspects of precolonial Shambaa society, these cross-world acts of giving and receiving help spirits and people to cohere by reinforcing their interdependence, cultivating and strengthening a living relationship that is imaged as body-like. Nkhoba thus heal in part by enacting a se‑ ries of cross-world flows through which humans and spirits become materially entwined. In this way, “dressing the spirits” both feeds and gives artistic expression to the “body social” to which Janzen and Green refer. Nkhoba are portraits of a social, communal body, and the giving and receiving of their decorations opens blockages in the commu‑ nity by (re)establishing good will (i.e., health) among people and spirits. But the movements that nkhoba facilitate are not limited to the social sphere. And they culminate as more than the flow of liquids, like rain and bodily fluids. The flows they enable are also articulated physically through the slow, perpetual movement of their artistic form. Passed down through generations of healers, their shapes are the result of an accumulation of creative gestures enacted in perpetuity, at least in theory. Healers also continuously repair and adjust the items on their nkhoba, ensuring that, during their lifetimes, the sculptures, like the institution of which they are a part, always remain in a steady, slow flux. Considering both the import of dance to initiations and the significance of movement to nkhoba, I suggest that such modifications are another expression of the ancient Afri‑ can belief that health is flow. Initiates articulate it through dance and nkhoba do so artis‑ tically through their ever-shifting amorphousness. In this way, these figurative sculptures, which bear such little visual reference to the body, nonetheless convey it by imaging the long-held wisdom that the body’s dance-like embedment in the human, spirit, and natu‑ ral worlds is the fount of its existence and its wellbeing. Notes 1 Ngoma or “cults of affliction” are a form of public healing found throughout central, eastern, and southern Africa. The term ngoma translates literally as “drum.” However, in this context, it refers not merely to drumming but to all the related elements that comprise healing rituals, including other forms of musical instrumentation, singing, and dancing. The term’s constella‑ tion of meanings also underscores the conceptual interdependence of sound and movement and the centrality of the arts to these healing systems. John M. Janzen, Ngoma: Discourses of Healing in Central and Southern Africa (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California

50  Marguerite E.H. Lenius

Press, 1992); Victor W. Turner, The Drums of Affliction: A Study of Religious Processes Among the Ndembu of Zambia (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968); Rhonda M. Gonzales, Societies, Religion, and History: Central East Tanzanians and the World They Created, ca. 200 BCE to 1800 CE (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), Chapter 3, paragraphs 3–5. http:// www. gutenberg-e.org/gonzales/print.html; Barbara Thompson, “Kiuza Mpheho (Return of the Winds): The Arts of Healing among the Shambaa Peoples of Tanzania” (Ph.D. diss., University of Iowa, 1999), 99–100. 2 Barbara Thompson, “Kiuza Mpheho,” 229. 3 Ibid., 92. 4 Ibid., 93–4. 5 See, e.g., Roy, Christopher D., “Reinventing the Canon: New Forms and Functions of Afri‑ can Art,” in Kilengi: African Art from the Bareiss Family Collection (Hanover, Germany and Seattle: Kestner Gessellschaft and University of Washington Press, 1999), 17–26; and Christa Clarke, “African Art at the Barnes Foundation: The Triumph of l’Art Negre,” in Representing Africa in American Art Museums: A Century of Collecting and Display, Christa Clarke and Kathleen Bickford Berzock, eds. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2011), 84, 86. 6 Spirits also request healers permanently to decorate their own bodies with specific accesso‑ ries, as well as those of their patients during healing sessions. Thompson, “Kiuza Mpheho,” 164–236; Barbara Thompson, “Shambaa Ughanga: Converging Presences in the Embodiment of Tradition, Transformation and Redefinition,” Mots Pluriels no. 12 (December 1999). http:// www.arts.uwa.edu.au/MotsPluriels/MP1299bt.html; Barbara Thompson, “Endless Potentiali‑ ties of Materia Intermedi(c)a in Shambaa Arts of Healing,” in Intermedia: Enacting the Liminal (Norderstedt: Herstellung und Verlag: Books on Demand GmbH, 2005), 96, 108, 114–5. 7 Barbara Thompson, “Endless Potentialities,” 108. 8 Ibid., 95, 115. 9 Steven Feierman, “Explanation and Uncertainty in the Medical World of Ghaambo,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 74, no. 2, (Summer 2000), 333; Thompson, “Kiuza Mpheho,” 149–51, 181. 10 Henry John Drewal, “Sensiotics or the Study of the Senses in Understandings of Material Cul‑ ture and History in Africa and Beyond,” in Oxford Handbook of History and Material Culture, Ivan Gaskell and Sarah Anne Carter, eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020), 269. 11 David Howes, “Introduction: Empires of the Senses,” in Empire of the Senses: The Sensual Culture Reader, David Howe, ed. (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2005), 10; Constance Clas‑ sen, “Foundations for an Anthropology of the Senses,” International Social Science Journal 49 (September 2010), 401–2; Constance Classen, “The Witch’s Senses: Sensory Ideologies and Transgressive Femininities from the Renaissance to Modernity,” in Empire of the Senses: the Sensual Cultural Reader, David Howe, ed. (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2005), 70–2; Con‑ stance Classen, “The Odor of the Other: Olfactory Symbolism and Cultural Categories,” Ethos 20, no. 2 (January 1992), 142. 12 See, e.g., Philip M. Peek, “The Sounds of Silence: Cross-world Communication and the Audi‑ tory Arts in African Societies,” American Ethnologist 21, no. 3 (August 1994), 475–6. 13 Henry John Drewal, 269–72. 14 Rhonda M. Gonzales proposes that the beliefs and practices that animate ughanga emanated from the Niger-Congo era. Bantu speakers disseminated them throughout central, southern, and East Africa over the course of thousands of years. During the first centuries of the first millennium CE, they brought them to northeastern Tanzania. According to Gonzales, improvi‑ sation has been a hallmark of public healing in East Africa for millennia. The tension be‑ tween improvisation and tradition in ughanga derives from a proclivity among Bantu speakers throughout history for creative responsiveness to the incessant vicissitudes of the spiritual, natural, and social worlds. It is likely key to both the efficacy of ughanga and its staying power. Ughanga continues to thrive in the West Usambara Mountains despite the variety of healthcare options there and beyond and the increasing influence of Islam and Christianity. Both of these institutions aggressively counter ughanga by promoting different understand‑ ings of human/spirit relations, and by discouraging people from visiting traditional healers. For more on the absorptive capacities of ughanga and how its syncretic nature enables it to adjust to and negotiate with cultural “others” and reckon with rapid social change, see Thompson, “Kiuza Mpheho,” 232–6; Thompson, “Converging Presences”; and Barbara

Dancing Nkhoba  51

Thompson, “Transformation in the Sacred Arts of Healing in Northeastern Tanzania,” in Shangaa: Art of Tanzania (New York: Queensborough Community College Art Gallery: The City of New York, 2013), 161. Gonzales, Introduction, paragraph 5; Chapter 3, paragraph 2; Feierman, “Explanation and Uncertainty,” 322. 15 Barbara Thompson has done the most in-depth art historical analyses of nkhoba to date. Her work reveals that color is the most crucial determining factor in the selection of a medicine container’s external decorations. Each spirit identifies with and responds powerfully to either red, black, or white, for example. When a healer applies an object to a nkhoba that reflects one of these colors, the object invokes and infuses the gourd with the power of the corresponding spirit, and prompts the spirit to enter into it. Thompson also traces connections between these gourds’ external and internal decorations, their therapeutic capacities, and spirits, particularly a category of non-ancestral ones called mphepo or, more recently, majeni. In general, the out‑ ward embellishments of a nkhoba tend to define the kinds of powers it embodies, and to work in concert with and thus compound its interior medicines. For Thompson’s in-depth analysis of the logic that informs the decorations of nkhoba, and the symbolism of red, black, and white, see “Converging Presences,” and “Kiuza Mpheho,” 93, 164–236. 16 Barbara Thompson, “Kiuza Mpheho,” 260. 17 I am following Henry Drewal’s lead by identifying movement as a part of Shambaa sensoria. By recognizing the cultural basis of sensoria, Drewal has realized that in addition to the com‑ monly recognized senses of sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste, Yoruba sensoria also include movement and extra-sensory perception. Drewal, 275. 18 Barbara Thompson “Kiuza Mpheho,” 211. 19 Alfred Karasek and August Eichhorn, “Beiträge zur Kenntnis der Waschambaa I,” BaesslerArchiv 1 (1911), 164. 20 Some grandmothers with whom I spoke called these adornments bindu ya mviengwa, which means “woman’s bindu” (pl. mabindu). Mabindu are waist adornments made of coiled strips of banana bark. They were worn by male initiates (and female Kilindi ones) during the male rite, which was called gao. They, too, have a buoy-like appearance. The nkhoba in Figure 3.2 of this essay wears a bindu. Karasek and Eichhorn, 164. 21 Utundu and bindu share the same Bantu root, *-nd, which has a cluster of meanings pertaining to pregnancy, the womb, the stomach, communal eating, and drinking. Neil Kodesh, personal communication with author, October 22, 2019. Karasek and Eichhorn, 164. 22 Alfred Karasek and August Eichhorn, 164–5. 23 Ibid., 165. 24 Ibid. 25 Beidelman also notes that, among the Ngulu, the verb to dance, kuvina, is also a euphemism for sex. Kuvina also means “to dance” in Kishambaa. T.O. Beidelman, The Cool Knife: Imagery of Gender, Sexuality, and Moral Education in Kaguru Initiation Ritual (Washington, DC and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997), 134; T.O. Beidelman, “Pig (Guluwe): An Essay on Ngulu Sexual Symbolism and Ceremony,” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 20, no. 4 (Winter 1964), 369; Ruth M. Besha, A Classified Vocabulary of the Shambala Language with Outline Grammar, Bantu Vocabulary Series 10 (Tokyo: Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, 1993), 91. 26 Barbara Thompson, “Endless Potentialities,” 104. 27 Ibid. 28 The circle may be a fundamental image of human/spirit interactions more generally. Another example might be the choreography of Shambaa sacred dance. Many ritual dances involve a group of people revolving around a focal point, such as drummers during kibwebwe, or a col‑ lection of medicine objects during all-night medicine dances called mphungwa. More research is needed to determine whether the circle (in choreography and elsewhere) images cross-world interplays. 29 Barbara Thompson, “Endless Potentialities,” 104. 30 In the mid-twentieth century, Marja-Liisa Swantz witnessed female initiation rites performed by a Zaramo community (cultural relatives of the Shambaa). The women used strands of white beads to deploy the same meanings—namely, the embeddedness of the initiates’ bodies within their lineages, past, present, and future. However, they draped the beads around the initiates’ necks rather than their waists. Marja-Liisa Swantz, Salome Mjema and Zenya Wild, Blood,

52  Marguerite E.H. Lenius

Milk, and Death: Body Symbols and the Power of Regeneration Among the Zaramo of Tanzania (Westport, CT and London: Bergin & Garvey, 1995), 389. 31 Alfred Karasek and August Eichhorn, 164. 32 John M. Janzen and Edward C. Green, “Continuity, Change, and Challenge in African Medi‑ cine,” in Medicine Across Cultures: History and Practice of Medicine in Non-Western Cultures, Helaine Seline, ed. (Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003), 14; see also Christopher C. Taylor, Milk, Honey, and Money: Changing Concepts in Rwandan Healing (Washington, DC and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992), 9–13. 33 Rhonda M. Gonzales, Chapter 5, paragraphs 40–1. 34 Barbara Thompson, “Kiuza Mpheho,” 93, 95. 35 John M. Janzen and Edward C. Green, 14. 36 Christopher C. Taylor, 4–9. 37 Steven Feierman, Peasant Intellectuals: Anthropology and History in Tanzania (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1990), 6, 8, 11, 69–85.

4 AFRICAN MEANINGS, WESTERN WORDS Barry Hallen

The field of African Studies is often characterized as interdisciplinary in nature. As time has passed and specific disciplinary studies have become distinguished by ever more tech‑ nical methodologies, this has become less the case. However, since the objects of study are often still entire cultures, this interdisciplinary spirit endures. With regard to the litany of subdisciplines within the general field, two relative late‑ comers are African art history and African philosophy. Previously, the fields of interest that constituted their special concern were significantly influenced by anthropology. But when sufficient, relevant, fieldwork studies had accumulated to initiate the type of spe‑ cialized intercultural understanding that is distinctive of these two subdisciplines, there was reason to see them licensed in their own right. As African art history and philosophy labored to accredit themselves, a number of concerns were expressed that became common to the two disciplines. The aim of this essay is to reflect upon some of these, as expressed by African art historians,1 from the standpoint of African philosophy with the anticipation that their respective insights and problems overlapped, coalesced, and perhaps proved mutually beneficial. The “worst case” scenario for the cross-cultural futures of the two disciplines would have been for professionals to conclude that, in indigenous African cultures, there was little to compare with “art” or “philosophy” as defined in Western intellectual terms.2 In fact something like this initially was suggested by those who saw Africa as a place where aesthetic sensitivities and powers of theoretical reflection remained comparatively undeveloped. As time passed, more fruitfully comparative studies did relate art and phi‑ losophy to African cultures, if only on a collectivized or tribal scale. In African philoso‑ phy this resulted in what came to be labeled as ethnophilosophy. A corpus of beliefs was extrapolated from diverse beliefs, practices and oral literary sources and then presented as the “philosophy” of an African “tribe.”3 In African art history, this led to the notion of tribal art—certain stylistic, formal characteristics were stipulated as stylistically definitive of an ethnic group and presented as paradigmatic.4 Perhaps some kind of parallel can also be drawn with art historians’ controversial distinction between art and artifact and philosophers’ controversial distinction between DOI: 10.4324/9781003389088-5

54  Barry Hallen

philosophy and worldview.5 In both cases, the former were said to have been arrived at via some kind of Western transformation of the latter. If an artifact may be defined as merely something “made”, bereft of the “fine” in fine arts, then certainly a comparatively “rough” status was assigned to African proverbs, parables, and divination verses as con‑ stitutive of philosophy.6 In African philosophy the rather unusual, collectivized use of the term philosophy as deriving from entire ethnic groups provoked vigorous protests; it was condemned for being based upon a derogatory double standard that denied individual African thinkers an intellectual acumen comparable to that of their Western counterparts.7 In African art history, comparable debate seems to have come later or was more prolonged, or perhaps both. Supposed peculiarities of African cultures, epitomized by characterizing them as traditional, were responsible for a de-emphasis upon history in a discipline that named it‑ self “African art history.” As Henry Drewal noted at the time, “Our field lacks concerted or systematic studies of the history of Art in Africa. … our aversion to historical thinking, I believe, derives … from our affinity and alignment with anthropological thinking.”8 Drewal went on to say, “In its search for the norm and for structure, anthropology has tended to ignore the impact and importance of individuals in creating art and culture.” Tribal cultures and art were somehow ahistorical. The one-tribe, one-style discussions marked a watershed in the direction of research with a renewed historical interest. They effectively concretized the alternative of approaching African art as products of remark‑ ably talented individuals and of diverse and changing interests and ethnic groups. As Drewal also noted, “We have moved decisively beyond the initial efforts to identify Afri‑ can art with ethnicity.”9 Both African art history and philosophy have had to come to terms with anthropology. One positive aspect of those relationships is the innovation of undertaking fieldwork. While it is not clear how much of a novelty the option of doing fieldwork represented in art historical circles generally, in academic philosophy it produced a reaction verging on astonishment. What is remarkable about the role of fieldwork in African art history is that while many professionals agree it is an indispensable part of their professional training, others complained that the viewpoints of Africans themselves on their art were under-reported and not given the attention they deserved. That led some to wonder pre‑ cisely what it was that the African art historian was doing during the course of fieldwork if not also learning about an African point of view. Henry Drewal epitomized this alter‑ native with his “like-they-see-it” or “insider’s view.”10 Here it is relevant to again stress the importance of the methodological, because what both unites and distinguishes aca‑ demic professionals in African studies is the scholarship formalized by their disciplinary methodologies. This means that “letting African cultures speak for themselves” about things artistic or philosophical is a matter of relative emphasis, an ideal, that can only happen consequent to the application of a disciplinary methodology. It seems this complaint can only be explicitly summarized if several adjectival quali‑ fiers are introduced. It was not just the “African point of view” that was said to be under‑ represented; it was the conscious, articulated points of view of relevant members of the African culture concerned that were said to be underrepresented. “In its search for the norm and for structure, anthropology has tended to ignore the impact and importance of individuals in creating art and culture.”11 The seminal work of scholars like Rowland Abiodun, Babatunde Lawal, and Henry Drewal in this regard cannot be ignored.12 It is

African Meanings, Western Words  55

difficult to identify a consensus on this issue in current African art history publications. Perhaps this is where the philosopher’s status as a relative outsider gets in the way. One relevant consideration appears to be the importance of the informed basis—such as lan‑ guage fluency—that determines how one is able to connect with African cultures. As African philosophy has struggled to establish some sort of methodological selfidentity, it too has been concerned with distinguishing itself from anthropology. One important tactic in this process has been a deliberate disconnection from much of anthro‑ pology’s theoretical superstructure. Philosophers had to embrace a methodological skep‑ ticism which distanced itself from any interpretations of African cognition that regarded traditions as substitutes for reasons; that took cross-cultural symbolization patterns as semantically fundamental; and that typed modes of thought according to articulated expressions for thinking about thinking.13 One consequence of disconnecting from this theoretical superstructure was the suspension of specific presumptions about the African intellect as a qualitative “other.”14 The query that immediately arose was, in the absence of such characterizations of Af‑ rican modes of thought, what was to take their place? At the time, I suggested a methodo‑ logical alternative that I described as a “common denominator” approach or attitude.15 This meant beginning from methodological presumptions that differences in modes of thought had yet to be definitely identified; that common sense might be common; and that African meanings, beliefs, and social practices might overlap significantly with those of people in other cultures. This kind of approach to intercultural understanding was not necessarily opposed to an insider’s view, since that might amount to discovering and acknowledging such serious and fundamental overlaps. That similarities between the cul‑ tures of Africa and those of the rest of the world were more important than differences was the point of the title that Kwasi Wiredu chose for his text, Cultural Universals and Particulars: An African Perspective.16 Initially the reaction of some professionals to this proposal was: “How naïve can you get!” But the justification for this line of thought was meant to involve more than first impressions might have suggested. It was not just idealistic and humanitarian—that all human beings are created equal, and so forth. It was also methodological, and the un‑ derlying justification can be summarized as follows. If African art historical fieldworkers were to divest themselves of established, sometimes controversial, sometimes restrictive, preconceptions about African attitudes towards art and artistic creation that were im‑ plicit in certain methodological approaches, how then were they initially to approach these cultures? The philosopher can suggest that, in the conventional fieldwork scenario, too much attention was given to presumed African otherness. Western fieldworkers brought to any situation of artistic interpolation a good deal of their own cultural and intellectual baggage as well. To disconnect them from this intellectual “baggage,” some notion of objectivity was invoked. This meant that fieldworkers were professionally trained to be sensitive to the dangers inherent in confusing their native cultural standards with those of Africans, what had come to be labeled as ethnocentrism. Then came the postmodern age when disciplinary standards of objectivity were under assault for privileging certain cultures and discriminating against others. But this essay would prefer to avoid that kind of deconstructive alternative. The point of being objec‑ tive is to be careful—not to misrepresent African meanings and attitudes. A lesson to be

56  Barry Hallen

learned from deconstruction was that, when approaching African cultures, African art historians who came from a Western cultural background had to begin from something. Their minds could not be the proverbial tabula rasa, sensitive exclusively to distortionfree renderings of African meanings. Then why not allow them to begin from their own cultural background with reference to the interpretation of the arts and art history of these cultures? My suggestion was not to advocate that the most careful way to interpret African meanings with reference to the arts was to impose Western ones upon them. Rather, the argument was suggesting that, if we could not presume some sort of overlap between Western and African meanings, it was difficult to foresee how we would ever be able to express the one by means of the other. Such a presumed semantic overlap would seem to be a prerequisite to any technical translation exercise between African and Western cul‑ tures as well as languages. It was to suggest that, in the present predicament in which Af‑ rican art history and philosophy found themselves, there was no agreed-upon “objective” theoretical model for the character of African art and aesthetic meanings. In the absence of such a model, and in the absence of an articulated, precise methodology which would reliably lead to such a model, why not embrace experimenting with commonalities—with the cross-cultural relevance of perspectives and problems endemic to art historical and artisanal research and analysis from one’s own culture? This does not imply accepting these things carte blanche as culturally universal. In many cases, the point of a compari‑ son might be to demonstrate that a perspective should not apply. But as the relevance and irrelevance, the similarities and differences, of various perspectives were detailed, African points of view would become better understood and appreciated.17 As time passed, it became possible to see increasing evidence of the influence of a “common denominator” attitude in the publications of African art historians. Those who advocated a stronger interdisciplinary emphasis in African art historical work—and made specific reference to the fundamental relevance of disciplines like philosophy, psy‑ chology, and literary criticism for better understanding African cultures—were thereby proposing revised perspectives on the constitution of African meanings and beliefs that moved them closer to their Western counterparts.18 Those who emphasized research themes that involved individual creativity, innovation/invention, change, the names of artists and workshops, the dating of works, informants as collaborators, or certain as‑ pects of performance studies, for example, were serving to shift perspectives on African art towards a “common denominator” approach (Figure 4.1).19 To introduce an African viewpoint into philosophy, one had to arrive at it by applying techniques derived from a specific philosophical tradition. One approach in this regard, that African art history and African philosophy came to share, is known to philoso‑ phers as conceptual analysis.20 This involves identifying concepts internal to an African language that are of aesthetic prepossession and then, on the basis of textual analysis, specifying their meanings and the criteria which govern their usage.21 While there is no need to tout any one discipline’s patrimony in this regard, con‑ ceptual analysis is something that philosophers have been involved with for millennia. However, in African philosophy, this kind of approach ran into one of the same prob‑ lems it engendered in the classical philosophical corpus—namely, that conflicting inter‑ pretations of the same concept were produced by different scholars. To understand the meaning of a particular concept in an African language, it is rarely sufficient to quote

African Meanings, Western Words  57

FIGURE 4.1 Moyo

Okediji, Ile Ife women’s group in performance, 2019.

or restate passages from the orature in which it occurs. Those passages must themselves be analyzed, and more specific meanings thereby attached to the concept. Again, all of this involves interpretation via the application of a disciplinary methodology. And when different scholars who analyze the same concept arrive at interpretations of its meaning which differ in important respects, how is the matter to be resolved? How sweet it would be to finally settle this question! The more realistic alternative is to face the fact that it would be possible virtually to fill an entire encyclopedia with the cumulative ruminations of academic philosophy on the meaning of a single concept like, for instance, “beauty.” A remedial measure that professionals in African philosophy came to adopt was to study relevant African discourse more carefully.22 “Discourse” means talk, conversation, and spoken language usage. Exclusive reliance upon conceptual analysis tends to treat in‑ dividual concepts in relative isolation from the contexts in which they occur. With greater emphasis on discourse, it is easier to discern relationships between concepts or criteria, so that a kind of semantic network begins to emerge. Other figures of speech from the philosophy of language that express this point include the field of discourse and Wittgen‑ stein’s notion of language game. The underlying idea is that discourse in a language may be subdivided according to the functions it performs; for example, one might specify the aesthetic, culinary, epistemic, moral, and so forth (Figure 4.2). Art historians like Henry Drewal, who also study African aesthetic vocabularies, would probably agree with this. However, problems arise when the divisions between the fields of discourse or language games of one culture (Western) are not replicated by those of another (African). Here we are back with the pluses and minuses of a common denominator approach. The priorities imposed by a scholar whose only interest is in the

58  Barry Hallen

FIGURE 4.2 Moyo

Okediji, Babalawo in Ifa consultation, Ile Ife, Nigeria, 2017.

aesthetic should not be allowed to uproot individual concepts so that they are treated in artificial isolation from the contexts in which they naturally occur in their language of or‑ igin. In English-language culture, “belief” begins where “knowledge” leaves off. In Yor‑ uba, “ìgbàgbọ´” (putative “belief”) begins where “ìmọ``” (putative “knowledge”) leaves off. The extent of one can only be understood by interrelating it with the other. What is pertinent is that the criteria underlying usage in these two languages that determine or define where one leaves off and the other begins (and therefore how the two interrelate) themselves differ substantially.23 But are there overlapping concerns? Yes, obviously: how to distinguish information and experience that is more reliable from information and experience that is less so and thereby how to arrive at “truth” or òótọ´ (putative “truth”). To reconsider that potential antipathy between the cross-cultural pretensions of a common denominator approach and the more culturally specific insider’s view as alter‑ native forms of interpretation: the history of the dialogue between African and Western cultures sometimes suggests the analog of a conversation between two total strangers from the same language culture meeting for the first time. Both are likely to misinterpret certain aspects of the other’s verbal and non-verbal behavior. Both are likely to find that the other sometimes speaks in an unusual or even bizarre manner. But, as conversation evolves, both come to understand better the similarities and differences underlying one another’s views and discover in the end that they share a good deal more in common than at first seemed to be the case. Analogously, the arguments of this essay are meant to suggest that professionals also consider the notion of overlapping meanings between cultures and languages as a basis from which to begin. We cannot erase the linguistic and cultural backgrounds that are

African Meanings, Western Words  59

so fundamentally formative of our intellects. Harking back to Evans-Pritchard’s musings about anthropology as more art than science, rather than trying to transcend cultural differences via a methodology that purports to introduce the intellect to some transcend‑ ent level of meta-understanding, it is dialogue based upon language fluency that will best enable researchers to see where attitudes and beliefs overlap and where they diverge.24 Notes 1 Two comprehensive studies then cited were Monni Adams, “African Arts from an Art Histori‑ cal Perspective,” The African Studies Review 32/2 [1989]: 55–103 and Paula Ben-Amos, “Af‑ rican Visual Arts from a Social Perspective,” The African Studies Review 32/2 [1989]: 1–53. References generally are meant to be representative rather than definitive. 2 “Although the term primitive art was eradicated from thoughtful anthropological enquiry forty years ago, it is still very much a part of contemporary art historical writing and thinking” (Suzanne Blier, “African Art Studies at the Crossroads: An American Perspective,” in African Art Studies: The State of the Discipline (Washington, DC: National Museum of African Art, 1990), 95). Ironically, the Western intellectual figure frequently blamed for the invention of the primitive, Lucien Levy-Bruhl, was in fact a philosopher. The reality of the primitive mentality or mode(s) of thought continued to be defended by developmental psychologists such as C.R. Hallpike. See his The Foundations of Primitive Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979). 3 Placide Tempels, Bantu Philosophy (Paris: Presence Africaine, 1959); John Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy (note the plural and singular nouns) (New York: Praeger, 1969). 4 William Fagg, Tribes and Forms in African Art (New York: Tudor Publishing, 1965). 5 Anthony Appiah’s critique of the English-language terms “Africa(n)” and “art” as irrelevant to many African ”art” objects when appreciated in their indigenous cultural contexts was more than relevant (“Why Africa? Why Art?” in Africa: The Art of a Continent, ed. T. Phillips (Mu‑ nich and New York: Prestel, 1995), 21–26); “The acceptance of African art within the disci‑ pline of art history—that is, the acceptance of African works as art rather than as artifact—is rare (Suzanne Blier, “African Art Studies at the Crossroads: An American Perspective,” also in African Art Studies: The State of the Discipline, Susan Vogel, ed., 94); Susan Vogel’s archetypal discussion of the terms “art” and “artifact” as representing, respectively, the favored (meth‑ odological) perspectives of the art historian and the anthropologist towards the same objects, was also relevant (“Introduction,” in Art/Artifact: African Art in Anthropology Collections, New York and Munich: Center for African Art and Prestel). 6 The intellectual merits of proverb, etc., have now been established by those interpreters of the literature who argue that the triviality associated with the proverb as a form of expression in contemporary Western culture was unceremoniously and unjustifiably transferred to the Af‑ rican context without due consideration of their alternative theoretical content and function. Form was allowed to humble content. The writings of Olabiyi Yai introduced some interesting methodological perspectives on the interpretation of African oral literature (“Issues in Oral Poetry: Criticism, Teaching and Translation,” in Discourse and Its Disguises: The Translation of African Oral Texts, eds. Karin Barber and P.F. Moraes Farias (Birmingham: University of Birmingham, 1989)). 7 Paulin Hountondji, African Philosophy: Myth and Reality (London: Hutchinson, 1983). 8 “African Art Studies Today,” also in African Art Studies: The State of the Discipline, 38. See also Suzanne Blier, “We [African Art Historians] Have Often Been Too Quick to Fall Into the Myth That the Arts Have Changed Little Over Time” (1990, 96). 9 “African Art Studies Today,” 33. Also see Sidney Littlefield Kasfir, “One Tribe, One Style? Paradigms in the Historiography of African Art,” History in Africa 11 [1984]: 163–93. 10 Henry John Drewal, 1990, 35. 11 Ibid., 36. 12 Rowland Abiodun, “The Future of African Art Studies: An African Perspective,” also in African Art Studies the State of the Discipline, 63–89; Babatunde Lawal, “Some Aspects of Yoruba Aesthetics,” British Journal of Aesthetics 14 [1974]: 239–49; Drewal, Ibid., 35.

60  Barry Hallen

13 See the selections in Modes of Thought: Essays on Thinking in Western and Non-Western Societies, eds. Robin Horton and Ruth Finnegan (London: Faber and Faber, 1973). 14 Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object (New York: Co‑ lumbia University Press, 1983); V.Y. Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988). 15 Though it won’t win the award for euphonious terminology, common denominator was ex‑ trapolated from its grammar school antecedents and suggested because it was less likely to be immediately associated with other methodological approaches. This does not mean that it marks the introduction of something entirely new, either. The point is to suggest a notion rather than a refined concept. The notion is that common human “somethings” create rough correspondences, overlappings between cultures that can be explored to benefit intercultural understanding. A comparable, deliberate fuzziness of meaning is essential to Wittgenstein’s celebrated notion of family resemblance. 16 Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press (1996). A similar line of thought is echoed by the philosopher Donald Davidson in his Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (Ox‑ ford: Oxford University Press, 1984). W.V.O. Quine also uses the same “key” expression: “I have suggested that our lexicographer’s obvious first moves in picking up some initial Kabbalah vocabulary are at bottom a matter of exploiting the overlap of our cultures” (From a Logical Point of View: Nine Logico-Philosophical Essays, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953; emphasis mine), 62. 17 An example of this kind of translation exercise may be found in Barry Hallen and J.O. Sodipo, “The Knowledge-Belief Distinction and Yoruba Discourse,” Chapter 2, Knowledge, Belief and Witchcraft: Analytic Experiments in African Philosophy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997). 18 “We also need to become familiar with other disciplines, such as history, philosophy, literary criticism, performance studies, religion, psychology, music, linguistics, political science, femi‑ nist studies, and African American studies” (Blier 1990, 103). 19 Margaret Thompson Drewal, Yoruba Ritual: Performers, Play, Agency (Bloomington and Indi‑ anapolis: Indiana University Press, 1992). 20 Barry Hallen, “The Art Historian as Conceptual Analyst,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism XXXVII/3 [1997]: 303–13. 21 See, e.g., Rowland Abiodun, 1990; James Fernandez, “The Exposition and Imposition of Or‑ der: Artistic Expression in Fang Culture,” in The Traditional Artist in African Societies, ed. Warren d’Azevedo (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973), 194–220; Lawal, 1974; Patrick McNaughton, The Mande Blacksmiths: Knowledge, Power and Art in West Africa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988); R.F. Thompson, “Yoruba Artistic Criticism,” also in d’Azevedo, 19–61; Susan Vogel, “Beauty in the Eyes of the Baule: Aesthetics and Cul‑ tural Values,” Working Papers in the Traditional Arts 6 [1980]: 1–43. 22 Barry Hallen, “Indeterminacy, Ethnophilosophy, Linguistic Philosophy, African Philosophy,” Philosophy 70/273: 377–93. Year of publication is 1995. 23 See Hallen and Sodipo, 1997, Chapter 2. 24 “The thesis I have put before you, that social anthropology is a kind of historiography, and therefore ultimately of philosophy or art, implies that it studies societies as moral systems and not as natural systems, that it is interested in design rather than in process, and that it there‑ fore seeks patterns and not scientific laws, and interprets rather than explains” (E.E. EvansPritchard, Essays in Social Anthropology (London: Faber and Faber, 1962), 26).

5 CHWUECHOLOGY Indigenous African Art Education Akinyi Wadende

This essay, a pioneering exploration of indigenous African art education, emanates from an immersive qualitative study conducted among a Bang’ jomariek women’s group in West Reru sub-location in Western Kenya. While the art of Africa has received art histori‑ cal, anthropological, and sociological attention and critical inquiries, there is a dearth of research on the pedagogical dimensions of African art. This chapter, in focusing on the Bang’ jomariek group, does not cover the entire continent of Africa; yet, it offers a portal into the possibilities of conducting a more robust and comprehensive inquiry throughout the continent. Members of Bang’ jomariek have sustained an adult teaching and learning program at the site of a community collective, from which this essay benefits. These teaching and learning processes not only generate income for members through the production of expressive forms such as baskets, pots, and muono (the process of making, curing, and decorating clay walls) but also serve as important sites for recovering and analyzing the pedagogical aspects of African art. These women learn, teach, and create art forms using indigenous processes, adapted over the years, from the pre-colonial era. Because they are holistic, wholesome, and designed for the needs of such populations in both tangible and less tangible ways, these methods and processes of teaching, learning, and production are more useful for rural populations in Kenya. This essay presents such collectives and activities as sites where Luo women seek adult education and the sustainable wholeness of their community. Concluding with suggestions on how scholars of indigenous creative cultures can illuminate the pedagogical aspects of African art, the study affirms the exist‑ ence of sources that could sustain the cultivation of indigenous art pedagogical programs in Africa. Emanating from a study conducted in the summer of 2010 in the West Reru strata in the West Seme junction of Kisumu East District, in the Western part of Kenya, this essay offers a model potentially applicable to various indigenous cultures in Africa. It benefits from Onalogy, propounded in the work of Moyo Okediji among Yoruba women paint‑ ers in Ile Ife, Nigeria.1 While Okediji focused on a single medium among a single group of women artists, this study builds upon that approach by exploring the teaching and DOI: 10.4324/9781003389088-6

62  Akinyi Wadende

learning processes employed with three creative forms among the Luo women of Western Kenya—basketry, pottery, and muono—all of which are common forms of expression for Luo women, as part of a larger body of expressive productions carried over from the pre-colonial society. In acknowledgment of the indigenous gender-centered cosmography of art education among Luo communities, this study focused on twenty-five members of the Bang’ jomariek (meaning “after the wise ones”) women’s group. The teaching, learn‑ ing, and production processes constitute an aspect of the agenda that the Luo women practice. Community collectives of women have functioned to keep alive modified forms of these pedagogic processes transferred from generation to generation along strictly maintained gender lines, among the Luo since pre-colonial times. These activities and sites still enrich the creative opportunities of indigenous Luo women without extensive access to Western education, especially those living in rural traditional Luo lands. The indigenous creative pedagogy provides adult learning and an opportunity for women to bond and discuss topics of personal and communal importance. They use the creative process as a space to explore a wide range of skills and ideas ranging from domestic ef‑ ficiency to economic exigencies and medical solutions. This West Reru study site is an area of about 15.1 square kilometers with a population of about 6,000. West Reru is a predominantly agricultural area where women not only form the majority of the agricultural workforce but also manage their homes. It is com‑ mon among these women that the men in their lives are working white-color jobs away from home or that the women are widowed due to various causes. Most women residing in rural Kenya lack the levels of Western education that would allow them to compete for jobs as effectively as men, resulting from decades of gender discrimination that dis‑ couraged investment in the education of girls. As subsistent farmers, these women plant a variety of food crops such as corn, beans, millet, and sweet potatoes. Other common crops include sim sim, cassava, and a variety of vegetables. In addition to these crops, farmers in West Reru also keep animals such as cows, donkeys, goats, and sheep, with a variety of domestic birds such as chicken, quail, turkey, and geese (Figure 5.1). In this region, there are about ten public primary schools, including Nyaundi, Rapogi, Okuto, Ramoye, Opande, and Ochara Elementary Schools. Eight clan elders represent the clans in this area—namely, Konywera, Kokelo, Kadinga, Kombija, Kaura, Kopudo, Koyoo, and Kodita. Among many other management issues inherited from pre-colonial times, these elders who are chosen by clan members are responsible for the timely and comprehensive conveyance of necessary information from the governmental arms in the area to the clan members. This community, like others in Kenya, values and strives to provide the young with an education, as can be deduced from the number of schools that serve the community. The provision of education to adults, however, is not as stressed and structured. Because of this, collectives such as Bang’ jomariek are invaluable as sites where exogenous groups and individuals provide a community-based form of adult education for the benefit of members. In Kenya, as in many other parts of the developing world, adult education often im‑ plies adult literacy classes or college classes specially geared toward underserved adults. African scholars such as Kilemi Mwiria (1993), Cassara (1987), and Riria-Ouko (1990) have studied these literacy endeavors by women and have noted that more women have been seeking formal education opportunities since the inception of the Kenyan adult

Chwuechology: Indigenous African Art Education  63

FIGURE 5.1 Akinyi

Wadende, Farmer’s Stall, photograph, 2010.

literacy program in 1979.2 Their studies investigate why women seek adult education, as well as the challenges they face in their quest for knowledge. In the West, scholars in the field of adult education, notably Bash (2003), go beyond the quest for literacy skills and describe adult learners at the college level and how they have been received.3 In rec‑ ognition of the alternative educational opportunities open to adults, studies by Merriam and Kim (2008) and Merriam, Caffarella, and Baumgartner (2007) are noteworthy. The latter scholars, in the third edition of their book Learning in Adulthood: A Comprehensive Guide, include “non-Western” perspectives of learning and decry the separation of knowledge from its context that they perceive in Western science.4 Such separation, they conclude, has affected what people conceive of education and schooling. This separation, they note, could be responsible for the learners’ hesitation to participate in formal classes. Deriving from the perspectives of Western and Kenyan scholars on adult education, it seems that the teaching and learning of pottery, basketry, and muono that take place at indigenous sites such as the West Reru area might not gain much acceptance as adult education, at least as it is formally defined. This more formal definition of adult educa‑ tion seems to dismiss another understanding of adult learning as a form of knowledge acquisition that is sought after for its functionality.5 Dating from pre-colonial times in Kenya, collectives such as these groups have pro‑ vided an outlet where village women can work to preserve the wholeness of their com‑ munity, through the exchange of knowledge, skills, and specialized information. Scholars

64  Akinyi Wadende

such as Kiluva-Ndunda (2001) and Jivetti (2007) note the importance of such collectives in the development of the community through their members’ activities.6 Kiluva-Ndunda mentions farm working parties as just one activity that these groups cultivate. The par‑ ticipants in these collectives seek to improve and maintain the standard of living of their community members by engaging in the activities organized by the collectives to facilitate forums for addressing important community matters. Jivetti notes the income-generating activities that the participants of these groups conduct for the betterment of their lives. Contemporary women’s collectives like Bang’ jomariek satisfy similar interests. In the West Reru study, the group’s primary activities included the production of pottery, bas‑ ketry, and muono in addition to the farm work services that they provided to group members and the community more broadly. Bang’ jomariek offers Luo women an op‑ portunity to learn as adults in their community. Moreover, the adult education they get here is specific to the needs of their community. Their methodology reiterates the findings of Jarvis (1992), who elaborated on the close relationship between what a person sets out to learn and the person’s world and needs. The specificity of the subject learned has been described as one of the differences between adults and children as learners.7 Bang’ jomariek’s members are deliberate in their choice of learning materials and of‑ ten justify their choice by the prevailing circumstances in their lives. As self-motivated adults, their approach to learning differs from that of children, as noted by scholars like Cross.8 As the Bang’ jomariek women make selective choices that focus on functional prerogatives, they evoke and demonstrate characteristic differences between adult and child learning, as recognized and propagated within the twin theories of andragogy and pedagogy, respectively. Malcolm Knowles (1980), who has been credited with coining the term and concept of andragogy comprehensible in the United States, noted that the complexities of adult learning are organically different from those of children. Although fraught with criticism, andragogy proposes some traits that distinguish between children and adults as learners.9 These traits commonly result from the basic changes that occur in the course of maturation into adulthood. Knowles discusses the dynamics that adults bring to the learning situation, including an independent personality, a wide knowledge resource base, a readiness to learn things important to their social roles, and a shift of their focus for learning from subject matters to problem-centered concentrations. Chwuechgogy: Bang’ Jomariek Women’s Group Art Education

Although they call the process of learning expressive forms chwuech, the Bang’ jomariek women as adult learners may be described as more inclined toward the andragogical ap‑ proach that Knowles propagated. As a Western educational meta-language, andragogy is akin to the Luo chwuech practices, which this study describes as Chwuechgogy for the purpose of precision, as andragogy appears to be a broader term. Bang’ jomariek chwuechgogical activities enable women to pursue specific tasks intertwined with their environmental, economic, medical, and political orientations as indigenous practition‑ ers. All of these tasks are geared towards achieving wholeness in the West Reru com‑ munity. Feminist scholar and award-winning writer Alice Walker (1993) has studied and elaborated upon female preoccupation with the survival and well-being of the whole community toward the formation of a gendered approach to understanding education

Chwuechology: Indigenous African Art Education  65

and pedagogy.10 Early adult learning theorists such as Knowles (1980) have noted that adults tend to seek learning when it is useful for them to do so at that time in their lives. Aslanian and Brickell (1980a) and Jarvis (1992) variously observed that changes in life circumstances that call for a new skill set and new social roles like parenting, or that highlight the inadequacy of old skills in the face of new challenges, are among the many drivers of adult learning.11 As adults with specific needs and desires, each member of the bang’ jomariek women’s group in the current study gave various reasons for participating in the activities where they learned to produce pots, baskets, and muono. Nyar Ogolla Ja Sakwa, the expert potter, explained that she first learned pottery be‑ cause it was simply what women in her family did. Later, she married into another family of potters and continued making pots as her contribution to her marital family’s suste‑ nance. She could not fully rely on proceeds from her farming ventures, she realized, to sustain her family. It helped greatly that she was already skilled in and loved pottery, so it was not a drudge to perfect her chwuech skills in their various forms, as an adult. Nyar Ogolla Ja Sakwa volunteered a second reason for participating in indigenous chwuechgogical work. The reason is that chwuechgogy is not simply art for art’s sake: in these processes that are holistic, she also learned a lot about what was going on in her community from the interactions that accompanied the communal pottery sessions. An illustration of her assertions can be found in the impromptu lessons she gave participants in the West Reru study about how to ensure that a newborn child grew up with a good complexion and beautified head; all of these discussions took place while she was teach‑ ing various pottery skills. Regarding the importance of these interactions, she says: There are a lot of developmental messages that you can get from involving yourself in women’s group activities. New challenges to the community like certain new diseases or new information from the government arms can easily be accessed in these groups. Different teachings on how to live well in the community can also be found in these groups. Nyar Kano ma Awasi (Figure 5.2), another participant in the West Reru study, empha‑ sized the need to generate an income to sustain her siblings after her parents’ death as one of the main reasons for her involvement in ceramic chwuechgogy. She had no other promising method of generating income. It was instrumental that she was familiar with advanced ceramic methods in pottery; therefore, she increasingly sharpened her chwuechgogical skills by progressively learning new methods and designs. This echoes the humanistic learning theory in adult education. Faure et al. (1972) noted that when learners are allowed greater,12 Nyar Kano ma Awasi chose to sharpen her skills in pot‑ tery when life events (e.g., the death of her parents) changed her circumstances and re‑ sponsibilities. Knowles (1980) also notes that some life events impel adults to seek out learning opportunities that would enable them to manage their lives in view of the new developments.13 Another participant, Nyar Gem Uranga, first learned the chwuechgogical rudiments of muono mural work while helping her mother at home but later sharpened these skills in school when it was required of students to beautify the school buildings. Previously, she could get away with knowing just the basic chwuechology of muono because she

66  Akinyi Wadende

Wadende, Pottery Making With Nyar Kano ma Awasi Using Indigenoous Firing Process, photograph, 2010.

FIGURE 5.2 Akinyi

was never charged with the responsibility of ensuring that the construction of the house is fully completed. When she married, however, she needed to muono her own house, a responsibility that made her aware of the gaps in her knowledge. Jarvis describes this as a realization that her knowledge and experiences had not equipped her with the skills to confront the challenge she was facing. Nyar Gem Uranga was spurred by feelings of inadequacy to seek out more training in muono from other women in the village. Chwuechgogical learning for adults is a continuous affair with skills sequentially building on what has already been learned. In the West Reru site, participants continually utilized the skills they already possessed to carry out new tasks in the learning process. Potters used the skills they already possessed as mothers and caregivers in the community to prepare the kiln and color the fired pots. As caregivers, the women are charged with chores like cooking and cleaning, which were easily adapted to the task of preparing the kiln for firing. Merriam, Caffarella, and Baumgartner (2007) note that adults usually bring lived experience into their learning environment. Successful adult teaching draws upon such experience in setting learning tasks.14 The transformative dimension of adult learning was illustrated by many participants in the West Reru study. This dimension had a multiplier effect of developing the capacities of the learners and better equipping them to live in the changing times in their communities. Freire (1970a) and Mezirow (1991, 2000) both investigate the transformative impact

Chwuechology: Indigenous African Art Education  67

of adult education insofar as it develops the critical aptitude of the learners.15 The West Reru teaching and learning environment was transformative insofar as the creative skills learned by the participants offered them financial and resource independence and the interactions empowered them. The financial independence offered choices and the new information they acquired widened their capacities to face the challenges in their lives. Nyar Asembo, the contact person for the bang’ jomariek group, described the trans‑ formative effect of the teaching and learning processes on the lives of group members and their dependents. These processes equip the women of bang’ jomariek with critical thinking abilities that help them to design creative solutions to the challenges they face in their lives. Their individual designs could be related to the decisions reached by group members for their personal and communal development. One important example of such communal goals is to ensure food security among its members. They tackle this goal by not only charging a flat rate of 500 Kenyan shillings (about $7) to weed members’ food crop farms, no matter how big the farms are but also by running a small-table banking service that offers soft loans for members. The group picked up these activities after real‑ izing that most members only planted farms they could weed themselves because they could not afford the exorbitant weeding fees of the local farm hands. With this weeding provision and soft loan service, all members were able to plant as much land as they desired and to reap large enough harvests to secure their food needs for the year. This ar‑ rangement is a transformative experience, because it gives the members food security so that they no longer suffer the humiliation of begging or making do with inadequate nutri‑ tion that stems from food scarcity at certain points of the year. Additionally, it enables them to meet some of their social, economic, and political obligations in the community, such as participating in weddings, donating to help cover the costs of funerals, and offer‑ ing gifts to new mothers. Contrary to expectations of established theory, as propounded by scholars, that adults only learn what is useful to them at that particular point in time, the West Reru study proves that women at times learn many things that are not of immediate tangible benefit to them.16 This andragogy appears like learning for the sake of learning. An example is photography. Only three participants needed to learn the rudiments of photography so they could document what they considered important in relation to their creative produc‑ tions in the community. Yet all participants wanted to learn the basic skills of using a camera. Because the study was conducted in 2010, before the era of cellphone photogra‑ phy, they learned to use a digital camera. Participants often gladly offered to make video recordings of the teaching and learning processes during the study. Such enthusiasm for learning photography was palpable, although it was apparent that none of them would take up photography as an income-generating venture. At that point, the widespread use of cellphones for taking pictures could not have been anticipated. The West Reru Indigenous Chwuechgogical Environment

The chwuechgogical observations among the Luo seem to support the concept of situated cognition developed by Lave (1988), who noted that adults learn better by continually interacting with their social situations.17 This concept complements the communalism tenet of African indigenous education as explained by Sifuna (1990).18 Sifuna argues

68  Akinyi Wadende

that African indigenous education is based in the communal environment and functions to enhance the community as learners who study by interacting with others in the com‑ munity. Learning in the West Reru study was much more a matter of members building up their competence and identity in the creative tasks at hand by benchmarking with other members of their community of practice. Participants in the West Reru study vol‑ unteered information they thought could benefit others in the community. This sharing of information was esteemed and was viewed almost as an obligation of one member to another. In a way, this obligation enhanced the adult education aspect of the study par‑ ticipants, as they advanced in their creative production activities. They got to learn new skills and ideas that were pertinent to their community from one another, in a context where skill was built and information was exchanged without stress, and often without the conscious awareness that such an interchange was even transpiring. The volume of exchanged information far surpassed the chwuechgogical activities at hand, to encom‑ pass matters such as healthy living in the community and community governance. The creative teaching and learning processes pertinent to this study transpired in envi‑ ronments that are comfortable, welcoming, and accepting. Participants in the West Reru study remarked that no one had been excluded from these trainings for their inability to pay tuition. Such participants could pay for the training with their labor or other com‑ modities they could produce. Apart from providing access to the training, the chwuech‑ gogical environment was accommodative of members with diverse needs. Mothers with small children and no alternative childcare arrangements could easily mind the children while carrying out their creative production. In the village called Nyamrerwa, the com‑ munity members with some paramedic skills who needed to attend to emergent health matters could absent themselves from meetings at such times. The creative production activities of Bang’ jomariek are conducted in this distinctive chwuechgogical communal setting. This environment functioned as a conduit for infor‑ mation that has been passed down from generation to generation by word of mouth. In a community that has relied on orature as opposed to Western written forms, such col‑ lectives functioned to preserve the community’s traditions for generations to come. As a result of sharing information about the community’s traditions, the wholeness of the community was preserved. One such belief that is functional for the community is that anybody who has been having a string of bad luck should not engage in the delicate pro‑ cess of firing the pottery. They believe that such a person will cause the pots to break in the kiln. Indigenous logic suggests that such a person would be pre-occupied with their troubles and might not concentrate on monitoring all aspects of this delicate process. Such a person is then denied access to the firing kiln through taboos. These taboos gener‑ ally help community members avoid unnecessary loss through carelessness in chwuech‑ gogical activities and ventures such as pottery. The West Reru study environment seemed to acknowledge and amplify the spiritual aspects of the community’s life, which emerged as very important in this venue. This component seemed to encompass the total environment of the study. John Mbiti pro‑ claimed that “Africans are notoriously religious.”19 Mbiti noted that Africans carried their religion wherever they went, be it beer parties or farms. Magesa (1997) also noted that the African religion is a way of life, as it involves all aspects of society.20 Dei, Hall, and Rosenberg (2000) acknowledge that most non-Western knowledge systems see the individual as interconnected with all influences in life, including the spiritual and physical

Chwuechology: Indigenous African Art Education  69

world that he or she inhabits.21 Participants in the study periodically referred to interac‑ tions they had with the spiritual world. The chairperson of the group, Jakom, related an incident in which she received instructions via dream from her late husband. In the dream, he remarked that he was not pleased with her constant absence from their home. She decided not to travel out of the home as much as before. Scholars such as Tisdell (2003) and Tisdell and Tolliver (2003) discuss the importance of acknowledging the spiritual component of adult learners in order to promote success in the educational ven‑ ture.22 Tisdell remarks that spirituality is not synonymous with religiosity but involves the acknowledgment of the interconnectedness of everything in the world. An environ‑ ment that honors interconnectedness is one in which the adult learner would thrive. Chwuechgogical Study Methods with Indigenous Populations

The main ethnographic method used in the West Reru study is closely akin to participant observation but is particularly located in the Luo concept of kit dak. This concept defines the family life architecture in which both the collective and individual are celebrated. All members of the family contribute to the interest and fortune of the collective kinship. Nevertheless, each member needs a personal space for reflection and to refresh his or her individuality, to be a functional component of the group. Luo architecture has always catered to this need to celebrate and value individuality within communal identities. There are constructed spaces for people to interact both collectively and individually. The space of the husband is separate from that of the wife. The young girls sleep in the siwindhi, which is the old grandmother’s house, under her care. The boys sleep in the young men’s house called samba. A wife constructs her poultry house to raise chickens for the family. These kit dat architectural spaces enable community members to partici‑ pate fully through mutual interaction, while allowing them to withdraw into a personal enclave and observe the others to better understand their individual psychological state within the group. The logic and method of the kit dak architecture informed the process of interaction in this study, within the structure of an apprenticeship in the three creative mediums of pot‑ tery, basketry, and muono among Bang’ jomariek women’s group. The women’s group mimics the Luo family with its various members who are committed to the collective good and participation but need time alone for individual reflection and observation. All participants related quite intimately with each other for about eight hours a day. They all went to their homes, however, at the end of the day, where they enjoyed their personal space in preparation for the activities of the upcoming day. Indeed, after the first three weeks of research, all of the participants took a two-week break from the study. The researcher also operated within this kit dak indigenous architecture of engage‑ ment and distance, to break various barriers between the researcher and the participants, while also building an allegorical sort of dam for intellectual reflection. Though largely bridged, the barriers initially arose from differences in such aspects as social class and academic achievement between the researcher and the participants. The allegorical dam that was constructed could be opened or closed whenever necessary, in a manner that relates the kit dak design to the classic participant-observation technique as an instru‑ ment of data collection. Dewalt and Dewalt (2001) and Wenger (1999) observed that the learning experienced when a researcher is also a participant in their own study is

70  Akinyi Wadende

more encompassing of the various aspects that are important in that environment.23 The comprehensiveness of this learning is only possible through consideration of the multidi‑ mensionality of the phenomenon under study that a participant observer has the facility to embrace. The capacity to locate the chwuechgogical activities within kit dak ensured that the processes of producing the art forms were considered in their multidimensional‑ ity. Lave and Wenger (1991) indicate that this methodology refers to situated learning which is anchored in the co-participation of learners in communities of practice through the process of legitimate “peripheral participation.” They conclude that communities of practice refer to “participation in an activity system about which participants share understandings concerning what they are doing and what that means in their lives and for their communities” (1991, 98). In the role of a kit dak participant observer, the re‑ searcher in the West Reru site took a legitimate peripheral participation role in the study, following the definition forwarded by Lave and Wenger (1991). These scholars propose the term legitimate peripheral participation to define the process of participating in a social practice in which learning occurs. In such social practice, the participant may opt for particular learning trajectories, develop identities, and form desired memberships. According to Lave and Wenger, the term “peripherality” is a positive term that has no relation to place in the community, just as there is no place called “center” in the com‑ munity. Peripherality here refers to the point at which the participant in a community of practice gains “access to sources of understanding through growing involvement” (1991, 37). It is thus more a description of a point at which growth begins than a physical posi‑ tion. This learning that starts off as peripheral participation enables the whole person to be involved in the activity as situated in the community. While functioning as a legitimate participant observer, the researcher decides on a membership role for themselves in the study. In the West Reru study, the researcher learned how to make pots, baskets, and muono as a novice apprentice to experts among the Bang’ jomariek women’s group. She chose to be an active member, as advocated and described by Adler and Adler (1987).24 This kit dak membership role allowed for the col‑ lection of richer and more comprehensive data because of the relative intimacy it afforded the participants. Participants spent no less than eight hours a day, on weekdays, learning the three creative forms. The chwuechgogical schedule initially consisted of one form a week and later two or more forms a week. In addition, all the participants ate together, which allowed them to bond even more with each other and the researcher. Adler and Adler (1987) describe this as the next level of membership roles in the field, after peripheral membership, in which the researcher refrains from participating in many of the activities that participants take part in. Adler and Adler assert that, as an active participant in a study, researchers allow themselves avenues of escape from the study situation in a way that helps them regain some, if not all, of their objective stance. The researcher does so in three ways: by periodically withdrawing from the field to regain her critical perspective; by realigning her perspective with those of outsiders; and by retaining the insight that she was involved in the study only temporarily and had a life and career pursuits elsewhere. In like fashion, the researcher in the West Reru study, in her adaptation of this avenue of escape into the kit dak membership role, withdrew from the field by means of two avenues that had been built into the study process. The re‑ searcher left the study site every evening to spend the night at a home some 12 kilometers

Chwuechology: Indigenous African Art Education  71

away, and she took a two-week break from the field after the first three weeks of field‑ work. All of this served to rejuvenate the participants for succeeding phases of the study. Conclusion

This essay has presented chwuechgogy among the Luo women of West Reru as a form of community-based adult education that experiments with the kit dak methodological perspective. It is the suggestion of this essay that scholars conducting studies with indig‑ enous populations locate their methods in the social fabric of their communities. In the West Reru study, the researcher explored and located the study methods in the kit dak architectural metaphor of the Luo community. Although the study was designed to be a woman-only space, participants still needed another level of spatiality—namely, the individual space of personal reflection beyond their shared gender. This method allowed participants both individual and communal identities, while functioning to reduce any stress that accrued from close interaction with others. While the details of the methodol‑ ogy are distinctive in actual practice, the theories of chwuechgogy in some ways relate to andragogy, just as the application of the kit dak architectural space is akin to the ethno‑ graphic methods of the participant observer. Notes 1 See Moyo Okediji’s work on the Yoruba indigenous artist Tinuomi Afilaka in his book Western Frontiers of African Art (Rochester, New York: University of Rochester Press, 2011). 2 See K. Mwiria, “Kenyan Women Adult Literacy Learners: Why Their Motivation Is Difficult to Sustain,” International Review of Education 39 (3) (1993), 183–92; P. Cassara Cross, Adults as Learners (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1981); J. Riria-Ouko, “Situation Analysis of Girls’ and Women’s Education in Kenya and Related Issues,” BERC Bulletin 19 (1993), 2–18. 3 L. Bash, Adult Learners in the Academy (Boston, MA: Anker Publishing Company, 2003). 4 S. Merriam, R. Caffarella, and L. Baumgartner, Learning in Adulthood (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2007); S.B. Merriam, and S.Y. Kim, “Non-Western Perspectives on Learning and Knowing,” New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education (2008), 119, 71–81. 5 M.S. Knowles, The Modern Practice of Adult Education: From Pedagogy to Andragogy (New York: Cambridge Books, 1980). 6 Mutindi Kiluva-Ndunda, Women’s Agency and Educational Policy (New York: SUNY Press, 2000); B.A. Jivetti, Improving the Livelihood of Women in the Developing World: Selected Perceptions of Women’s Self-Help Groups in Western Kenya, Unpublished Master of Science Thesis, Oklahoma State University, 2007. 7 See P. Jarvis, Adult Learning in the Social Context (London: Croom Helm, 1992). 8 Patricia Cross, Adults as Learners (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1981). 9 See M.S. Knowles, The Modern Practice of Adult Education: From Pedagogy to Andragogy. 10 See Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mother’s Garden: A Womanist Prose (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishers, 1993). 11 C.B. Aslanian, and H.M. Brickell, Americans in Transition: Life Changes as Reasons for Adult Learning (New York: College Entrance Examination Board, 1980). 12 See Edgar Faure et al., Learning to Be: The World of Education Today and Tomorrow, UNESCO Document, 1972. 13 M.S. Knowles, The Modern Practice of Adult Education: From Pedagogy to Andragogy. 14 See Merriam, Caffarella, and Baumgartner, Learning in Adulthood. 15 See P. Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: The Seabury Press, 1970); J. Mezirow, Transformative Dimensions of Adult Learning (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1991); J. Mezi‑ row & Associates, Learning as Transformation: Critical Perspectives on a Theory in Progress (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2000).

72  Akinyi Wadende

16 See J. Lave, and E. Wenger, Situated Learning—Legitimate Peripheral Participation (Cam‑ bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); also Malcolm Knowles (1980); Aslanian, and Brickell (1980a); and Jarvis (1992). 17 J. Lave, Cognition in Practice: Mind, Mathematics, and Culture in Everyday Life (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988). 18 H. Sifuna, Indigenous African Education (London: George Allen, 1990). 19 See John Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy (London: Heinemann, 1969). 20 Laurenti Magesa, African Religion: The Moral Traditions of Abundant Life (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1997). 21 G.J. Dei, B.L. Hall, and D.G. Rosenberg, “Introduction,” in Indigenous Knowledges in Global Contexts, Dei, Hall and Rosenberg (eds.) (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000). 22 E.J. Tisdell, Exploring Spirituality and Culture in Adult and Higher Education (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2003); E.J. Tisdell, and E. Tolliver, “Claiming a Sacred Face: The Role of Spir‑ ituality and Cultural Identity in Transformative Adult Higher Education,” Journal of Transformative Education 1 (4) (2003), 368–92. 23 See K. Dewalt, and B. Dewalt, Participant Observation: A Guide for Field Workers (Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 2001); E. Wenger, Communities of Practice (Cambridge: Cam‑ bridge University Press, 1999). 24 P.A. Adler, and P. Adler, Membership Roles in Field Research (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1978).

6 AZANDE AND MANGBETU ARTISTS AS SOCIAL CRITICS IN THE BELGIAN CONGO 1909–1915 What Are the Implications for Contemporary Artists and Museums Today? Nancy Pauly

Introduction

This chapter argues that some Azande and Mangbetu artists in the Belgian Congo from 1909 to 1915 created representations of soldiers using graphic satirical conventions of the time to expose and critique colonial atrocities. These artworks were collected by the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) after King Leopold II lost control of the Congo Free State for committing horrendous atrocities, which continued under the Belgium government. It questions the role of the museum in circulating visual colonial‑ ism linked with imperial narratives through the popular imagination. This chapter also connects paintings created by Tshibumba Kanda Matulu around 1973 as evidence of artists working with similar satirical iconography and histories within the same country. In conclusion, it associates the recent defacements of King Leopold monuments by Black Lives Matter (BLM) activists in 2020 and interrogates the current part art plays in social critique. It aims to illustrate the ways that artworks, museums, and public monuments have participated in discourses of meanings and power to circulate visual colonialism. Further, artists and activists work to expose counternarratives that elevate voices of de‑ scent challenging colonial narratives and seek to redress historical atrocities through art, public education, and reparations. In the early twentieth century, few Europeans and Americans imagined African art‑ ists as social critics challenging colonial reality and injustices. This chapter argues that some Azande and Mangbetu artists in the Belgian Congo from 1909 to 1915 produced numerous representations of soldiers using popular satirical conventions of the time to caricature, critique, and resist colonial oppression. Producing socially critical art implies that an artist is responding to an issue situated within a particular socio-historical context; communicating to an audience who might act on their behalf; and/or providing a catharsis for oneself or others. These artists critiqued the behavior of soldiers and the regime they supported using six artforms: a wooden/bark box, a wooden sculpture, a leopard skin harp, a ceramic container, a painted mural, and an engraved gourd cup. DOI: 10.4324/9781003389088-7

74  Nancy Pauly

At the Berlin Conference of 1884, European powers and the United States recognized the Congo Free State as the Belgian King Leopold II’s private colony. This art was created after twenty years of international controversy about King Leopold’s brutal treatment of the Congolese, executed by the “Force Publique,” his own private army of Europeans, Africans, and mercenary soldiers under Leopold’s control. In 1908, due to intense inter‑ national pressure, King Leopold II was forced to relinquish the Congo Free State to the Belgian government, which continued many of his atrocities. In 1907, King Leopold gifted 3,000 anthropological objects1 to the AMNH to be showcased in their African Hall, which opened in 1910. The AMNH played a significant role by collecting, displaying, and educating the public imagination while shortchanging knowledge of the atrocities in the Belgian Congo. In 1909, the AMNH sponsored an expedition to the Belgian Congo with the financial support of the Belgian government and wealthy members of the AMNH board such as Cleveland Dodge, J.P. Morgan, Jr., William K. Vanderbilt, and William Rockefeller,2 many of whom profited from their financial connections to the Belgian Congo. Leading this expedition were Herbert Lang, a mammologist, and James Chapin, an ornithologist, who collected over 54 tons of objects: over 333,000 zoological specimens, 3,800 cultural objects, and 9,000 photographs at this important historical moment.3 A large exhibition of these works, with an accompanying catalogue entitled African Reflection: Art from Northeastern Zaire, written in 1990 by Schildkrout and Keim, toured many cities in the United States from 1990 to 1994. In 1993, I studied the exhibi‑ tion at the University of Wisconsin in a graduate class accompanied by visiting speakers and events. The exhibit opened with a male African mannequin sitting on a woven and wooden bench; wearing bark pants and an elaborate headdress; holding a knife; and replicating the mythic drawing of King Mbunza, as illustrated by Schweinfurth4 in 1874. This image also personified King Okondo with whom Lang and Chapin lived for a time. During their visit, Okondo asked his subjects to create hundreds of objects and archi‑ tecture to recreate objects from the past that Schweinfurth had described, which Lang bought and photographed for the AMNH that helped to perpetuate the myth that the past culture remained after Belgian rule. As I investigated the museum exhibit, packed with photographs, art, and material culture (such as hats, necklaces, clothing, knives, stools, harps, drums, horns, farming implements, ceramic vessels, and baskets), I noticed the brief mention of “atrocities” on the informational materials. I spotted a copy of Mark Twain’s book King Leopold’s Soliloquy in one of the cases. I located a copy that documented the horrible practices of soldiers in the Congo Free State. After scrutinizing the collection, I found six artforms that depicted soldiers, which led me to examine the context during which these objects were collected and speculate about the ways these artworks may have participated within discourses of meaning and power in the past and present. I contend that Azande and Mangbetu artists who created these six artworks were so‑ cial critics who used satirical conventions used in other humorous art at the time, to not only portray soldiers but to criticize the brutality they enforced. These artists may have intended their art for local consumption, their own expression, or foreign exposure since many of them knew their art might be displayed at AMNH. How might these artworks have challenged historical narratives and myths about the agency of African artists? What role did the AMNH play by launching an expedition

Azande and Mangbetu Artists As Social Critics in the Belgian Congo  75

financed by the Belgian government and wealthy financiers who profited from their hold‑ ings in the Belgian Congo? How might these examples contribute to broader discussions about the functions museums perform while collecting, exhibiting, and representing Af‑ rican people? How might these works relate to current movements regarding representa‑ tion such as the BLM demonstrations, monuments, museums, imperial injustices, artistic agency, and the portrayal of African people? Visual Colonialism

This project illustrates the ways that some artists responded to the dominant narrative of visual colonialism that explained and defined colonial order and others did not. Accord‑ ing to Mirzoeff, visual colonialism Sought to use visual imagery to represent the grand narratives of the imperial worldview both to domesticate populations and also to subject peoples.5 … The colonial powers claimed that their role centred on the three Cs …: commerce, Christianity and civilization. What the French called the “civilizing mission” may seem like a mere ex‑ cuse for the development of trade, but the colonists took their self-appointed role very seriously. One of the consequences was an immensely productive visual colonialism, ranging from maps, photographs, and paintings to collections of indigenous arts and crafts.6 Vast collections were displayed in major museums to construct imperial narratives. Mir‑ zoeff contends that “collectively the visual culture of colonialism had a significant role to play in both explaining and defining the colonial order.”7 “As important as it has been to analyze the visual culture of imperial nations, this kind of dialogue with the experience of the colonized themselves has still to be fully developed in scholarly accounts.”8 I hope this chapter contributes to that dialogue. African Artists Displaying Cultural Resistance or Indigenous Counter-Visuality

Lips,9 Vogel,10 and Mirzoeff11 have suggested that some colonized peoples produced ob‑ jects and practices to contest outside domination through mimicry, other forms of humor, or metaphor. Julius Lips12 documented images of soldiers made in Oceania, the Americas, and Africa. Soldiers, according to Lips, were extensions of the white man’s power. “The black man … recognized that ridicule can kill, and that all that is needed to caricature an oppressor is to portray him exactly as he is.”13 Similarly, Homi Bhabha critiqued mimicry found in anti-colonial rhetoric. Mimicry “marginalizes the monumentality of history, quite simply mocks its power to be a model.”14 In contrast to the dominant form of visuality that Mirzoeff15 calls “Imperial visuality,” “Indigenous counter-visuality” is pro‑ duced by a person who “claims autonomy from this authority, refuses to the segregated, and spontaneously invents new forms,”16 as these Azande and Mangbetu artists did. African artworks have been commonly attributed to nameless artists whose work has been described as fixed within cultural codes. Clifford,17 Mudimbe,18 Coombs,19 and Schildkrout and Keim20 have critiqued the decontextualized ways that anthropologists

76  Nancy Pauly

have collected, and curators have represented, African objects. Schildkrout and Keim21 recommended that scholars Consider questions about the historical and ethical circumstances of collecting, the social and cultural world in which objects were first created and used, and the trans‑ formations in meaning as objects travel about the global stage.22 They also encourage us to think about African agency since “early colonial collecting of‑ ten make Africans appear more passive than they were.”23 Mirzoeff argues that Europe‑ ans particularly used the Congo to invent Africa as a primitive wilderness in literary and visual works “as it turned from slavery to colonialism, involving a remarkable rewriting of historical and popular memory.”24 Intertextual Articulation among Cultural Narratives and Texts

A theory of intertextual articulation of cultural narratives and texts was used to ana‑ lyze and unpack the potential discourses of meanings and power within which these images of soldiers may have historically participated and imagine their current signifi‑ cance. Scholars such as Morrison,25 Said,26 and Mirzoeff27 have juxtaposed “texts” (such as art, literature, mass media, or photography) against other “texts” (such as histori‑ cal events, emotional reactions, performances, or exhibitions) and “cultural narratives” (such as racism, colonialism, and imperialism) to construct the discursive meanings of texts within specific historical locations. A theory of Articulation is derived from Hall28 to link visual materials to other cul‑ tural texts. Thus, a theory of articulation is both a way to understand how ideological elements came, under certain conditions, to cohere together within a discourse and a way of asking how they do or do not become articulated, at specific conjunctures, to certain political subjects.29 Then, following Mitchell,30 we might ask what these images “do in the network of social relations”31 and, further, “what is our responsibility toward those representations?”32 In other words, how might images influence people to think, feel, act, or imagine future pos‑ sibilities? Also, what is our response-ability to appreciate the art and lived experiences of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, take action for social change, and “connect people’s everyday lives and concerns with the reality of material relations of values and power.”33 As stated above, intertextual articulation was used to analyze these six artworks. First, this paper examines the historical reports of abuse in the Congo Free State since I believe these artists reacted to the actions of soldiers, Belgian oppression, and international re‑ actions. Second, four categories of satirical artwork employed by socially critical artists prior to 1915 are described, which was derived from the work of Edward Lucie-Smith34 and Ralph E. Shikes.35 Third, six artworks showing representations of soldiers created by Azande and Mangbetu artists are investigated in terms of the specific socio-historical contexts surrounding each artwork, Mangbetu and Azande artistic practices, quotes from the fieldnotes of the collector, the reactions of local people to the artwork, interpretations of similar artwork, and an Azande sanza, or parable, collected by Evans-Pritchard.36 Then, these artworks were contrasted with a painting by Tshibumba Kanda Matulu cre‑ ated around 1973 in The People’s Republic of the Congo to show more evidence of art‑ ists working with similar satirical iconography and narratives within the same region. In

Azande and Mangbetu Artists As Social Critics in the Belgian Congo  77

conclusion, recent events in response to BLM demonstrations and the defacement of King Leopold II monuments were juxtaposed to comment on the current relevance of these issues. Socio-Historical Context: Soldiers in the Belgian Congo

King Leopold of Belgium told the world that he was developing trade, hospitals, and schools for the people of the Congo. In reality, he ran the so-called Congo Free State as his own personal colony from 1885 to 1908, extracting raw materials, especially rubber, through brutal force exerted by the “Force Publique,” his private army of Africans under Belgian command. Leopold formally organized the Force Publique in 1888, which grew to more than 19,000 officers and men in the next dozen years.37 Many African men were taken from their villages and beaten if they failed to carry out their orders. By 1908, there were 313 military posts in the Congo Free State. In 1890, George Washington Williams, an African-American lawyer, journalist, min‑ ister, and historian wrote the first expose of Leopold’s reign of terror in the Congo in an Open Letter to King Leopold II, which he also sent to U.S. President Benjamin Harrison. Your Majesty’s Government is engaged in the slave trade, wholesale and retail. … Your Majesty’s government gives L 3 [3 pounds] per head for able-bodied slaves for military service. … The labour force at the stations of your Majesty’s Government in the Upper River is composed of slaves of all ages and both sexes.38 Photographs such as “Native Prisoners at Boma Taking the Air” (Figure 6.1) were documented by Edmund Morel39 in 1904. Morel, a young representative for the Elder

FIGURE 6.1 Edmond

Morel, Native Prisoners at Boma Taking the Air, photograph, 1904, 192.

78  Nancy Pauly

Dempster transport company, noticed that thousands of rifles were sent to the Congo and handsome profits were gained from ivory and rubber, yet no money was going to the Congo to pay for the acquired commodities. He deduced the existence of slavery, quit his job in 1901 at the age of twenty-eight, and began an international campaign to ad‑ dress the injustices in the Congo. Morel documented testimony from 1901 to 1908 such as 6,500 Congolese taken from their homes on twenty- to thirty-day marches by armed raids and then forced to build the railroad.40 What follows is testimony given by Morel41 to the British House of Commons documenting atrocities committed by soldiers in the Congo Free State and Belgian Congo. For seventeen years, since the Edicts of 1891–2, the Congo territory and the people inhabiting it have been subjected to a policy of organized pillage and to a form of slavery necessarily accompanied by hideous outrages … enforced … [by] an often un‑ controlled soldiery, feeding upon the country, frequently recruited by armed raids and so poorly paid that unlimited license to gratify every lust has been the main incentive to loyalty. History can record few, if any instances of a crime so comprehensive, so deliberate, and affecting so large a number of human beings. … The determining features of the system devised to carry out this policy have been these. … The natural products of the country having commercial value on the world’s markets have been claimed by the Belgian rulers … [and] the inhabitants of the country have been driven by compulsory labour to collect these products … by violence.42 Ivory and rubber were the commodities that fueled Leopold’s greed. In the 1890s Charles Goodyear invented pliable rubber. Overnight rubber was needed to mold everything from wheels to insulation for electrical wiring. Wild rubber was found on vines throughout the Congo, and Leopold knew that wild rubber was needed for only two decades before it would be replaced by cultivated rubber planted in Latin America and Asia. Collecting rubber was very dangerous. To collect wild rubber, a man needed to enter the thick rainforest filled with leopards, climb a vine intertwined around a tree hundreds of feet off the ground, cut the vine, collect the sap in a bucket, and dry the sap on his body. To force Africans to do this dangerous work, the soldiers attacked villages and seized the women, children, or elders who were “kept as hostages until the Chief of the district brought in the required number of kilograms of rubber.”43 Photographs of systematic hand-cutting, mutilation, and other atrocities perpetrated by soldiers were documented by Morel (Figure 6.2),44 Twain,45 and Conan Doyle46 for failure to collect rubber or carry out the wishes of the “Force Publique.” Resistance to Leopold’s Actions Grew in the United States

Within the United States, many human rights advocates and political leaders also con‑ tributed to the growing public awareness of the atrocities occurring in the Congo. In Sep‑ tember of 1904, Morel spoke with President Theodore Roosevelt at the White House at the invitation of the American Congo missionaries.47 John and Alice Harris, two British Baptist missionaries, also addressed 200 public meetings about the Congo atrocities in forty-nine cities across the United States. Telegrams, petitions, and private letters poured

Azande and Mangbetu Artists As Social Critics in the Belgian Congo  79

FIGURE 6.2 Edmund

Morel, Children Mutilated by Congo Soldiery, photographs, 1904, 112.

into the White House encouraging Roosevelt to take action. Booker T. Washington and Mark Twain were among the notable citizens who lobbied President Roosevelt to pres‑ sure King Leopold to reform his practices in the Congo. King Leopold countered the barrage of negative pressure in Washington by offering influential Americans financial incentives to support him. He contacted Senators Henry Cabot Lodge, Nelson W. Aldrich, and J. P. Morgan, then chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. King Leopold offered Congo concession rights to Aldrich, the Guggenheim interests, Bernard Baruch, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and Thomas Ryan. Leopold also gave 3,000 Congo artifacts to the AMNH in 1907, knowing that J.P. Morgan was on its board.48 Eight hundred of these objects came from the Uele region where the Azande and Mangbetu peoples lived. Leopold also bribed journalists in Britain and the United States to discredit missionary reports and sought to link his enterprises with scientific enter‑ prises to placate the Western elite.49 Political condemnation of King Leopold’s actions grew in both the United States and Europe. Reports filled the press prompting a U.S. Senate investigation. Due to British and U.S. condemnation, King Leopold ceded control of the Congo Free State to the Belgium government, which assumed administration of the newly named Belgian Congo on Octo‑ ber 18, 1908. Atrocities continued under the Belgian government. For example, on June 11, 1909, twenty-six men and boys were cast into chains and marched twenty-six days journey to a state post in the Leopoldville District, where they were detained in penal servitude for six weeks because the full tax had not been paid by their village.50

80  Nancy Pauly

Hochschild51 estimated that, between 1880 and 1920, the Congo population was roughly cut in half, killing approximately ten million people through murder, starva‑ tion, disease, and a plummeting birth rate. It is within this international context that the AMNH sent the Lang-Chapin Expedition to the Uele River area in the northeast Belgian Congo to collect natural and cultural objects in 1909. Four International Characteristics of Socially Critical Art Before 1915

This section shows four categories of satirical art that referenced military or political force that were created internationally prior to 1915, which were distilled from the works of Edward Lucie-Smith52 and Ralph E. Shikes.53 Then I compared these categories to artworks depicting soldiers made by Azande and Mangbetu artists collected from 1909 to 1915. Category 1: Satirical Humor Used to Make a Social or Political Point

Satire relies on exaggeration, incongruity, relative size, or irony to comment on society with wit or biting effect. William Walker’s irony is obvious in “White Man’s Burden” printed in Life Magazine in 1899, in which he condemns U.S. imperialism by portraying colonized people shouldering the burden of disproportionately enlarged white men: Un‑ cle Sam and leaders of the United Kingdom, Germany, and France by carrying them on their backs.54 In the following section, I will compare the art of two Mangbetu and one Zande artists who used the satirical devices of exaggeration and incongruity to satirize the role of soldiers in society on a wooden bark box, sculpture, and harp. Category 2: Artistic Reactions to Social or Political Events

Many socially critical artists reacted against specific social or political events, such as the behavior of men at war, the clergy, elites, politicians, and bosses. Lindley Sambourne depicts King Leopold II as a snake entangling a Congolese rubber collector in the engrav‑ ing “In the Rubber Coils. Scene—The Congo ‘Free’ State” published in Punch, a weekly British magazine, on November 28, 1906. Sambourne used visual and verbal parody to respond to events occurring in the Congo Free State. Similarly, Mangbetu men began making pottery with exaggerated male genitals at Niangara in 1910 shortly after the Bel‑ gian government assumed governance as a regional center. Prior to this time, only women made pottery for household purposes in Niangara. Category 3: The Need to Communicate to an Audience Who Might Respond

Socially critical art was often made using mass-produced, inexpensive prints such as fliers, posters, or magazines to communicate the concerns of artists to a wider audience who might see evidence of their own experience, or the concerns of others, and respond. By the sixteenth century, artists had produced inexpensive broadsheets for mass consump‑ tion. In the same way, Sambourne’s image appeared in Punch, a popular weekly British satire magazine influential from 1842 to 1992 and again from 1996 to 2002. Analo‑ gously, Zande murals created in 1913 at Faradje communicated the colonial experience

Azande and Mangbetu Artists As Social Critics in the Belgian Congo  81

to a broad audience of people who passed it and others internationally through Lang’s photography who might act on their behalf. Category 4: Moral Themes Sometimes Using Allegory

Socially critical artists made art that consisted of moral themes ranging from allegory to issues of dispute, human nature, or universal themes. According to Shikes,55 Daumier’s “Peace, An Idyll” was done after Napoleon led France through six weeks of war in 1870. His title refers to Napoleon’s claim ten years earlier that “The Empire means peace!” I contend Bade, a Zande artist, made a drawing on a gourd cup to comment on the im‑ moral actions of soldiers. He may have referred to an Azande sanza, or proverb, to con‑ vey the meanings he intended. Mangbetu and Azande Artists Use Four Categories of Socially Critical Art

Category I: Satirical Humor Used to Make a Social or Political Point—Two Mangbetu and one Zande artists used satirical humor to comment on society by creating a wooden bark box, a wooden sculpture, and a wooden harp. Each artwork depicted naked soldiers wearing only the signifiers of a soldier’s uniform or behavior, that is, the cap, ammunition belt, gun, and/or the salute. They used graphic conventions of the time such as exaggera‑ tion, incongruity, relative size, or irony to convey their messages. Wood and bark boxes, with or without human heads, were commonly made in the re‑ gion during this time to store honey or objects, yet a bark box depicting a saluting naked soldier with an ammunition belt56 appeared at this time as a new adaptation of the bark box form. Intentional change and incongruity may suggest satirical intention. What meanings was this bark box soldier meant to convey? Was a substance placed in the central cavity, and, if so, what might that have signified? The solder’s eyes are only outlined, while other Mangbetu artworks throughout the collection show carved pupils or slits in the eyes. Does this artist intend to suggest that these messengers are acting with‑ out opening their eyes to the abuses they are supporting? He wears an ammunition belt but carries no gun. Might this indicate that messengers wore emblems of power without the force to execute it to align themselves with the colonial regime? Why did Mangbetu and Azande artists make images of naked soldiers between 1909 and 1915? Herbert Lang recorded the reactions that he and Africans had upon seeing these art works and the ways he acquired them as gifts, commissions, or purchases. Most colonial officials and Europeans collected art through chiefs who commissioned objects. Lang commissioned some works directly, and his fieldnotes suggest that he collected art that he found humorous. In his fieldnote #2497, Lang mentions that the messenger bark box seemed to have been carved “for sport … [T]hese Figures are considered simply funny.”57 Lang writes, “Carved Figure initiating a saluting messenger of white men, the exaggeration of the cartridge belt and the sexual portion is rather a hint of the behavior of these men.”58 Ac‑ cording to Schildkrout and Keim, This is a new adaptation of the bark box form that emerged in 1910 as a response to the impact of soldiers. Although this sculpture evoked humor among the Mangbetu,

82  Nancy Pauly

sculptures like this seem to have also been made for Europeans and Americans since forms of this kind did not exist prior to this period.59 Neither the Azande nor the Mangbetu had traditions of making anthropomorphic sculp‑ tures for kingship, religious, or utilitarian purposes, with a few exceptions, according to Schildkrout and Keim.60 In 1883, Emin Pasha collected one “funerary figure for use in a mourning house,”61 which he attributed to “Monbuttou”62 (Mangbetu), which was fully clothed. Mack63 reports that Azande used small, abstract Yanda figures as a part of the Mani secret society aimed at seeking advantage for their members. Yanda figures were banned by Azande princes and colonial authorities who felt they challenged their author‑ ity. The existence of Yanda figures suggests that artists resisted dominant social forces by making these wooden forms. Might the images of soldiers have served a similar function? In 1914, Lang collected a wooden sculpture of a soldier, rendered naked apart from his cap, ammunition belt, and rifle created by an unknown Zande artist at Panga (Figure 6.3). The incongruity of a naked man standing seriously at attention wearing the symbols of a soldier provoked humor among local people, according to Lang.64 His gun, ammunition belt, and feet seem exaggerated to enhance the comic effect. In comparison to the box, the bridge of the nose is more sharply defined, suggesting that this soldier may be European,

FIGURE 6.3 Unknown

Zande artist. Sculpture. Wood, painted fiber. H: 24.3  in. Lang collec‑ tion. Panga, 1914.  AMNH, 90.1/3321.

Azande and Mangbetu Artists As Social Critics in the Belgian Congo  83

yet he is rendered barefooted, a characteristic found among most of the images of African soldiers in this collection. Darkened carved slits exist in the middle of the eyes, which may mean his eyes are open. Schildkrout and Keim have observed, [S]everal of the anthropomorphic objects … show no signs of wear … statues like the one of the soldiers may have been made for Europeans. Such works caused amusement among Africans, partly because of their explicit and sometimes exaggerated sexuality. These works represent a genre that emerged around 1911 when a number of carvers began producing objects for new patrons or for chiefs who presented the art to colo‑ nial officials as a way of currying favor in the new power structure.65 The Significance of Male Nudity in African Sculpture

The representation of naked soldiers may have been used as a satirical device in these artforms at this time since no representation of men exposing their genitals existed at any other time in Mangbetu or Azande artforms. Explicit male genital nudity is quite rare in African art as a whole. According to Moyo Okediji, when nudity appears in Yoruba art, it is used very purposefully. The nude signifies that which is revealed, no longer hidden or secret. It implies hon‑ esty. … Several Yoruba traditional artists have therefore, used the nude to record some of the agonizing daily struggles of man. … Many of the works that survive testify to the trials and excruciating pains experienced by the Yoruba people during the period of slavery and to the extent of the oppression that accompanied colonial rule. … Pub‑ lic nudity was (and still is) considered totally abnormal, a symptom of insanity among the people. But Yoruba traditional artists had the license to present the social truth, as nakedly as they conceived it, with visual symbols.66 Okediji’s writing suggests that these Azande or Mangbetu artists may have used nudity to reveal the naked truth about soldiers and the regime they supported. The Role of African Chiefs in the Belgian Congo in 1910

In 1910, Okondo presented Lang with a wooden harp (Figure 6.4) representing a salut‑ ing soldier, naked all but his cap. The artist used dark brown pigment for the cap, pegs, and the tip of the penis. The incongruity of a naked soldier saluting while wearing only his cap suggests an ironic meaning since all other Azande and Mangbetu harps that de‑ pict males and females cover the genitals. Okondo was installed by the Belgians after the hereditary chief was killed by the Bel‑ gians. Why did Okondo give Lang this harp? When he met Okondo, Lang “changed the direction of his research”67 since he became fascinated with Okondo’s court life, which reminded him of the drawing of the great king Mbunza, as illustrated by Schweinfurth.68 “Lang was among the Mangbetu and Azande long enough for them to understand … that he was making a large collection to take to the white man’s museum.”69 Although

84  Nancy Pauly

FIGURE 6.4 Unknown Mangbetu artist. Harp. Leopard fur, wood, vine, fiber cord. L: 24.6 

in.

Lang collection. Niangara, 1910.  AMNH, 90.1/3964.

Lang commonly photographed Okondo in his Mangbetu chief’s regalia, such as the bark pants and a feathered hat, he photographed him in a soldier’s uniform for his goodbye photograph, suggesting the role that chiefs like Okondo played to enforce Belgian power. According to Curtis Keim,70 by 1910, Mangbetu chiefs, or ekinyi, had acquiesced to Belgian domination or were replaced by Africans chosen by the Belgians. Ekinyi “were expected to extract increasing amounts of labor and goods from subjects.”71 In the early twentieth century, “conflicts centered on forced collection of rubber.”72 In 1910, “British Acting Consul Jack Armstrong toured the Uele District and reported … rubber ­collection  … had been made the responsibility of the rulers so Belgian officials could claim that they themselves had not committed atrocities.”73 Armstrong’s report ends: “officials are quite aware that the chief is quite as powerless as they are … to make the natives work without abuse.”74 In 1912, tax payment in rubber was replaced by money, which could only be acquired in exchange for products desired by Europeans, such as cotton. “In return for collecting taxes, chiefs were paid in guns and trade goods.”75 The wooden bark box, sculpture, and harp representing naked soldiers are examples of social satire. Two of the naked soldiers salute. Are the artists suggesting that soldiers

Azande and Mangbetu Artists As Social Critics in the Belgian Congo  85

acquiesced to the Belgian system of control? These depictions of soldiers provoked laugh‑ ter among the Mangbetu and Azande viewers. Were these sculptures designed to ridicule African and European soldiers? Did they function as a catharsis for these Congolese who witnessed soldiers rape their women, land, labor, natural wealth, and cultures? Or were they intended to speak to an international audience who might act to stop the atrocities, as advocates had done in the past? Category II: Artistic Reactions to Social or Political Events—Specific social or political events or experiences may trigger artists who normally do not make social references to react through their art. I believe one Mangbetu ceramic pot with exaggerated genitals is such an example (Figure 6.5). In 1910 men started creating highly sexualized anthropo‑ morphic ceramic pottery when Niangara became a new regional colonial center. Prior to this time, only Mangbetu women made pots for cooking purposes. Yangala, the father of Chief Okondo, allied himself with the Congo Free State and provided the land used to establish the river post at Niangara.76 He also executed forced conscription into the army. For example, “Yangala sent nearly all of the males of one dissenting clan as recruits for the Force Publique and effectively wiped out the clan.”77 The existence of several hundred foreign African soldiers at Niangara may have trig‑ gered an unknown Mangbetu artist to create a ceramic pot with genitals. According to Lang, these works were meant “to amuse by mocking the behavior of outsiders, both African and European.”78 Another pot in the collection of the AMNH, similar in form and probably done by the same artist, depicts two figures, each with an arm broken off, which appears intentional. Was the artist commenting on the widely documented mutila‑ tion of hands by soldiers when individuals failed to collect rubber? Category 3: The Need to Communicate to an Audience Who Might Respond—­Murals such as the 1913 Zande mural at Faradje79 communicated the colonial experience to a broad audience of people who passed it and to others who experienced it globally through photography. In this mural, thirteen African soldiers clothed in uniforms with guns, led by a European, are shown guarding a smaller European man and woman eating at a table, fanned by an African woman. Does this public display suggest that it takes fourteen soldiers to enforce the lifestyle that these two Europeans enjoy? According to Schildkrout and Keim,80 many house paintings became popular with the advent of colo‑ nialism, often featuring soldiers and administrators. Category 4: Moral Themes—Six gourd cups showing soldiers appear in the collection of the AMNH. Bade identifies himself as the artist who engraved this gourd cup when he writes “Bade Asali,” since “asali” means “he made it” in Lingala. The exhibition catalog refers to the images on the cup as “a soldier taking prisoners.”81 Did Bade make this incised drawing on a gourd cup to comment on the immorality of unjust imprisonment, forced conscription into the military, or the sexual improprieties of soldiers? A proverbial reference that may suggest his intended meanings. Lips82 described thousands of images made by indigenous peoples in Oceania, the Americas, and Africa, many depicting soldiers with guns. Wherever they came, no arrow, however well aimed, was of any use. …They were the executive organ of the white man’s power, the medium of victory and colonization: soldiers! … What makes a soldier? The rifle … What is there striking about a soldier? The uniform … Is the soldier a personality? No.83

86  Nancy Pauly

Mangbetu artist, Ceramic pot. H: 7.6  in. Lang collection. Niangara, 1910.  AMNH, 90.1/4703.

FIGURE 6.5 Unknown

The iconography around the surface of the Bade gourd cup (Figure 6.6) portrays a bare‑ footed African soldier holding a gun who appears to be guarding incarcerated people within rectangles (six people in front of him and two people behind him). On either side of his head are a coffee pot and an axe. Next, a traditionally dressed musician carries a

Azande and Mangbetu Artists As Social Critics in the Belgian Congo  87

Gourd Cup with Plant Fiber, Azande. H: 6.7  in. Lang collection. Akenge’s village, 1913.  AMNH, 90.1/2625.

FIGURE 6.6 Bade,

harp below the artist’s name “Bade.” In front of him is a traditionally dressed woman and soldier embracing, followed by a large python snake. The juxtaposition of the python snake with the embracing couple may suggest the art‑ ist’s moral intention. Evans-Pritchard84 refers to an Azande sanza, or parable, regarding the python that was collected by a missionary, Canon Gore, from his Azande informant. Azande Informant: “If you have done a man wrong, such as committing adultery with his wife, … men will tell you that you had better stop acting as you are acting because the husband will get to know about it. It is about that you speak this sanza … [I]t is as though one said “you will know it on that day when it comes out, you will then know the truth of it” … [T]hey know a male snake at the time of roasting it; because when they begin to roast a python its male member rises …so people see it … whereas before, when it was alive, it was hidden.85 Gore interpreted this sanza to mean: “A man’s character is known at the time of trial or testing.”86 The python snake is positioned between a man and woman locked in an embrace and two people behind the gun enclosure. By drawing the python, Bade may be referring to this sanza, thus intending to condemn the soldier who uses his power to have illicit sexual relations.

88  Nancy Pauly

Azande and Mangbetu artists critiqued the atrocities committed by soldiers in the Belgian Congo from 1909 to 1915 using graphic conventions popular at that time in many common artforms. They were active agents using visual art to respond to Belgian control. Urban Paintings Chronically Abuses During Belgian Rule

In pondering the significance of the art created and collected during the Lang–Chapin Expedition from 1909 to 1915 in the Belgian Congo, it may be helpful to consider paint‑ ings created by socially critical artists between the 1920s and 1990s in the same country, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). According to Jewsiewicki,87 since the 1920s, artists like Lubaki and Tshyela Ntendu created paintings on paper, canvas, and plastered walls on houses to express their understanding of the Belgian colonial world and more recent historical events. Like their predecessors, these artists also relied on subject matter, themes, and graphic devices similar to designs in the Azande and Mangbetu artworks to revisit the treatment of Congolese by soldiers during the colonial period. For example, Tshibumba Kanda Matulu, a popular painter of the Shaba Province, produced a series of historical paint‑ ings and interpreted them for Johannes Fabian between 1973 and 1974 (when the DRC was called Zaire). He provided the following description of his artwork entitled “Colonie Belge: Under Belgian Rule, 1885–1959,”88 in which Tshibumba shows a Belgian officer overseeing African soldiers whipping men in prison. Tshibumba:

Fabian: Tshibumba:

The colonial period was a time of servitude. They put people in prison and beat them with canes. Yes, they were flogging people in prison. … In prison, flogging was like paying a fine when you had done something bad. The flogging took place during roll call. It could happen that you were in the lineup and did not quite understand what the supervisors said. Then they would beat you with a cane … I could do all the districts or towns of Zaire, because there were prisons in all those places. And those two women? Those two are the wives of prisoners. They are there because they brought food. … You see here his wife as she puts her hand to her cheek, in a ges‑ ture of distress.89

Like Bade’s gourd drawing, Tshibumba addresses moral themes by criticizing the behav‑ ior of the Belgian and African soldiers. He created multiple copies of his paintings for Europeans and Americans, many of whom were historians and writers who might reach a larger sympathetic audience. Conclusion: Implications for Contemporary Artists and Museums

This chapter aims to illustrate the ways that art works, museums, and public monu‑ ments participate within discourses of meanings and power to circulate visual colonial‑ ism through the popular imagination linked with colonial narratives. Some artists and activists work to expose counternarratives that might elevate the voices of descent that

Azande and Mangbetu Artists As Social Critics in the Belgian Congo  89

challenge colonial narratives and seek to redress historical atrocities through art, public education, and reparations. What are the roles of museums, artists, and activists as social critics today? Since the death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis, Minnesota, police in 2020 and the subsequent proliferation of the worldwide BLM movement, hundreds of activists in Belgium and elsewhere have staged protests, defaced monuments of King Leopold II, de‑ manded the removal of those statues, challenged museum representations, advocated for public education about past atrocities, and called for the Belgian government to return stolen objects and pay reparations to the DRC. For example, an image taken by Associated Press photographer Virginia Mayo shows the defacement of the monument to Leopold II on June 10, 2020,90 which links the BLM events in the United States with Belgian atrocities by stating “BLM: This man killed 15 million people.” According to Belgian-Congolese Joelle Sambi Nzeba, a spokeswoman for the Belgian Network for Black Lives, “Those monuments are present not just in pub‑ lic space, but also in people’s mentalities. … It’s symptomatic of the absence of responsi‑ bility for colonial history. … It is invisible in the public discourse.”91 Guido Gryseels, director of the Africa Museum founded by Leopold II in Tervuren, Belgium, has received numerous phone calls asking if his museum will take removed statues. He estimates that 300–400 statues, plaques, and streets are named after the king or other problematic colonial figures. Several statues have been removed, and more than 78,000 signatures were added to a petition to remove all monuments to the former king in Belgium. Gryseels stated, I could maybe take a few of these statues here and make some kind of contemporary art out of them, … But I don’t want to have the opposite effect and make this a place where Leopold admirers come to pray. 92 For years, the British artist Hew Lock has been creating imaginary altered sculptures of statues with problematic histories. Referring to the actual statues, he stated, “The paint shouldn’t be removed to elevate the statues to perfect museums objects, …They should be covered in paint, with burn marks, because that’s part of their history now.”93 Cedar Lewisohn, a British artist, curator, and member of Museum Detox, recommends asking people whose ancestors suffered to recommend how spaces formerly dedicated to unde‑ sirable statues should be filled.94 The current Belgian King Philippe, ancestor of King Leopold II, visited the DRC on June 6, 2020, to express his “deepest regrets”95 for acts of violence committed during Belgian rule, but he made no apology or announcement about reparations. After Leopold was forced to give up the Congo as his private fiefdom in 1908, the Belgian state ran the country with brutality until June 30, 1960, when Patrice Lumumba, a popular independ‑ ence leader, was elected prime minister. Lumumba was assassinated in 1961 by Congolese rebels and Belgian army officers on the orders of the CIA, with tacit support of the Belgian government. Martin Fayulu, a respected opposition politician in the DRC, said it was never too late to recognize past wrongdoing and called for reparations from Belgium. … “It’s what they do now that matters.”96

90  Nancy Pauly

How might museums, such as the AMNH, foreground evidence of agency and social critique by African artists in the past and present? Could greater efforts be made to jux‑ tapose African artworks, historical events, personal stories, and other cultural texts to invite dialogues about the significance of art and representation and tell counternarra‑ tives about power, privilege, profit, and human rights today? Notes 1 Enid Schildkrout and Curtis Keim, African Reflections: Art from Northeastern Zaire (New York: American Museum of Natural History, 1990), 47–50. 2 Ibid., 53. 3 Ibid., 59. 4 George Schweinfurth, The Heart of Africa: Three Years’ Travels and Adventures in the Unexplored Regions of Central Africa from 1868 to 1871, trans. Ellen Frewer (New York: Harper and Bros., 1874/1969). Also in Schildkrout and Keim, African Reflections, 31. 5 Nicholas Mirzoeff (Ed.), The Visual Culture Reader (New York: Routledge, 1998), 283. 6 Ibid., 282. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid, 284. 9 Julius Lips, The Savage Hits Back (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1937). I regret this title is offensive. 10 Susan Vogel, Africa Explores: 20th Century African Art (New York: The Center for African Art, 1991). 11 Nicholas Mirzoeff, An Introduction to Visual Culture (New York: Routledge, 1999). 12 Lips, The Savage Hits Back. 13 Ibid., 74. 14 Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (New York: Routledge, 1994), 87–8. 15 Nicholas Mirzoeff. The Right to Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), 34. 16 Ibid. 17 James Clifford, The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth Century Ethnography, Literature and Art (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988). 18 Vumbi Mudimbe, The Idea of Africa (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994). 19 Annie E. Coombs. Reinventing Africa: Museums, Material Culture, and Popular Imagination (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994). 20 Enid Schildkrout and Curtis Keim, The Scramble for Art in Central Africa (London: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid., 3. 23 Ibid., 5. 24 Mirzoeff, Introduction to Visual Culture, 134. 25 Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark (New York: Vintage, 1992). 26 Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage Books, 1993). 27 Mirzoeff, Introduction to Visual Culture. 28 Stuart Hall, “On Postmodernism and Articulation: An Interview with Stuart Hall,” Lawrence Grossberg (ed.) in Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies by David Morley and Chen Kuan Hsing (Eds.) (New York: Routledge, 1986/1996), 131–50. 29 Ibid., 141–2. 30 William J. Thomas Mitchell, Picture Theory (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1994). 31 Ibid., 423. 32 Ibid., 424. 33 Henry Giroux and Susan Searls Giroux, Impure Acts: The Practical Politics of Cultural Studies (New York: Routledge, 2000), 106. 34 Edward Lucie-Smith, The Art of Caricature (Ithica, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981). 35 Ralph Shikes, The Indignant Eye (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1969).

Azande and Mangbetu Artists As Social Critics in the Belgian Congo  91

36 E.E. Evans-Pritchard, Social Anthropology and Other Essays (New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1956/1962), 332. 37 Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1998), 123. 38 George Washington Williams, “A Report on the Congo-State and Country to the President of the Republic of the United States of America,” in George Washington Williams: A Biography by John Hope Franklin (Eds.) (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 277–9. 39 Edmund Morel, King Leopold’s Rule in Africa (London: William Heinemann, 1904), 192. 40 Edmund Morel, The Future of the Congo (London: Smith Elder and Co, 1909), 78–82. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid, 1–5. 43 Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost, 161. 44 Ibid., 193. 45 Mark Twain, King Leopold’s Soliloquy: A Defense of His Congo Rule (Boston, MA: The P.R. Warren Co., 1905), 41. 46 Arthur Conan Doyle, The Crime of the Congo (New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1909). 47 Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost, 241. 48 Ibid., 243–4. 49 Schildkraut and Keim, The Scramble for Art in Central Africa. 50 Arthur B. Keith, The Belgian Congo and the Berlin Act (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1919), 152. 51 Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost, 233. 52 Edward Lucie-Smith, The Art of Caricature (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981). 53 Ralph Shikes, The Indignant Eye (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1969). 54 Ibid., 322. 55 Ibid., 192. 56 Mangbetu, unknown artist. Bark box, Wood, bark, and plant fiber. H:21.5 in. Lang collection, 1910, Medje. AMNH 90.1/2221. In Schildkrout and Keim, African Reflections, 62. 57 Herbert Lang’s field note #2497, Ibid., 244. 58 Herbert Lang’s fieldnote #693. Ibid., 63. 59 Ibid., 62–3. 60 Ibid., 236–7. 61 Ibid., 236. 62 Schildkrout and Keim, African Reflections, 236. 63 John Mack, “Art, Culture, and Tribute Among the Azande,” in Schildkrout and Keim, African Reflections, 222. 64 Schildkrout and Keim, African Reflections, 244. 65 Ibid., 244. 66 Moyosore Okediji. “The Naked Truth: Nude Figures in Yoruba Art,” Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 22, No. 12, 1991, 31–33. 67 Schildkrout and Keim, African Reflections, 64. 68 George A. Schweinfurth, The Heart of Africa. 69 Schildkrout and Keim, African Reflections, 67. 70 Curtis Keim, Precolonial Mangbetu Rule: Political and Economic Factors in Nineteenth-­ Century Mangbetu History (Ph.D. dis. Indiana University, Bloomington, 1979), 304. 71 Ibid., 304. 72 Ibid., 306. 73 Ibid., 306. 74 Ibid., 307. 75 Schildkrout and Keim, African Reflections, 162. 76 Ibid., 162. 77 Keim, “Precolonial Mangbetu Rule,” 307. 78 Schildkrout and Keim, African Reflections, 243. 79 Zande artist. Mural painting, Faradje, 1913. AMNH Archives, 223945. Schildkrout and Keim, African Reflections, 22. 80 Ibid., 22. 81 Ibid., 23.

92  Nancy Pauly

82 Julius Lips, The Savage Hits Back. 83 Ibid., 73. 84 Evans-Pritchard, Social Anthropology, 332. 85 Ibid. 86 Ibid. 87 Bogumil Jewsiewicki, “Painting in Zaire: From the Invention of the West to the Representation of Social Self,” in Vogel, Africa Explores, 139. 88 Johannes Fabian, Remembering the Present: Painting and Popular History in Zaire. Narra‑ tive and paintings by Tshibumba Kanda Matulu (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 68–9. Found on https://cafebabel.com/en/article/painting-congolese-history-tshibumbakanda-matulu-5ae004d0f723b35a145dbdd9/ 89 Ibid. 90 Virginia Mayo, AP Photo of Defaced Statue of King Leopold II, June 10, 2020. Brussels, Belgium. 91 Monika Pronczuki and Mihir Zaveri, “Statue of Leopold II, Belgian King Who Brutalized Congo Is Removed in Antwerp,” New York Times, June 9, 2020. 92 Nina Siegal, “The Statues Were Toppled. What Happens to Them Now?” The New York Times, June 15, 2020. 93 Siegal, “The Statues Were Toppled.” 94 Ibid. 95 Jennifer Rankin and Jason Burke, “Belgian King Expresses ‘Deepest Regrets’ for Brutal Colo‑ nial Rule,” The Guardian US Edition, June 30, 2020. 96 Ibid.

7 CLOTH AS METAPHOR IN EGUNGUN COSTUMES Bolaji Campbell

Egungun costumes usually comprise a wide variety of carefully chosen fabrics ranging from exquisite samples of local hand-woven aso ofi to exotic imported fabrics from around the globe. The choices represent the best that money can buy, and they include velvet (aran), damask, silk, lace, and cotton, including ankara—Africanized Dutch wax prints (Figure 7.1). The fabrics are then arranged into strips or panels of intricately deco‑ rated sashes (ooja), like those used by women in tying babies on their backs. At the same time, they reference the mythic history of Egu´ngu´n and the collaboration between Eesa Ogbin Ologbojo and the queen mother, Erubami Abimbowo, who created the first en‑ semble during the reign of Alaafin Abiodun Adegoriolu (1770–1789). Made into elaborate decorative patterns, forms, and colors, these carefully arranged fabrics (Figure 7.2) must follow the well-established conventions of the past—best defined here as those representing the treasured values of Egu´ngu´n traditions (asa). Asa represents a conscious attempt “to select, choose, discriminate, or discern” (Yai, 1994) while remain‑ ing cognizant of the historical past. Quite logically, the artists/priests/devotees use their design consciousness (oju ona)—together with their inner eye or artistic insight (oju inu) and intuitive knowledge (laakaye), plus unusual sensitivity (imoju-mora) (Abiodun, 1990; Lawal, 1996)—to make deliberate choices in the selection of colors, patterns, and designs, as integral elements of a dynamic artistic process, which is constantly inventive, revital‑ izing, and modern. The result is that the sashes (ooja) or cloth panels (Figure 7.3) come in a multiplicity of designs, patterns, hues, shapes, and colors in a curious blend of disparate elements fully reflective of the multidimensional vision and power of departed ancestors. In oriki Ologbin (cited below), the precise colors on the first masquerade ensembles at the inaugural performances at Oyo-Ile included those arrayed in the three basic colors: cam‑ wood red (osun), white chalk (efun), and darker shades of green (ewu eje koriko). Erin m’ori k’osun, merin a m’ori k’efun, erin a w’ewu eje koriko erin yooku, bi nwon ba gbago, nwon a ta’di rekereke. (Babalola, A., 1967)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003389088-8

94  Bolaji Campbell

FIGURE 7.1 Egu´ngu´n with imported fabrics, Ibadan, Nigeria. 2007. 

Photo by Bolaji Campbell.

Cloth as Metaphor in Egungun Costumes  95

FIGURE 7.2  Oyo-Yoruba

Egu´ngu´n ensemble, twentieth-century, hand-woven and machinespun textiles embellished with cowrie shells, aluminum, string, thread embroi‑ dery, leather, pitch, brass, plastic buttons, and sequins. 2007. Photo by Bolaji Campbell.

FIGURE 7.3  Egu´ngu´n

Atipako, with hand-woven textiles. Ibadan, Nigeria. 2007. Photo by Bolaji Campbell.

96  Bolaji Campbell

Four were arrayed in camwood red, another four appeared in white, four others wore greenish clothing, while the remaining four, if they carried any costumes at all, danced in carefully orchestrated steps. (translation mine) Egungun costumes are also made in the form of quilted fabrics with several layers of both old and new fabrics, in addition to the empowering amuletic pouches, gourds, and leather, as well as the metal adornments on visually intriguing mobile sculptures (Figure 7.4). To deviate from these models (asa) is tantamount to contravening the well-established conventions—a scenario likened to an outright aberration, one that fits the mold of ab‑ surdity commonly referred to as asakasa. Asakasa is an extension of the notion of tradition and change. Asakasa can also be construed as a critique of asa—that notion of tradition, innovation, and change often mitigated by the ability to make informed and conscious selections. Invariably, asakasa is a departure from asa. It recognizes discord, disjunctions, and disorder as integral ele‑ ments of tradition, change, and innovation. While we privilege asa titun, integral ele‑ ments of newness and modernity, we are alerted to the futility and dangers inherent in

FIGURE 7.4 Egu´ngu´n with imported fabrics, Ibadan, Nigeria. 2007. 

Photo by Bolaji Campbell.

Cloth as Metaphor in Egungun Costumes  97

disjunctions by asa atijo, traditions of the past. Asakasa, in another parlance, represents discordant intermingling known as amulu-mala—an aesthetic consciousness which at best is a curious blend of disparate elements like the harlequin robe, full of variegated disjunctions, multiplex hues and colors, and scintillating shapes and patterns—an in‑ ordinate intermingling which sometimes creates confusion, difference, and departures. In sum, amulu-mala negates the very essence of purposeful selection implicated in that delicate and precarious notion of asa—that which we purposefully selected. Egu´ngu´n celebrate asa—the freshness and novelty of creative innovation—while up‑ holding the sacred tenets and conventions of the past. The primary focus of the costume is the cloth. Cloth is the organizing metaphor upon which the notion of immortality is predicated. Cloth (aso) plays a particularly significant role in Yoruba social and religious institutions. Eniyan l’aso—our friends, acquaintances, and relatives—are the metaphoric cloth or clothing we use in covering, protecting, beautifying, and honoring our bodies. Some of the incidences I witnessed at the Odole Compound in Ilesa in 1969 during the funeral of my maternal great-grandfather, S.A. Fasooto, underscore the centrality of this philosophical ethos in the Yoruba social and religious landscape. Virtually all visitors at the funeral parlor arrived with several bundles and layers of cloth. The cloths were then carefully arranged and displayed as befitting gifts or tokens to the bereaved family. The cloths came from relatives far and near. Indeed, for every mourner entering the house‑ hold, the social expectation was to produce at least five to six yards of cloth as gifts for the interment of the deceased. In essence, cloth was the most befitting gift one could offer to the spirit of the departed—the more exotic, the more valuable. The fabrics are charac‑ teristically sourced from all corners of the globe. A Yoruba aphorism puts it most succinctly—“without cotton (cloth), we’d be exposed with our most intimate vulnerabilities”—bi o ba si owu, oni ruuru idi la bari (Babalola, 1967). Cloth (aso) is the prime symbol and marker of sophistication and the index of social identity and power. What defines individuals in society is how they use cloth to express their individual identities, their social status, and their role within the larger community. According to Rowland Abiodun, “One’s social unit is often described meta‑ phorically as one’s cloth, because it protects, beautifies, and hints at immortality.” It is an expression that the “cloth never dies.” Indeed, Yoruba celebrate the place of cloth as the most appropriate signifier and marker of our collective human identity—aso l’edidi eniyan. The French poet and art critic Charles Baudelaire once wrote, “Fabrics speak a si‑ lent language,” in recognition of its universal significance and applicability, which might sometimes be culturally specific but in essence spans the whole gamut of our collective human experience (Baudelaire, 1869). Though it has no voice, cloth speaks in complex multi-sensorial fashions. For the Yoruba, “clothes are like children that cover one’s nakedness,” omo l’aso. In a culture where there is hardly any social security as a viable economic support system for the elderly, it invariably falls upon the children to care for their parents, especially in old age. Perhaps this is one of several reasons why there is an admonition recognizing the importance of having close relatives and associates as opposed to just children within one’s family unit—hence, Yoruba insist that “Merely having a child is not a cause for joy; the person whose child survives him is the one who really has a child”—Omo ko layole; eni omo sin lo bimo (Ajibola, 1971: 30, 41). “To be without an ebi, that is, without blood relations, associates or close friends, is to be alone, deserted, abandoned or ‘unclothed.’”

98  Bolaji Campbell

This means that one who dies “unmourned” and without survivors has a “bad death” with no hope of an afterlife (Abiodun et al. Pemberton 2004: 48). Like the metaphor of cloth within the family, Egungun costumes are used in celebrat‑ ing departed ancestors, which exemplify those treasured values (asa) that bind the fabric of Yoruba society together. As the otherworldly performers whirl back, they are heralded by a breeze of blessings and the staccato rhythms of the drum. And for theatrical effect, they appear in dazzling colors, infusing the environment with potent energies for the spiritual revitalization of human communities. In this manner, the costumes represent the quintessential “fabrics of immortality,” shaping the ways through which departed ances‑ tors are reunited with their families. Bibliography Abiodun, Rowland. (1990). “The Future of African Art Studies: An African Perspective,” in African Art Studies: The State of the Discipline. Washington, DC: National Museum of African Art, 63–89. Abiodun, Rowland. (2014). Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art. New York: Cambridge University Press. Abiodun, R., U. Beier, and J. Pemberton III. (2004). Cloth Only Wears to Shreds: Yoruba Textiles and Photographs from the Beier Collection. Amherst, MA: Mead Art Museum. A Dictionary of the Yoruba Language. (2001). Ibadan: University Press, PLC. Ajibola, J.O. (1971). Owe Yoruba. Ibadan: Oxford University Press. Babalola, Adeboye. (1967). Awon Oriki Orile. Glasgow: Collins. Babayemi, S.O. (1980). Egungun Among the Oyo Yoruba. Ibadan: Oyo State Council for Arts and Culture. Babayemi, S.O. (1982). “Traditions and Function of Egungun Among the Oyo Yoruba,” in Masquerade in Nigerian History and Culture, Nwanna Nzewuna, ed. Nigeria: Port-Harcourt, Uni‑ versity of Port-Harcourt, 374–88. Baudelaire, Charles (1869). Paris Spleen, trans. Louis Varese, Wesleyan Poetry Series, New York, New Directions. Campbell, Bolaji. (2005). Catalogue Entries in Resonance from the Past: African Sculpture from the New Orleans Museum of Art. New York: Museum for African Art, 70–5. Campbell, Bolaji. (2015). “Eegun Ogun: War Masquerades in Ibadan in the Era of Moderniza‑ tion,” African Arts, vol. 48, no. 1: 42–53. Dos Santos, Juana, and Deoscoredes, M. Dos Santos. (1969). “Ancestor Worship in Bahia: The Égun-Cult,” Journal de la Société des Américanistes, vol. 58, 79–108. Drewal, H.J. (2011). “Whirling Cloth, Breeze of Blessing: Egungun Masquerades among the Yor‑ uba,” in Homegoings, Crossings, and Passings: Life and Death in the African Diaspora, Regen‑ nia N. Williams, ed. Porter Ranch, CA: New World African Press, 175–206. Drewal, H.J. (2013). “Local Transformations, Global Inspirations: The Visual Histories and Cul‑ tures of Mami Wata Arts in Africa,” in Companion to Modern African Art, G. Salami and M. Visona, eds. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 23–50. Lawal, Babatunde. (1996). Gelede Spectacle: Art, Gender and Social Harmony in an African Culture. Seattle: Washington University Press. Yai, Olabiyi. (1994). “In Praise of Metonymy: The Concept of ‘Tradition’ and ‘Creativity’ in the Transmission of Yoruba Artistry over Time and Space,” in Yoruba Artist, Rowland Abiodun et al., eds. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 107–15. Yai, Olabiyi. (1999). “Tradition and the Yoruba Artist,” African Arts, vol. 32, no. 1, Spring 1999: 32–35 +93.

8 CONFLICT AND PEACE Gender and Spiritual Dimensions of Egúngún Performance Funmi Saliu Imaledo

The public de-robing of an Egúngún in the market square brought about the destruc‑ tion of the first Ibadan by Alaafin Sango. ‘Dele Layiwola (2015) Among the indigenous Ibadan people, the annual Egúngún festival is a guardedly myste‑ rious ritual. As a spiritual activity, it has escaped the taint of modernity that has marred traditional practices among indigenous people around the globe, especially in Africa. Reports show incessant conflicts during Egúngún festivals in Ibadan, one of the largest urban centers in West Africa; yet, little has been done to investigate how these conflicts are prevented in the first place.1 This chapter, therefore, examines a regular cause of conflict in present-day Ibadan—namely, the clash between male and female interests. It investigates why and how Oje women traders use preventive styles of cultural interven‑ tion to avert such conflicts during the Egúngún procession that often demonstrates clear male masochism. The chapter observes that, in spite of modernization affecting African culture, the Egúngún festival is still religiously reverenced in the Oje market, while the conflicts attending its performances demand a critical balance of male and female con‑ cerns through negotiations that are customarily conducted through cultural practices (Figure 8.1). Introduction

What exactly is Egúngún, and why has it been described as a “masquerade”? The word Egúngún has attracted opinions from many scholars. For instance, Robin Poynor (1978) sees Egúngún as one of the Orisa (gods) among the Yoruba people. His conclusion on Egúngún is borne out of the inter-relationship between the Owo people and other Yoruba cities and towns in the Southwest of Nigeria. Scholars like Oladimeji (2001) and Camp‑ bell (2015) believe that Egúngún is an elaborate ensemble of cloth, representing the spir‑ its of the ancestors. Johnson (1921) sees Egúngún as bones (skeletons) that are given life through performance and worshipped as ancestors. Apart from these opinions, Egúngún DOI: 10.4324/9781003389088-9

100  Funmi Saliu Imaledo

FIGURE 8.1 Egungun

costume of transformation. Photo by Bolaji Campbell.

performances are generally believed to pacify the ancestors through worship. Regarded as their ancestral spirits, Egúngún are believed to be divinities who contribute religious significance to the survival of their families while these rituals take place. Thus, every

Conflict and Peace  101

Agbole in Ibadan has its own Egúngún divinities that are zealously worshipped. These divinities are believed to be the spirits of their ancestors who had lived good lives on the earth. The family pays their respects during the Egúngún festival by preparing their fa‑ vorite delicacies and using performance to imitate the way they walked and talked while on the earth. The sculptural pieces placed on the head of the Egúngún depict the facial appearance of the male ancestors in these Ẹ` kún (costumes).2 In Ibadan, there are two types of Egúngún: the Egúngún Ẹbọ, which specifically refers to the Olóòlú, and all the others, referred to as Egúngún Ogun. This grouping is based on the drums used during the public processions of these Egúngún in Ibadan. The Egúngún Oloolu is the only Egúngún in Ibadan that uses the gángan drum during its procession, whereas other Egúngún use any other drum, especially the bàtá.3 This chapter is inter‑ ested in Egúngún Oloolu, which was brought to Ibadan during the Kiriji War by one of Ibadan’s warriors, Ayorinde Aje. When Ayorinde Aje consulted Ifa to know what Egúngún Oloolu was capable of doing and what it was used for in its town of origin, they discovered that it was worshipped as an Orisa that brings rain and children and cleanses the town of evil. Whenever there is a calamity in Ibadan, Egúngún Oloolu is saddled with making sacrifices at strategic places to appease the gods. These duties have remained to date in Ibadan.4 Despite the important roles attached to Egúngún Oloolu in Ibadan, its appearance always leaves market activities in shambles, providing the traders, especially the women, with bitter stories to tell. Problems associated with cultural conflicts, and the need to prevent them, have at‑ tracted attention from scholars with suggestions for addressing them. For instance, Ola‑ oba (2001) suggests the intervention of the Yoruba traditional legal system to curb the assaults; Otite and Albert suggest sociological studies (1999); Ayantayo suggests religious disparities as the cause (2008); and Oyebode (2012) suggests mediation between tradi‑ tional institutions and modern developments. However, previous studies have paid little or no attention to how conflicts involving Egúngún and market women are prevented in the traditional market, a gap that this chapter fills. This chapter pays specific attention to the study of the conventional relationships be‑ tween markets and Egúngún in Yorubaland, using the Egúngún Oloolu and Oje market as a case study. Oje market was built by the Ibadan warriors for many purposes, including the display of Egúngún performances. This chapter elaborates on the approaches taken to prevent conflicts between Egúngún Oloolu and market women in Ibadan (Figure 8.2). Conflict, Culture, and Conflict Prevention

Conflict is a complex concept because there is no evidence that it is the opposite of peace in a normal society. In fact, some scholars see peace as an expression of conflict (Aula and Siira, 2010). Conflict does not manifest in isolation; it involves at least two individuals who perceive incompatible goals or interference from others in achieving their goals (Hy‑ bels and Weaver, 2001). Conflict has also been seen as competition for scarce resources. This is best explained in terms of two or more parties striving to acquire the same scarce resources at the same time (Wallensteen, 2002). Conflict might not always be between two people; it could also manifest within an individual like one fighting oneself. Conflicts involving religious groups, social groups, and individuals could be aspects of culture. One understanding of culture is that it captures the totality of humanity. In this view,

102  Funmi Saliu Imaledo

FIGURE 8.2 Egungun

enactment in Ibadan. Photo by Bolaji Campbell.

culture has the ability to sustain the identity and survival of a race or group of people at a particular time (Linton, 1945; Sandkuhler, 2021). Some definitions of culture depict it as causing conflict. Some conflicts around the world are meant to preserve the cultures induced by the economy, religion, and politics

Conflict and Peace  103

of groups or individuals. Since culture cannot be determined by any one group, there will always be some degree of conflict when two cultures meet. The possibility of conflict in relation to culture inspires mechanisms for preventing such conflicts. Conflict preven‑ tion is a set of instruments aimed at precluding disputes before they develop into active conflicts. Niklas and Mikael (2005) see the perception of threat or the actual occurrence of conflict as reasons for conflict prevention. Hence, one may conclude that conflict and conflict prevention are the products of culture. Methodology

Data was gathered between May 2017 and December 2020. This chapter takes an indepth look into Egúngún Olóòlù activities in Ibadan through a case study method. The qualitative approach was used both in the data gathering, which employed ethnographic methods such as in-depth interviews and field observations, and in the data analysis. An ethnographic study aims to understand and describe a social and cultural scene from an insider’s perspective (Given, 2008). For the analysis, interviews were transcribed, and content analysis was completed. The respondents were purposively sampled and inter‑ viewed face-to-face in two local governments in the city of Ibadan. These were the Ibadan South East and Ibadan North East local governments, where the Egúngún culture is very prominent, and where the Oje market is located. I conducted interviews with five indi‑ viduals who comprised the Egúngún cult or had vast knowledge of Egúngún culture in Ibadan and two key informants from the Egúngún cult of Ibadan. The sampling took into consideration respondents’ knowledge of the Egúngún culture in the area. Additionally, some secondary literature on the Egúngún was used for the analyses. Traditional Markets in Ibadan

The concept of markets in Yorubaland did not originate outside the Yoruba sociological landscape. Yoruba people are naturally farmers, rearing animals and cultivating crops for immediate consumption and trade. Lloyd specifically looked at the farming activities in Ibadan and concluded that almost everyone in Ibadan is a farmer: It is of course difficult to define ‘farmer’ when all members of indigenous compounds hold rights to land and when many who are craftsmen, traders, clerks work a small plot to help maintain their families. Those who are full-time farmers live for much of the year in one of the three thousand and more hamlets which lie on Ibadan land within twenty or thirty miles from the city. (1967, 4) In Ibadan, there are four types of farms. The first is the ọgbà (garden), which is located close to the owner’s compound and fenced to keep animals out. The second is the àkùro .` , located along the banks of streams or swamps. The third is oko etílé (neighborhood farm), located mostly outside the town walls, where there is fertile and abundant land beyond the reach of domestic animals. And the fourth is oko ọba or abúléko, a distant farm where farmers, typically male, stay for days. With the excesses of farm products, the need for farmers to dispose of these products is eminent and urgent. This is why the

104  Funmi Saliu Imaledo

women, who stay at home away from the long-distance farms, are the ones who market these farm products (Falola, 2012). Traditional markets among the Yoruba are situated in front of the king’s palace. Among other reasons, this enables the Oba or king to watch from a reasonable distance the regular assembling of his people (Olaoba, 2000). In Ibadan, the idea of an Oba is a recent concept. Until 1936, there was no Oba. Ibadan was headed by a Mogaji (head of an estate), who were potential warriors of their various Agboles (estates). These Mogaji had the potential to become the Baale of Ibadan. The promotion of the head of Ibadan to an Oba, the Olubadan of Ibadan, is a relatively recent development. Thus, the social set‑ ting of Ibadan warranted that markets be located in front of warriors’ Agboles. Bowen (1968) suggests that a market is located in front of the Oba’s palace for three reasons: first, to facilitate his control of the market, ensuring a vibrant economy; second, to make the market available for use in ritual festivals such as Egúngún and performances of public events, because the market setting has an open space that can accommodate many people; and, third, to disseminate useful information from the palace. According to Hodder and Ukwu (1969), town spirits are believed in Yoruba philosophy to meet and live in trees near the marketplace to ensure peace among the people, and sacrifices are made to them for the prosperity and progress of the town. My research shows that the association of the trees with the spirits and stability of the town explains why tradi‑ tions often demand that the branches of the market trees be lopped off whenever the reigning king dies. Traditional markets have been classified by scholars according to their functions. Mabogunje (1967) classified markets into three tiers. The first is the provincial market, which he describes as taking place every four days and attended by the inhabitants of the province. The second is the inter-kingdom market held every eight days and patron‑ ized by people from other kingdoms. And the last is the larger metropolitan market that serves as a terminal for numerous long-distance trade routes from far and wide. Markets like Oje market in Ibadan run on two schedules, daily and weekly. Vagale identifies local and regional markets. The local market is held daily, whereas the regional one is held pe‑ riodically at specific intervals to feed the stock of local markets in urban areas. The works of scholars, particularly Filani and Richard (1976), Nwafor (1982), Sada and McNuity (1978), and Eben-Saleh (1999), give a wider classification of markets in this context. Although they agree on these two basic classes of markets—daily and periodic—they fur‑ ther sub-classify markets into morning, full-day, night, periodic, provincial, and kingdom markets. In Ibadan, most traditional markets are either daily or periodic in nature. These markets serve buyers’ daily needs and serve travelers for periodic purposes. Many buyers come from in and out of Ibadan to trade in local products at the Oje market. These prod‑ ucts include ọs ̣ẹ dúdú (black soap), òrí (shea butter), àgbo (herbal concoction), and aṣọ òfì (textiles). Trading in all of these products has always made the Oje market a busy one. Reality of the Egúngún Festival in the Traditional Markets of Ibadan

In Yoruba cosmology, marketplaces are not simply for buying and selling; they are be‑ lieved to be associated with a female deity, Ajé, who demands regular worship from her priestesses and traders to provide them with prosperity (Adalemo, 1979). Ajé is also one of the days of the week among the Yoruba; Monday, the first day of the week, is regarded

Conflict and Peace  105

as the day for business and designated as the Ajé day. The Yoruba believe that if one sells well on Ajé, the other days of the week will be good for profits. Also, the Yoruba greet the first buyer of their goods “Ajé ẹ,” meaning, “May your hand bring profits.” Such a buyer is noted if at the end of the day’s selling, the seller has made good sales. If such a person lives near the shop, indeed, that trader may give money to this buyer early in the morn‑ ing and request that the person pretend to buy something by returning the money to her. The assumption is that this person has Ọwọ´ Ajé (Ajé’s touch). In some Yoruba markets, we have iya laje (priestess of profit). This person represents the interests of the market in relation to profit. The heads of market associations often double as priestesses and are responsible for the worship of Ajé. The rituals involved in goddess worship are intri‑ cately linked to productivity, power, and spiritual balance, all of which are controlled by women in the socio-spatial structure of the market (Olupona, 2014). Coincidentally, the father of all Egúngún in Ibadan, Egúngún Oloolu, is from the Aje’s family in Ibadan. Although Aje’s family is associated with productivity, power, and spirituality, the Egúngún Oloolu is also known for participating in wars for Ibadan. The physical participation of Egúngún in war is common among Yoruba warlords. In the course of fighting, they become either victors or losers. Thus, most Egúngún in Ibadan and elsewhere in Yorubaland are parts of war booty. The man in the costume is held as a slave while the costume is repurposed to serve the spiritual interests of the conqueror, after due consultations with Ifa divination. This was also the situation with Egúngún Olóòlù, who was himself a captive in the war between Ibadan and Ekiti. A great Ibadan warrior, Ayorinde Aje, confronted Egúngún Olóòlù and defeated him in battle. As war booty, Egúngún Olóòlù became the property of Ayorinde Aje.5 Ayorinde Aje, the founder of Ode Aje, has Aje attached to his name. Aje, as stated ear‑ lier, is a market divinity. Ode Aje is one of the seats of Aje divinity in Ibadan. This is why women gather by the thousands on the eve of the procession of Egúngún Olóòlù to seek blessings from the divinity. They dance around the sacrifices prepared for various Orisas by the head of the Oloolu cult in Ayorinde Aje’s compound and sing songs of prayer, economic profit, protection, and good health.6 After these spiritual exercises, the market women return to their stores to continue trading. The Egúngún worshippers see the mar‑ ket not just as a meeting place for buying and selling; they see it as a venue for performing rituals because of the various orita (three junctions) that characterize them.7 The orita are crossroads regarded as points of intersection between the spiritual and physical realms and between good and bad fortune. The marketplace is regarded as a potent orita. The Egúngún festival among the Yoruba predates the coming of Egúngún Oloolu to Ibadan. There is a significant connection between the fall of the first actualization of the city of Ibadan and the Egúngún festival. The Alaafin Sango, the king of the Oyo Yoruba, attacked the original settlers of Ibadan on the issue of the Egúngún festival. The secrets of the Egvngún cult were unfortunately revealed by Lagelu and his men during an Egúngún festival in Ibadan. This involved a public disrobing of Egúngún at the market square in Ibadan, which brought serious repercussions for Ibadan. The biggest of these was the tragic fall of the first Ibadan settlement. To show strong support for the Alaafin Sango, Oba Koso, some obas in Yoruba kingdoms went to war to support Alaafin and protect this Egúngún culture from Ibadan incursion. These Obas—namely, Olowo of Owo, the Awujale of Ijebu, the Alake of Abeokuta, Owa Ilesha, Orogun Ile-Ila, and others—were reportedly involved in a destructive campaign that was said to have lasted for three years

106  Funmi Saliu Imaledo

(Layiwola, 2015). Thus, traditional markets are important avenues for Egúngún to dis‑ play their skills and perform religious duties. Conflict Prevention between Egúngún Oloolu and Women Traders at Oje Market

In Ibadan, the Egúngún festival is a sacred annual event observed between June and July. Thousands of Ibadan Egúngún worshippers move with various Egúngún, especially Egúngún Oloolu, during his public possession. Among these worshippers, there are some who purposely select aso odun eegun (festive uniform) to mark this celebration. De‑ spite the beauty of this Egúngún festival in Ibadan, clashes sometimes arise between the Egúngún adherents and market women. Most of these conflicts are fought at the market‑ place. For instance, the Egúngún Oloolu creates more fear in the hearts of female traders than any other Egúngún in Ibadan. The reason is that Egúngún Oloolu is forbidden to see or to be seen by women for any reason. A female that either sees or is seen by Oloolu will die (Interview with Omotosho at Ode Aje, Oloolu compound 2017). Thus, prior to the procession of Oloolu, market women used several strategies to prevent the Egúngún Oloolu from encountering them during his procession. Financial Support to Egúngún Oloolu

Financial support as a means of preventing conflict has been one of the tactics employed by warriors in Ibadan since before the beginning of British rule in Ibadan. Johnson (1921) gave an account of how one of the richest women in the history of Ibadan was killed be‑ cause of her financial support for the Kiriji War—one of the most historic wars fought in Yorubaland. Efunsetan Aniwura, the Iyalode of Ibadan, was attacked and assassinated because she was a threat to Aare Latosa, the head of Ibadan. When Aare Latosa discov‑ ered that he would not be able to pay back his debts to Efunsetan Aniwura, he decided to frustrate her. Ibadan warriors seek support in the form of weapons like gunpowder, guns, and swords, and these weapons are necessary items of trade as they determine the victory of the possessors. As the head of the traders, the Iyalode Efunsetan Aniwura, a woman, commanded the market economy, including the weapons of war, while Aare Latosa, a man, commanded the warriors who used these weapons. This was a recipe for conflict that turned the Oje market in Ibadan into a classical theater of war between male and female combatants taking opposite sides. This is the history behind the ongoing conflict between the genders at the Oje market today. At the Oje market, market women pay certain amounts of money to the acclaimed entourage of the Egúngún Oloolu. The entourage moves from one shop to another, urging the female merchants to pay money to divert the Egúngún Oloolu from the Oje market. They dress in war costumes, beating bells to announce the emergence of Egúngún Oloolu from its sacred grove. Mostly, the entourage of Egúngún Oloolu comes out for this activity a day to Egúngún Oloolu’s public procession, specifically in the afternoon before the eve of Egúngún Oloolu’s procession. These market women do not dispute the payment; they pay willingly. Judging from the way the money is paid, one can easily see that it is customary in the market. The entourage does not force them to pay. They pay willingly to financially support the Egúngún Oloolu’s procession.8

Conflict and Peace  107

After one such man left during my research at the market, I asked a woman why she gave the entourage this money. She said: This is how we do it in Oje market. This money is for Egúngún Oloolu from us. The Oloolu’s entourage does not force us to pay this, but since they have come for it, we pay willingly. We know that Egúngún Oloolu would not come to Oje market but might come to other parts of Oje to pay visit. This method has really helped us. Hardly do we have clashes with Oloolu.9 This corroborates Fadipe’s (1977) claim that Yoruba festivals have the potential to unite rather than divide communities. Although the Oloolu’s entourage might visit the market a day before Oloolu’s procession, the contributions of these women protect them from the Egúngún Oloolu. Avoidance of Markets during Egúngún Oloolu’s Procession

There is no general method used for avoiding conflict. Rather, scholars believe that it could take different forms (Catherine and Kagucia, 2014; Olawale, 2011). Avoidance is necessary when the possibility of cooperation and satisfying one’s own needs is very low. Catherine and Kagucia (2014) see avoidance as behavior that either ignores or refuses to engage in the conflict. In the context of the market women at Oje market, avoidance is used to avert conflict. Although modernization has affected traditional culture in Ibadan, the market women abstain from the market when Egúngún Oloolu comes to visit. The market women have the itinerary of Egúngún Oloolu, which they use in preparing to avoid any contact between the two opposing interests. In the past, to respect the Egúngún Oloolu and protect the wellbeing of Ibadan, the founding fathers of important markets like the Oje market in Ibadan barred females from trade. Women had no choice but to obey because most of them were Ibadan indigenes grounded in Egúngún culture. The women know that Egúngún Oloolu is a warrior masquerade and the spiritual head of all Egúngún in Ibadan. They also recognize that, since Ibadan warriors fought physically to prevent the fall of the city in the ancient wars, they own these markets and Egúngún.10 Moreover, these markets are populated by the wives and extended families of the mar‑ kets’ founders. This makes it easier for the market women to stay away from Egúngún Oloolu during his procession. There are various sections in the markets headed by various sectional heads. For in‑ stance, in some Yoruba markets, the head of the market could be called iya alaje or Iya loja. These market heads supervise market affairs, such as the settling of disputes and the management of security. At the Oje market, the Alágbàáà (Egúngún handler) informs the heads of the market about the itinerary of the Egúngún Oloolu, as the Egúngún parades through the neighborhoods to visit the Dele Solu, Jubilikenke, Ajeja and Ojo families, who founded Oje market in 1860.11 Government Support for Egúngún Culture in Ibadan

Egúngún Oloolu is an Ibadan Egúngún and is directly supported by the government. It is believed that by making sacrifices at specific locations in connection with Egúngún Oloolu,

108  Funmi Saliu Imaledo

one can drive away evils and calamities in the state. By culture, the legacies of the found‑ ing fathers in Ibadan are appreciated through the processions of these Egúngún (Interview with Olori Alagbaa of Ibadan, Chief Dr. Ojetunde Akinleye Asoleke, Mato Compound, Oranyan, 2017). Thus, the government’s involvement in the Ibadan Egúngún festival has greatly helped in preventing conflicts between Egúngún Oloolu and merchant women at Oje market. The Oyo state government sees Egúngún as a tradition of indigenous Ibadan that is crucial to the economic, political, and aesthetic stability of the population. This is why the Egúngún festival is monitored by the Ministry of Information and Culture.12 Before the public procession of Egúngún in Ibadan, especially Oloolu, the Oyo State Government makes public announcements through the media about the masquerade’s itinerary. The Egúngún Oloolu pays a special visit to the state governor to pray for the state and seek his blessing.13 As a result, the market women at the Oje market are aware when the Egúngún Oloolu will visit. Oyo State Radio regularly broadcasts the movement of Egúngún Oloolu during his procession. The movement of Oloolu is monitored, which alerts people to specific times when the Egúngún Oloolu could be in the Oje neighbor‑ hood or market for his annual visit. This gives the women the opportunity to hide.14 The Crowd That Follows Egúngún Oloolu

Egúngún Oloolu is considered the most important, or the father, of all Egúngún in Ibadan. Accordingly, other Egúngún in Ibadan are expected to follow him not in their ekun (cos‑ tume) but in their human attire to celebrate him. There are over 30,000 Egúngún Oloolu adherents with Alagbaa (custodians of masquerade) that move with him during his procession (Nigeria Tribune, 1971). These crowds move at least two kilometers ahead of Egúngún Oloolu with drums and songs before reaching the Oje market. The reason for such large crowds is that other orisa worshippers believe that Egúngún Oloolu is the best ebora (invisible being) to help them place ritual sacrifices at specific places in Ibadan. Sacrificial offerings are common during the procession. Yoruba diviners constantly rec‑ ommend ebo (sacrifice) and riru ebo (offering sacrifice), and priests give guidance on how to make ebo (Awolalu, 1981). Apart from the spiritual importance of Egúngún Oloolu’s procession, this period has always been notorious for conflicts. It is believed that the area boys (neighborhood gang members) use this period for extortion, stealing, and other crimes.15 Since this ‘crowd’ can‑ not be easily controlled, crimes can be carried out more easily under the cover of the Oloolu procession. Although security personnel are hired to keep the crowds safe, there are always reports of vandalism during these processions. Thus, the arrival of this crowd, well ahead of the Egúngún itself, is a signal for the Oje market women to close their shops and hide un‑ til Egúngún Oloolu has passed. Also, as these market women know that this crowd could be dangerous and unaccountable for any unlawful acts, they prefer to keep their shops closed for the period of Egúngún Oloolu’s visit, rather than losing everything to them.16 The Charms and the Physical Appearance of Egúngún Oloolu

Charms, amulets, and other magical substances are among the items used to identify the presence of Egúngún in Ibadan. The reason for this, among others, is the nature and the duties of Egúngún that have become the norm of its procession. Since the main aim of Egúngún worship is to associate with the spirit of the ancestors, the costume of Egúngún

Conflict and Peace  109

is often laced with charms (Campbell, 2015). It is believed that the person in the costume embodies the ancestors. Thus, if an ancestor was a warrior in his lifetime, his Egúngún must evoke his prowess, including the display of charms on the Egúngún costume as es‑ sential forms of power for a warrior.17 A typical Egúngún costume displays collections of many objects: bones, both human and animal; horns (ìwo); rattles (s. e.´e.´re.´); gourds (àdó); amulets (tíírà) encased in leather or cloth; metal and wooden sculptures, such as figurines and masks (ère); thrones and stools of the gods (àpótí/òòtà/apèrè); gongs and bells (agogo/àjà); dance wands (os ̣é); whips (àtòòrì); wooden clubs (àpólà igi or kúúmo.` ); daggers (o.` bẹ); cutlasses (àdá); axes (ààké); Dane guns (ìbọn); as well as the costume carriers (aru e.`kú/are.`kú); beads, cowrie shells, and mirrors (Campbell, 2015). Since Egúngún are masked, there is an ato (guide), who dresses in special attire that is spiritually fortified against attacks. The costume of an ato is very important to the Egúngún. The ato leads Egúngún and displays the character of the Egúngún’s power. Most Egúngún challenge their rival Egúngún. The idea of challenging rival Egúngún is a continuation of pre-colonial and post-colonial rivalries among some families in Ibadan. There are indications that the Ibadan warriors challenged their rivals in open battles us‑ ing mysterious and magical means. Records show that between 1855 and 1914, no less than eight principal chiefs in Ibadan committed suicide in the course of open challenges to their powers: Lakanle (1855), Balogun Ajobo (1870), Seriki Iyapo (1877), Chief Ai‑ yejenku Foko (1877), Balogun Ajayi Osungbekun (1893), Baale Dada Opadare (1907), Baale Irefin (1914), and Balogun Ola (1917) (Johnson, 1921). Their deaths were in line with the nature and culture of Ibadan in that period as an outgrowth of a war camp. These Ibadan warriors are venerated during the Egúngún festival. Thus, the charms (both visible and invisible) attached to Egúngún Oloolu are enough to scare away the market women from the Oje market. Naturally, the man in the costume, the Oloolu, must be spiritually possessed before he can bear the spiritual weight of his costume. In line with the potent accoutrements of the Egúngún, its entourage is not composed of average Yoruba traditional worshippers. Throngs of Yoruba religious devotees use the cover of Egúngún Oloolu’s procession as an opportunity to disseminate their sacrifices at locations that would ordinarily be questioned. Deities such as Sango, Ogun, and Oya are embodied through the charms mounted on the regalia of Egúngún Oloolu. For instance, on the head of Egúngún Oloolu is a female skull, while a human bone is openly displayed in his hand. His costume is made from animal skins decked with different charms, with ado, a black wooden comb, cowrie shells, and a horse tail attached to it. Occasionally, the Egúngún dramatically removes the heavy paraphernalia on its head, and the audience can see that the human head beneath is bald. The head and legs are bare. Egúngún Olo‑ olu does not walk while moving. It is believed that the charms in his costume move him. He makes a sound (eeeehhhh) as he moves, to scare people. The charms in the costume of Egúngún Oloolu evoke a fearsome power that scares women away, compelling them to hide when he is in procession, closing their shops so as not to provoke him.18 Conclusion

Using the Oje market women’s relationship with Egúngún as a case study, this chapter dem‑ onstrates the prevention of conflict as a gendered performance during the Egúngún festival in Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria. The chapter argues that despite the incessant conflicts that

110  Funmi Saliu Imaledo

emerge in the public procession of Egúngún in the study area, preventive strategies have helped maintain peace and avoid violence, unlike other areas in Ibadan where Egúngún festivals have resulted in violent conflicts. As the chapter has demonstrated, the current intergender relationships of the performance of Egúngún at the Oje market are grounded in his‑ tory. The performance of conflict prevention between the male and female actors is effective: it ensures that the historic tragedy between the original protagonists (Efunsetan Aniwura and Aare Latoosa) is re-enacted while avoiding the tragic outcomes of the original event. Notes 1 During the Egúngún festival season, newspapers are often filled with reports of conflicts, some of them ending in fatalities. With the advent of social media, many of these conflicts are vide‑ otaped and presented in vivid recordings. 2 Interview with Olatunbosun Oladapo, journalist, broadcaster, writer, musician, Yoruba poet at Agbowo, 2019 (eighty-six years old). 3 Interview with Alhaji Kazeem Owolabi Ifejoye Omotosho at Ode Aje, Oloolu compound 2017. Alhaji Kazeem is the Otun Aare Ogboni Agbaye and the custodian of Egúngún Oloolu. 4 Ibid. 5 Interview with Alhaji Kazeem Owolabi Ifejoye Omotosho at Ode Aje, Oloolu compound 2017. Alhaji Kazeem is the Otun Aare Ogboni Agbaye and the custodian of Egúngún Oloolu (over fifty years old). 6 Personal observation by the author during the 2018 Egúngún festival in Ibadan. 7 Interview with Olori Alagbaa (leader of masquerades) of Ibadan, Chief Dr. Ojetunde Akinleye Asoleke, Mato Compound, Oranyan, 2017 (over sixty years old). 8 Personal observation by the author during the 2018 Egúngún festival in Ibadan. These men claimed they were the ones who tell the Egúngún Oloolu where to go. 9 Interview with Mrs. Fasasi in Oje market, 2018. She sold me schnapps, which I wanted to pre‑ sent to the custodian of Egúngún Oloolu, Otun Ogboni Agbaye at his residence at Ode Aje. 10 Interview with Olori Alagbaa of Ibadan, Chief Dr. Ojetunde Akinleye Asoleke, Mato Com‑ pound, Oranyan, 2017 (over sixty years old). 11 Interview with Alagbaa Fawole Aderinto, Alagbaa Oje, 2018 (sixty-six years old). 12 Interview with Mr. Gideon Adegbenga Alade, Director of Culture Oyo State, State Secretariat, Oyo State, 2019 (over fifty years old). 13 Interview with Olori Alagbaa of Ibadan, Chief Dr. Ojetunde Akinleye Asoleke, Mato Com‑ pound, Oranyan, 2017 (over sixty years old). 14 Interview with Mr. Ayoade Oluwatoyin, at Oje market in Ibadan, 2019 (thirty-nine years old). 15 Interview with Olori Alagbaa of Ibadan, Chief Dr. Ojetunde Akinleye Asoleke, Mato Com‑ pound, Oranyan, 2017. 16 Interview with Alagbaa Fawole Aderinto, Alagbaa Oje, 2018 (sixty-six years old). 17 Interview with Olatunbosun Oladapo, journalist, broadcaster, writer, musician, Yoruba poet at Agbowo, 2019 (eighty-six years old). 18 Interview with Mr. Kola Akintayo, a.k.a. Ode Akoni, Yoruba radio presenter, 2018 (over forty years old).

Bibliography Abimbola, Wande. Ifá Divination Poetry (New York: Nok Publishers Ltd.,  1977), x + 170 pp. Preface, texts, notes, bibliography. Adalemo, A.I. “Small Urban Centres in Nigeria’s Development Strategy; The Role of Rural Mar‑ ket Centres, Small Urban Centres in Rural Development in Africa.” African Studies, 1 (1979): 128–30. Aremu, P.S.O. “Between Myth and Reality: Yoruba Egúngún Costumes as Commemorative Clothes.” Journal of Black Studies, 22, no.1 (1991): 6–14.

Conflict and Peace  111

Aremu P.S.O., Biodun Banjo, O. and Yaya, Olanipekun. “Egúngún Tradition in Trado-Modern So‑ ciety in South-Western Nigeria.” Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 3, no. 1 (2012): 285. Aula, P. and Siira, K. “Organizational Communication and Conflict Management Systems: A So‑ cial Complexity Approach.” Nordicom Review, 31 (2010): 125–41. Awolalu, J.O. Yoruba Beliefs and Sacrificial Rites (London: Longman Group Limited, 1981), 134–77. Ayantayo, J.K. “Socio-Religious Dimensions to Chieftaincy Affairs in Yorubaland, Nigeria.” PrajnaVihara, Journal of Philosophy and Religion. Assumption University of Thailand, 9, no. 2 (2008): 100–17. Bowen, T.J. Africa: Adventure and Missionary Labours in Several Countries of Africa 1849–1956 (London: Frank Cass and Co., 1968), 296. Browley, R.J. (ed.) “Market in the Developing Countries.” A Review Geography, 11, no. 46 (1971): 124–32. Campbell, Bolaji. “Eegun Ogun: War Masquerades in Ibadan in the Era of Modernization.” African Arts 48 (2015): 1. Clément, S. Conflict Prevention in the Balkans: Case Studies of the Fyr Macedonia (Alencon: Insti‑ tute for Security Studies of WEU, 1997). Cordwell, J. “Some Aesthetic Aspects of Yoruba and Benin Cultures.” Ph.D. Thesis, Northwestern University, 1952. Drewal, Henry John. “The Arts of Egúngún among Yoruba Peoples.” African Arts, 11, no. 3 (1978): 97–8. Durkheim, E. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (St. Joseph Ward Swain, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1915), 47. Eben-Saleh, M.A. “Alkalaf: The Evolution of the Urban Built Form of a Traditional Settlement in South-Western Saudi Arabia.” The International Journal of Building Science Application, 34, no. 6 (1999): 549–669. Falola, Toyin. Ibadan: Foundation, Growth and Change 1830–1960 (Ibadan: Bookcraft, 2012), 78–80. Filani, M.O. and Richard, P.R. “Period Market Systems and Rural Development: The Ibarapa Case Study, Nigeria.” Savanna 5, no. 2 (1976): 149–62. Hammersley, M. “Egúngún Masquerades of the Remo Yoruba.” African Arts, 11, no. 3 (1978): 20–7. Hodder, B.W. “Markets in Yorubaland.” In Markets in West Africa: Studies of Markets and Trade Among the Yoruba and Igbo, eds. Hodder, B.W. and Ukwu, U.I. (Ibadan, Nigeria: Ibadan Uni‑ versity Press, 1969), 56. Hybels, S. and Weaver, R. Communicating Effectively (Boston: McGraw Hill, 2001). Johnson, Samuel. The History of the Yorubas from the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the British Protectorates (Lagos: Lagos, C.M.S., 1921), xxii. Kagucia, C.N. “Effect of Avoidance Conflict Resolution Strategy On Employee Performance in Kenyan Public Universities.” International Journal of Management Research & Review, 2, no. 4 (2014): 704–714. Layiwola, ‘Dele. The City State of Ibadan: Text and Context (Ibadan: Institute of African Studies, 2015). Linton, R. “Present World Condition in Cultural Perspective.” In The Science of Man in World Crisis, ed. Linton, R. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1945). Lloyd, P.C. The City of Ibadan, eds. Lloyd, P.C., Mabogunje, A.L. and Awe, B. (Cambridge: Cam‑ bridge University Press, 1967), 4. Mabogunje, A.L. The City of Ibadan, eds. Lloyd, P.C., Mabogunje, A.L. and Awe, B. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 72. Niklas, L.P. Swanström and Mikael, S. Weissmann. Conflict, Conflict Prevention and Conflict Management and Beyond: A Conceptual Exploration, Concept Paper (Washington, DC and Uppsala: Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program, 2005). Nwafor, J.C. “Marketing System and Periodic Market.” Nigeria in Maps, p. 114, (1982).

112  Funmi Saliu Imaledo

Oladimeji, Tirimisiyu. 2001. “Egungun Costumes: Implication of Typology on Masquerading Ac‑ tivities in Ibadan.” Symphony Journal of Arts and Aesthetics 1: 22–30. Olaoba, O.B. Rural-Urban Marketing in Yorubaland: Bodija Market in Ibadan (Ibadan: John Archers Publisher, 2000). Olaoba, O.B. An Introduction to African Legal Culture (Ibadan: Hope Publications, 2001). Olawale, I.A. Pinched, Ditched or Jinxed? The Mantra of African Solutions to African Problems (Ibadan: University Press, 2011). Oloidi, F. Jumoke. “Market Systems and Domestic Trade Activities in Ekiti of Western Nigeria between 1900 and 1960.” International Journal of Social Science and Humanities Research, 2, no. 3, (2014): 251–60. Olupona, J.K. City of 201 Gods: Ile-Ife in Time, Space, and the Imagination (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2011). Olupona, J.K. “A Response to Comments.” Journal of Africana Religions, 2, no. 4 (2014): 502–11. Omole, F.K. “Analysis of Some Factors Affecting Market Patronage in Osun State, Nigeria.” Asian Journal of Business Management, 1, no. 1 (2010): 24–31. Opoku, Kofi A. West African Traditional Religion (Accra: FEP International, 1978), 47. Otite, O. and Olawale, I.A. (eds.) Communal Conflicts in Nigeria: Management, Resolution and Transformation (Ibadan: Spectrum Books, 1999). Oyebode, M. “The Mogaji Institution and Conflict Management in Ibadan.” Ph.D. Thesis, Uni‑ versity of Ibadan, 2012.Poynor, R. “The Egúngún of Owo.” African Arts, 11, no. 3 (1978): 70. Sada, P.O. and McNulty. The Market Traders in the City of Lagos. Urbanization and Problems in Nigeria (Ibadan: University Press, 1978), 63–80. Sada, P.O. McNulty, M.L. and Adalemo, I.A. “Periodic Markets in a Metropolitan Environment: The Example of Lagos, Nigeria.” In Market-Place Trade: Periodic Markets. Hawkers and Traders in Africa, Asia and Latin America, ed. Robert, H.T. Smith (Vancouver, Canada: University of British Columbia, 1978), 155. Sandkuhler, H.J. “Pluralism, Cultures of Knowledge, Transculturality, and Fundamental Rights,” accessed at www.unesco-phil.uni-bremen.de/.../Pluralism-Cultures%20of% 20Knowledge on 17 February 2021. Vagale, L.R. Anatomy of Traditional Markets in Nigeria: Focus on Ibadan City (The Polytechnic, Ibadan: Town Planning Development, 1973). Wallensteen, P. Understanding Conflict Resolution War, Peace and the Global System (London: Sage Publishing, 2002), 16.

9 ÌBÀ FÚN OBÌNRIN Monochromatic Mythography of Yoruba Female Power Kehinde Adepegba

The celebration of female power permeates all facets of Yoruba social, economic, politi‑ cal and religious experience. This gendered potency finds expression in several mediums of Yorùbá art, becoming a legible mythographic pattern that links the people’s past to their present through subtle and obvious motifs. The work of Moyo Okediji draws upon this mythographic visual culture, clearly underscoring female power while articulating some of the challenges faced by women in this contemporary dispensation. To discuss the mythographic complexity of female representation in Yoruba art, this chapter explores a number of selected monochromatic figurations in Okediji’s work, foregrounding the oeuvre in indigenous allusions to music, folklore, mores, proverbs and other genres con‑ textualizing the mythic elaborations of the culture. The Yorùbás’ composite cosmology and abundant natural resources enabled them to develop a fertile mythographic tradition ranging from vivid naturalism to non-figurative abstractions in sub-Saharan Africa (Lawal, 2012, 11). Adepegba and Abati (2017, 342) assert that the artistic wealth of the people is an encapsulation of their peculiar political system, social activities and organization, economic lifestyles, religious beliefs, practices and cosmology. Many scholars have traced Yoruba culture and practices beyond Africa to the diasporic. The matter of gender,1 the state of being male or female in relation to social and cul‑ tural roles that are considered appropriate for men or women, is not simply binary. In every society, a set of behavioral and cultural traits are associated with the social roles of males and females. However rigid the gender culture may appear on the surface, it actu‑ ally is quite fluid on closer examination, since it is derivative of their belief system and worldview. As a result, it is not difficult to understand gender dynamics among the peo‑ ple. One can understand how gender and power interrelate and overlap through socioeconomic duties, religious leadership, family life and other responsibilities. For example, a male Ṣàngó dancer wears a woven female hairdo and paneled skirt, while a regent, usu‑ ally female, wears the male paraphernalia of royalty. For the female gender, which is our focus, the patriarchal structure of many parts of Yorùbá society is also female-sensitive, leading to balance and harmony in the gender roles of both within their society. DOI: 10.4324/9781003389088-10

114  Kehinde Adepegba

The productive cultural interactions between ọkùnrin (male) and obìnrin (female) form the bedrock of efficiency in this society. Ọkùnrin and obìnrin are otherwise referred to as akọ and abo,2 respectively; hence they say: Takọ-tabo la dálé ayé (the world is situ‑ ated on the dynamics of male and female).3 This way, the vicissitudes of life as either positive or negative, good or bad, hard or soft, are premised on the metaphor of Takọtabo. As a result, akọ is often an allegory of something hard, strong or virile, whereas abo is a representation of softness, flexibility and calm. For instance, a hard tree is referred to as akọ igi; thus, they say akọ igi kìí ṣoje4 (a hard tree does not produce sap), and at the beginning of every New Year, they pray for a year of peace and abundance saying: ọdún á ya abo (may the year be female). Abo in this context underscores the inherent ability of the female to facilitate productivity, fruitfulness and accomplishment. This is why they are known as abiyamọ (a-bí-iya-ọmọ)—the ones that give birth to and mother a child. This role is why the circle of life never fails to revolve—a girl is birthed to grow into a bride, marry and become a wife, become pregnant and later become a mother. Her daughter in turn grows up, gets married and bears female children to begin the cycle again. Of course, this narrative operates only on the surface: in reality, things do not operate with such rigid continuity, as individuals face specific challenges that complicate personal narratives. In spite of these complications, however, there is a socially constructed architecture underlying the male–female cosmological unity. An Odù Ifá,5 known as Ogbè Atẹ̀, ex‑ plains the genesis of marriage between ọkùnrin and obìnrin as follows: Ogbè wá tẹ̀ kára ó rò. wọ́n Á díá fún Yemòwó6 Tí yóò ṣaya Ọbàtálá 7 Níjọ́ tí yóò kó gbogbo obìnrin sẹ´yìn Lọ sílúù ọkùnrin Á ní kó rú ò. wá mẹ´wàá Ẹyẹlé mẹ´wàá àti ẹgbàáwàá Kí gbogbo ọkùnrin lè máa wá wọn Nígbà tí wọ́n bá dé ò. hun Yemòwó gbọ́, ó rú. Ogbè Atè ̣ brings comfort to them. It was divined for Yemòwó, who was to become the wife of Ọbàtálá. On the day she took all women along with her to the town where only men live, she was asked to offer ten branches of palm fronds, ten pigeons and ten thousand cowries, so that men would court them when they got there. Yemòwó adhered, offered the sacrifices. This mythical explanation narrates the origins of marriage when ten women who were living in their own realm decided to travel to the land of men in search of husbands.

Ìbà Fún Obìnrin  115

Yemòwó, their leader, performed the rituals and led the other nine as instructed and prescribed by Ifá. The men, seeing women for the first time, were amazed by their beauty and pursued them. The men struggled with them and brought them to Ọbàtálá, the head, who took Yemòwó as his wife and shared the remaining nine women with the men. This narrative, which seems patriarchal, must not be taken at face value, because it was the desire of the women to be courted in the first place, and the strug‑ gle between the men and women is a dramatization of the courting rituals. Since then, the tradition of marriage has been established, and women are valued in large part for their ability to bring forth children. Hence, they are treasures deserving of care as understood from their oríkì (praise names), which include the following: Àjíkẹ´ (the one who is cared for from the wake of the morning), Aníkẹ´ (the one who is cherished for the purpose of being cared for), Adukẹ´ (the one whose care is competed for) and Apinkẹ´ (the one whose care is a shared responsibility). Another story was told of a bachelor (àpọ́n) from the same odù, Ogbè Atẹ̀, who had no woman yet requested that the òrìṣà8 grant him a child: Ẹni ń wá ìwákúwàá á rí ìríkùúrìí Ló díá fún àpọ́n tó fàìlóbìnrin nílé Tó ń tọrọ ọmọ lọ́wọ́ òrìṣà. Anyone who seeks the impossible will get the unpalatable. This was divined for a bachelor who did not have a woman yet petitioned the òrìṣà for a child. The àpọ́n became pregnant with a false fetus, which inflicted agony on him until he ap‑ peased the gods. The Yorùbá believe that looking down on women and their roles in society is to work against the tide and may spell doom in the society. Having a wife is seen as an important socio-cultural practice. As they say, àpọ́nlé kò sí fọ́ba tí kò ní olorì9 (there is no honor for a king without a queen). An Òsẹ´ Ìtúrá verse quoted by Abiodun (2014, 102) corroborates this as follows: Àìní obìnrin kò ṣe é dákẹ´ lásán Bí ó bá dákẹ´, ẹnu lo ń yọ ni Níní ẹjọ́, àìní ò . ràn Not having a woman calls for taking quick action. Keeping quiet may lead to trouble. Having a wife, or not having, is a challenge. Makinde (2004, 165) affirms that a woman in Yorùbá culture occupies various positions—a mother, a wife, a daughter, a priestess or even a mythological figure. He says further that the way a female is perceived depends on the position she occupies. This is indicative of how the roles played by women are wide-ranging and interrelated. Different perceptions about women and their divergent roles are reflected through orin (songs), oríkì (praise chants), iṣẹ´-ọnà (works of art), èdè (language) and è ̣sìn (religion), among others.

116  Kehinde Adepegba

Songs, proverbs and other maxims that accentuate the many important roles and val‑ ues of Yorùbá women abound. They include but are not limited to the following: i Ìyá ni wúrà iyebíye Tí à ko lè fówo rà O loyún mi fóṣù mẹsàn-àn O pò . nmí fọ´dún mẹ´ta Ìyá ni wúrà iyebíye Tí à ko lè fówo rà Mother is precious gold that cannot be bought with money. She carried me in her belly for nine months. She carried me on her back for three years. Mother is precious gold that cannot be bought with money. ii Fòro-foro imú ìyàwó Sàn ju iyàrá òfìfo lọ To have an ugly wife is better than an empty room. iii òrìṣà bí ìyá kò sí No god that can be compared to mother iv Gbẹ̀dè ̣ gbẹdẹ bí ogún ìyà Ánini lára koko bí ogún baba. Pleasant like a mother’s inheritance, Difficult like a father’s inheritance. v Bì mò ba lowó Màá tọ´ju ìyá mi Ìyá jìyà nítorí ọmọ If I am rich, I will take care of my mother. Mothers suffer so much for their children’s sake. vi Ọmọ tó mọ` ìyá rẹ lójú o Òṣì yóò tá ọmọ náà pa Ọmọ tó mò . ìyá rẹ lójú o Òṣì yóò tá ọmọ náà pa Ìyá tó jìyà pò . lorí rẹ Ìyá tó jìyà pò . lorí rẹ

Ìbà Fún Obìnrin  117

Ọmọ tó mò . ìyá rẹ lójú o Òṣì yóò tá ọmọ náà pa A child that scorns his mother will die in destitution. A child that scorns his mother will die in destitution. The mothers who suffer so much for you, the mothers who suffer so much for you. A child that scorns his mother will die in destitution. It is tempting to hyperbolize the seemingly patriarchal nature of contemporary Yorùbá so‑ ciety and the seeming domination of men as Ọkọ (husband), Bàbá (father), Baálé (family head), Baálẹ` (head of quarter) and Ọba (king). The power of Yorùbá women in control‑ ling the economy, overcoming the rigors of childbearing and child-caring, home-making and caregiving, to mention a few, makes them no less important but complementary within the market, religious organizations and political spheres of society. Socio-politi‑ cally, a lot of work has been left to women in Yorùbá society. They are now chief execu‑ tive officers, party leaders, leaders of thought, etc. This puts them at an advantage and makes them indispensable. Consequently, the Yorùbá often affirm: Obìnrin kò sí lẹ´gbẹ´, agbo kan bí ibo, wọ´n de inú ẹgbẹ´ tán gbogbo rè ̣ darinrin (When women are absent in a society, it becomes sour; but when they appear in the society, it becomes cheerful). Rigor‑ ous and stressful activities have been traced to their anatomical and physiological compo‑ sition (Sesan, 2013, 175). Accordingly, they possess the ability to carry pregnancy, deliver children, breastfeed, manage homes, cook and care for their homes, all at the same time. Yorùbá women are also active in trade and markets as revealed by their titles, such as Ìyálájé (trade leader) and Ìyálọ´jà10 (market leader), in roles which help them to make important economic and leadership decisions. Through these activities, Falola (2018, 531) asserts that women serve as valuable links between the farms and the households—that is, between the producers and consumers. In consequence, they become the key to family ex‑ pansion, playing a leading role in the creation of household wealth and overall prosperity. The women are not seen only as market leaders; rather, they are regarded as goddesses of commerce, trade and business, who deserve to be worshipped in the same way that fathers are venerated as Ègúngún of the household. This fact is upheld by the Ọ̀wọ́rín méjì11 corpus quoted by Abimbola (1977, xxiv) thus: … Bàbá ẹni lEégún ilé … Ìyá ẹni lÒòs ̣à ọjà … One’s father is the Egúngún of the household … One’s mother is the goddess of the market. The women are not exempted from religious roles among the people. For example, in the Ògbóni or Òṣùgbó cult, the position of the Erelú12 is very important, and there is

118  Kehinde Adepegba

a saying that bí kò sí Erelú, Òṣùgbó kò lè dáwo ṣe (without the Erelú, the Òṣùgbó cult cannot perform its rituals). Also, Ìyáàgan13 is a female title holder who is next in com‑ mand to Aláàágbà,14 who shares in the secret of Ègúngún society. Bí ègúngún bá ṣubú, Ìyámọdẹ15 ni yóò gbé e (when an ègúngún falls to the ground, Ìyámọdẹ` is responsible for lifting him up) is a proverb that underscores the important duty reserved for Ìyámọdẹ`. Another saying Bi ègúngún ilé ẹni bá bèèrè àgbò, ìyà ẹni làá fà á l é lọ´wọ´ (when one’s family ègúngún demands a ram, it is usually handed over to one’s mother) shows the acceptance of women’s role as mediator between the person making a sacrifice and the divinity or ancestor accepting the sacrifice. It is obvious from the foregoing that women occupy imperative positions in Yorùbá society. Olajubu (2004, 43) stresses that neither the male nor the female can claim a monopoly over the ‘private’ or ‘public’ domain as they may do in other cultures. Therefore, the Yorùbá avow: kí ọkùnrin rí ejò, kí obìnrin pa á kí ejò ṣá ti kú (If a man sees a snake and a woman kills it, what matters is for the snake to die). Though there is devolution of power among the people, and power belongs to both men and women, there is no doubt that agbára obìnrin (female power) subsists. This is in line with Fagg et al. (1982, 114), who explain: Yoruba society is patrilineal and patrilocal. The line of descent is traced through the husband’s family, and women live in their husbands’ compounds. But the continuity of their husband’s lineage depends upon the woman, who comes from another house and another descent group. The wife must submit to her husband, yet he is dependent upon her . . . for the children he needs to preserve his father’s family. Terms such as ‘patrilineal’ and ‘patrilocal’ may be inadequate to fully convey the com‑ plexity of the Yoruba gender equilibrium. Power is not limited to coercive force alone but extends also to the ability to effect change. Considering the many visible and invisible, formal and informal roles that women play in effecting change in society, power among the Yorùbá confers privileges as well as responsibilities (Olajubu, 2004, 46). Agbára obìnrin was explained in an Ifa literary corpus known as Òsẹ´ Òtúrá thus: seventeen deities (sixteen male and one female) were sent into the human world by Olódùmarè to accomplish essential missions. These sixteen deities neglected the female deity known as Òṣun in sacred knowledge and decision-making. Unfortunately, things did not go as ex‑ pected as there was turbulence, famine and pestilence in the world. When they reported back to Olódùmarè for a solution to their predicaments, Olódùmarè told them to seek the forgiveness of Ọ` ṣun. It was only after then that things returned to normal on the earth (Olajubu, 2013, 50). This reveals the inevitability of women in the affairs of men. Abiodun (1989, 12) quotes Verger to emphasize the above allegory as follows: Ó ní gbogbo ohun tí ènìyàn bá ń ṣe Tí kò bá fi ti obìnrin kún un Ó ní kò lè ṣe é ṣe Ó ní kí wọ́n ó máa fi ibà fún obìnrin Ó ní tí wọ́n bá ti fi ibà fún obìnrin Ilé ayé yóò máa tòrò (Verger, 1965, 218)

Ìbà Fún Obìnrin  119

Everything that a man does, if he does not consider the woman, it will not be successful. Homage must be paid to the woman. When homage is paid to the woman, the world will be at peace. Female Power and Art among the Yorùbá

Pogoson (1991, 28) asserts that the Yorùbá have a rich varied artistic tradition, more copious than any other ethnic group in Nigeria. Their art is not static, and so Okediji (1997, 166) opines that, like their dynamic culture, Yoruba art manifests, at its best, the fullest possible sense of perpetual emigration because it is in motion, hence the constant change and transformation of their art forms. Despite such continuous transformation, the art still performs contemporary aesthetic functions. Yorùbá art has revealed a lot about gender as entrenched in their belief system. Di‑ vision of labor among the people, in regard to the type of art to be done by men and women, is evident. Some art practices are exclusive to males or females, while others are for both sexes. For instance, women are found to be involved in pottery, textiles, mural painting and weaving, as well as their sales, whereas males are involved in woodcarv‑ ing, smithing and metalwork as well as weaving. In artistic representations, women have always been depicted in their positive ideal as oníwàpẹ`lẹ´ (patient), afínjú (neat), arẹwà (beautiful), abiyamọ (productive), akínkanjú (industrious) and òrìs ̣à (goddess), to men‑ tion a few. They are portrayed as profound users of arts like waist beads, necklaces, Yorùbá fabric and dress types and other artistic adornments. Sexuality, marriage and maternity are all given great emphasis in story, legend, ritual, ceremony, education and art (Brain, 1980, 232). As such, women are depicted as mothers and wives in the prime of their life, with protruding and erect breasts, which symbolize fecundity, and attractive hairdos to underscore their beauty. So women are mostly de‑ picted with babies on their backs (Figure 9.1), kneeling (ìkúnlẹ`) to show humility (ìrẹ`lẹ`) and at the same time presenting offerings and venerating a god. While men are typically portrayed as warriors, medicine men, horse riders and kings, women are depicted as mysterious energies who possess spiritual power. Such images typically use birds to represent the ever-present ‘great Mothers’16 who are capable of us‑ ing their power as aṣe-búburú-ṣe-rere (doers of evil and good) to guarantee orderliness and harmony in society. Drewal and Drewal (1983, xv) affirm this In line with the Yorùbá belief, women, primarily elderly women, possess certain ex‑ traordinary power equal to or greater than that of the gods and ancestors, a view that is reflected in praises acknowledging them as ‘our mothers’, ‘the gods of society’, and ‘the owners of the world’. They can bring health, wealth, and fertility to the land and its people, or they can bring disaster—epidemic, drought, pestilence. At other times, women are depicted with men as couples who are engaged in some social, cultural and family activities. The popular Ẹdan Ògbóni/Òṣùgbó (bronze staff) is usually a depiction of twin figures (male and female) conjoined by a chain. Fagg et al. (1982, 186)

120  Kehinde Adepegba

FIGURE 9.1 Moyo

Okediji, Tori´ ọmọ (For the Child’s Sake). Pen and ink on paper, 2016.

affirm that the bronze staff signifies the interdependence of male and female in the perpetu‑ ation of life and the preservation of social order among the people. Ère ìbejì17 is another example of a couple rendered in wood for the memory of the spirits of dead twins. More so, images of women are a regular feature of ègúngún, ẹpa and gẹ`lẹ`dẹ´ masks and headdresses with all of their paraphernalia of beauty, such as gèlè (headwraps), irun dídì (coiffures) and ilà (face markings). Of course, the costume of the Àgbó masquerade tradition of the coastal Ìjẹ`bú, which is a celebration of the water goddess, portrays a female figure with a beautiful headdress, with (or without) facial markings, elegant hairdo and cloth regalia showing protruding buttocks that enhance the beauty of the masquerade (Adepegba, 2016, 36). Gẹ`lẹ`dẹ´ is a masquerade art tradition dedicated to female power among the Yorùbá. Lawal (1996, 71, 73) notes that Gẹ`lẹ`dẹ´ may be performed for any òrìṣà or cultural hero. Its most popular function is to placate Ìyá ńlá (the great mothers) and their earthly disciples, the ‘powerful mothers’. He says further that most Yorùbá myths por‑ tray Ìyá ńlá, the grand patron of àjẹ´ (witches), as a pleasant and fashionable woman and lover of art: Ìbà ìyá mi òṣòròn`gà Ìyá ẹlẹ´yínjú ẹgẹ´ … Ìyá ọlọ´pọ´n idẹ Alábẹ`bẹ` idẹ Afínjú ẹyẹ òru tó ń fò lẹ´gẹ´lẹ´gẹ´

Ìbà Fún Obìnrin  121

Homage to my mother òṣòròn`gà. Mother with charming eyes … The owner of a brass tray, and the owner of a brass fan. The immaculate bird of the night that flies elegantly. Since one of the principal occupations of Yorùbá women is trading, many Gẹ`lẹ`dẹ´ masks depict market women with wares on their heads, such as trays or containers of foodstuff and other commodities. In view of the spiritual powers of Yorùbá women, it is not sur‑ prising that many Gẹ`lẹ`dẹ´ provide an elaborate aesthetic and symbolic system by which the concept and images of women and their spiritual and social roles in Yorùbá society and culture are explored (Drewal and Drewal, 1983, xv). There is no doubt that the celebration of women is important in Yoruba culture, as the discussion here has shown. Yorùbá art provides an insight into their gender philoso‑ phy and the powers attributed to women. Yorùbá artists in contemporary times portray women in different forms based on their understanding of their past and present roles in culture. Artists also portray them in their contemporary struggles against oppression by men and the society at large, through rape and sexual assault, domestic violence, poverty, lack of education for girls and early marriage, among others. Recent expressive mytho‑ graphs by Moyo Okediji, a Yorùbá artist in the American Diasporas, reflect the different contemporary pressures facing women in Nigerian society through the prism of Yoruba socio-aesthetics, transcending space and time. Moyo Okediji

Moyo Okediji was born in 1956 in Lagos, Nigeria. He attended primary school in Ile-Ife, the spiritual home of the Yorùbá from 1962 to 1968, and proceeded to Oyo, his home‑ town in South-Western Nigeria, for his secondary school education at Olivet Heights Bap‑ tist School. Okediji returned to the prestigious University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University), Ile-Ife, Nigeria, for his bachelor’s degree in Fine Art specializing in Painting, and graduating in 1977. His career took him to the University of Benin, Benin City, Nige‑ ria, where he obtained his Master of Fine Art in Painting, Art Theory and Visual Culture. After his first degree, the young Okediji was hired as a Graduate Assistant in the De‑ partment of Fine Arts at the University of Ife. His training in both Ife and Benin art schools afforded him the opportunity to interact with the great Rowland Abiodun, Babatunde Lawal, John Ojo, Solomon Wangboje and Ugbodaga-Ngu, who were instrumental to his formation as a theorist and experimental and explorative Yorùbá artist. Back at Ile-Ife, he co-founded the Onaism movement in 1989 with Kunle Filani, Bolaji Campbell, Tola Wewe and Babatunde Nasiru. The group was committed to the promotion of Yorùbá fundamentals and an experience of art guided by the Yoruba principles of Ọna or crea‑ tivity. His other influences included the creative nuances of his father Oladejo Okediji, a renowned Yoruba creative writer, and his grandmother, who was a traditional muralist. His major contributions to art theory and practice include the use of ‘semioptics’, which recognizes the intersection of the literary tradition of semiotics with the evocative associations generated by the sense of sight and the conscious rejection of art materials from former colonial sources by experimenting with alternative natural earth pigments sourced from his localities and christened terrachrome (Campbell, 2008, 167, 168).

122  Kehinde Adepegba

In 1992 he left Nigeria for the United States, where he obtained his PhD in African and African Diaspora Art History at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Today, Okediji is a notable and erudite art historian with extensive experience as a lecturer in more than seven universities in Nigeria and the United States. Okediji has been on the frontlines of promoting African art using Yorùbá philosophy and theories. He has authored and coauthored essays in recognized journals and written many books on American and African (especially Yorùbá) arts. A multi-media artist, he has taken part in many solo and joint exhibitions and curated many art exhibitions in Nigeria and overseas. He is passionate about issues of gender and the problems facing women in Africa. His recent expressive mythographic drawings, some of which have been selected for analysis in this chapter, address the state of woman‑ hood in Africa, especially in Nigeria and among the Yorùbá. Moyo Okediji’s Monochromatic Mythographs and Female Power

Five of Okediji’s drawings are selected and analyzed here using formal and socio-­ contextual methods with the aim of investigating their significance as elaborations of female power in Yoruba visual culture. The drawings are recent expressive mythographic musings by Okediji. They are mythographic because they draw on ideas resonating within Yoruba mythic imagination, while simultaneously investigating contemporary ex‑ periences of the people. I have given them titles that elucidate this discussion’s analytical thrust. Okediji considers it appropriate for beholders and critics to freely interrogate his work from their own perspectives. All the drawings selected for the analysis share one distinctive feature: they portray women with guns. The analysis speculates on the rela‑ tionship between the women depicted in the drawings and the object that unifies them within the particular era on which Okediji focuses his gaze. In a culture where nobody carries a gun, it is particularly striking to see guns in the more than a hundred drawings that Okediji completed during this phase. Torí o.mo . (for the Child’s Sake)

This work (Figure 9.1) reveals a trekking mother whose child is strapped to her back, with a sizable load inside a container on her head. The elegantly dressed mother is de‑ picted as a hawker eking out a living to provide for her baby. The woman recognizes her need for a gun to boost her power on the street. Her most precious possession, it appears, is the baby on her back, and all of her activities seem geared toward the singular task of protecting her baby. The Yoruba idea explored here includes Torí ọmọ la ṣe ń ṣíṣe: we work to provide for our young ones. She is apparently prepared to do everything to keep her child alive, including carrying a gun for protection. Okediji also explores the mythog‑ raphy of Ọlọ´mọkan, the one-child mother. A Yoruba lullaby explains the motivation for such resilience: Bi mó ṣe ń ṣọmọ gẹ`gẹ` Tèmi yé mi Bí ṣú ọmọ bá jiná o

Ìbà Fún Obìnrin  123

Kó mamà jó mi lẹ´nu o Bi mó ṣe ń ṣọmọ gẹ`gẹ` Tèmi yé mi For the care I shower on my child, I know why. When it is time to eat of my labor, may my mouth not get scalded. For the care I shower on my child, I know why. Páńsá18 kò fura (Vigilance)

This work (Figure 9.2) explores the mythography of Ìfura, or vigilance, in Yoruba cos‑ mology. It depicts a woman taking her destiny into her own hands in the face of uncer‑ tainty. She represents the woman responding to an era that is not favorably disposed to her relevance, despite her contributions, as well as her determination to survive, even thrive, in this environment. She is defiant, prepared and vigilant to avoid falling victim to a society that might prey on her or exploit her. She simply adorns her body with the

FIGURE 9.2 Moyo

Okediji, Pánsá kò fúnra (Vigilance). Pen and ink on paper, 2016.

124  Kehinde Adepegba

ba`n`tẹ`, the most basic attire associated with Yoruba women. Yet, she arms herself to the teeth with a rifle, poised and alert with a blatant display of her power consciousness. Her attitude bespeaks a cautionary Yorùbá proverb: Pánsá kò fúnra Ó já síná Ajà kò fúnra Àjà jìn Bí onílé kò bá fura Olè ni yóò kó o A suspended calabash that is not cautious falls into the fire. A ceiling that is not cautious caves in. If the landlady is not vigilant, robbers will surely pack up her property.

Kárìnkápọ ` (Togetherness)

The work (Figure 9.3) reveals four figures—three pregnant women, two of them car‑ rying guns, and a child—most likely returning from the stream with pots of water on

FIGURE 9.3 Moyo

Okediji, Ìjàgbara (Emancipation). Pen and ink on paper, 2016.

Ìbà Fún Obìnrin  125

their heads. Conscious of their vulnerability in this rural space, they walk together. Here, Okediji explores the concept of Ka´rìnka´pò . or group security. Pregnant women are par‑ ticularly vulnerable: they have their own bodies and the lives of the unborn to protect. When they move together, they support one another, as there are more hands and arms to deploy in the case of an emergency, to avert any potential harm. Their singularity of purpose—that is, moving from one place to another to run their errands—forms the basis of their determination, just as their number and the power of the arms they carry provide them the justification for feeling safe. In addition, Okediji alludes to the proverb reiterat‑ ing that kárìn kápò . , yiyẹ´ ni ń yẹni (walking together benefits all). Ìyá, o.mo. àti ajá re. (Mother, Child and Her Dog)

This work (Figure 9.4) muses on the proverb of Bí a ko` ba´ ré. ni fé. hìntì, ka´ tẹra mọ́s.̣é e ̣ni: when we have nobody to support us, we must focus more precisely and work even harder. Okediji explores the struggles of a single mother in contemporary Africa. She works hard to support not only herself but also her child and their family dog, their only companion. The child and dog are not burdens: they share her experiences, and they provide her addi‑ tional strength, in a new Africa where traditional values are eroding and global pressures compel her to function as the head of her household, working hard without any social or mental support. The attribute of the woman as a caregiver abandoned by her husband

Okediji, Ìyà, ọmọ àti ajà rẹ (Mother, Son and Her Dog). Pen and ink on paper, 2016.

FIGURE 9.4 Moyo

126  Kehinde Adepegba

and probably her husband’s family is emphasized as she is armed with a gun as a symbol of her defense. We can only imagine where the men in her life have gone. Who fathered the child walking behind her? Who is responsible for her pregnancy? Without a social network to protect her, the gun becomes a symbol of self-reliance. Abiyamo. (True Mother)

This work depicts a proud mother breastfeeding her child in a battle-ready mode. Infants, when depicted in African art, often appear in a secondary role, as representations of the mother’s productivity (Vogel, 1997, 13). She is courageous and caring, acutely aware of her motherly responsibilities, which she discharges irrespective of any adversity she finds herself in. She is not ashamed to be a mother in an environment that is hostile to the plight of women. In Yoruba art, mothers shown nursing or carrying children represent the long weaning period, a time of sexual abstinence and suppressed menstruation, which is seen as a state of purity or ritual cleanliness (Drewal, 1978, 564). As they say: Abiyamọ kìí gbọ´ ẹkún ọmọ rẹ` ko ma tatí were (A true mother reacts swiftly to the cry of her child). Her commitment to breastfeeding, when she is occupied with other pressing issues, is a demonstration of motherly love. As she feeds and looks after her child, she is not simply a mother to this infant but also a symbol of motherhood to the community encouraging her to persevere, with this folksong Ìyá mi kú iṣẹ´ o Abiyamọ ẹ kú orọ` ọmọ Ìyá mi kú iṣẹ´ o Mother, a good job you are doing. The one who births and cares for children. Mother, a good job you are doing. One of the reasons children are so cherished by mothers is the Yorùbá belief that these children, both male and female, are regarded as their symbolic husbands. This is why Yorùbá mothers eulogize their children, male or female, from cradle to adulthood as ọkọ mi (my husband). These drawings, selected from a suite of about 100 that Okediji produced in 2016, address the state of womanhood in Africa, in Nigeria and in the Yoruba nation, where many women are caught in the wheel of tradition that is turning under the drive of rap‑ idly changing conditions. These works are global visual commentaries on the challenges of gender struggles, and they place emphasis on the mythic aspect of being a woman.19 They are referred to as mythographs that elaborate on the mythic past and an uncertain future. When Okediji produced these drawings in 2016, he hardly realized that the images were prophetic. The Yoruba part of Nigeria was quite stable in terms of security then, and nobody envisaged the banditry, molestation and incessant kidnapping that is now the order of the day in Nigeria, where women are the main victims and casualties. Inse‑ curity, not just in urban spaces but more especially in rural and pastoral environments where women often find themselves, is now commonplace. It gets worse daily, hence the

Ìbà Fún Obìnrin  127

declaration of a state of emergency on rape and sexual assault in Nigeria, as reported in Global Voices on 3 July 2020 (Isiaka, 2020). Okediji’s drawings dwell on myths associated with the ability of women to regenerate and extend the life of the human species, an existential role that they have ably performed for ages. They not only nurture life but are part and parcel of its continuation. Okediji spotlights the vulnerability of women in Africa, in an era that is becoming unabashedly patriarchal, in which the economic, political and religious domains are increasingly dom‑ inated by men and their phallocratic interests are prioritized. His drawings expose the toxic environment that unmitigated patriarchy precipitates in neocolonial states like Ni‑ geria as well as the way that women are violated, abused and controlled by men. Okediji turns our attention to the new legislation written and interpreted against women (for example, Section 61 of part I, 1999 Constitution of Nigeria) in which the female body is materialized and commodified, almost defiled (see Braimah, 2014).20 In the new legisla‑ tion passed in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, where decisions about women are made, the interests of women are hardly the primary concern. Okediji’s drawings are politically engaged observations that stem from his commitment to representing the voiceless and the helpless visually. Through these mythographic contemplations, Okediji emphasizes tibi-tire (the evil and the good). This is especially evident in the use of black-and-white contrasts in the representation of a dichotomy like good and evil. Between the black and white, he introduces mediating grays through carefully spaced lines. Okediji’s creative innovation with the use of simple black ink on white paper results in a suite of whimsi‑ cal images that manage to express amusing insights from these unsettling, severe and tension-soaked circumstances. Okediji’s works are influenced by his Yorùbá background. He is conscious of his ori‑ gins and is well nurtured in the culture of his people. He is therefore addressing a global subject through his culture. In the drawing, he employs Yorùbá distortion of proportion whereby emphasis is placed on the head as the locus of human power and destiny. The exaggerated heads signify the power possessed by Yorùbá women. Also, the depiction of nudity where female breasts are rendered bare, erect and voluptuous is a symbol of fascination and fecundity as one of the attributes of Yorùbá art that he adopts. Through these drawings, Okediji makes the woman’s body a medium that interacts with and com‑ plements the AK-47 rifles that they carry in these drawings. There is a redistribution of power when women control the gun, with its phallic associations, in a situation where the men renege on their roles in the family. These images of weapon-toting women show their readiness to defend themselves against domestic violence, rape and sexual assault. Essentially, the works are visual proverbs that are meant to be excavated beyond the first level of meaning. The artist also employs a stylistic device known as ètò (organization), which entails the profound ability to put various parts together in a unified way. The elements that were cohesively and successfully organized in the works are ilà (lines), àwòrán (patterns) and oríṣìí ẹ̀yà onígun (shapes). The heavily linear, texturized patterns on the figures reveal the complexity associated with women. The female figures are organized to emphasize ìwà (character) and ìwà (existence), all following the visual process of ọnà lílé (defining forms), àlétúnlé (detailing) and dídán21 (smoothening). The painstaking detail of the bod‑ ily components contributes to the visual pleasures and sociological elements embedded in the composition. All of this he accomplishes with ojú ọnà (artistic creativity) and ojú

128  Kehinde Adepegba

inú (inner eyes), which fill the meticulously composed and executed works with cultureimperative meanings. The artist’s draughtsmanship is impeccable, as he displays masterful manual dexterity. The drawings enact movements that transport the figures from two to three dimensions, bringing the viewer’s eyes into the process of creative play. One is made to feel empathy for these women who are the victims of the subtle and severe violence meted out by men on a daily basis. The daily routines of women are depicted to reflect how down to earth they are in the face of atrocities. Also worthy of note is Okediji’s fusion of tradition with modernity in his mythographs to stress the dynamism of the gender-conscious Yoruba culture and society. Okediji’s monochromatic mythographs explored here situate his compositions within the representation of female power in Yorùbá aesthetics and cosmographic consciousness. These works raise the gender concerns and tensions that are gradually emerging among the people, as Oyeronke Oyewumi (1997) suggests in her seminal work The Invention of Women, a text that also uses the Yoruba culture as the basic subject of analytical engage‑ ment. With these drawings, importantly, Okediji does not position himself as the voice of women; he is clearly still an outsider unable to replicate women’s perspectives. Yet, he is a visual crusader raising concerns over his perception of women’s vulnerability. What is most fascinating is Okediji’s prophetic gaze. His drawings offer no solutions, but he appears to see the problems well before they are visible to others. It is this presci‑ ent vision that sets this series of 100 drawings apart in Okediji’s work. He sees a present and a future that appear problematic as the theater for a conflict of gender that has given rise to the ‘Me Too’ movements that Black women named as early as 2006. His drawings compel viewers to think a step beyond the images and contemplate a more gender-friendly society. The Yorùbá believe that women are e ỵ in ayé (eggs of the world) and must be protected so that they do not break. Okediji’s mythic drawings warn us to prepare for the women to defend themselves by any means available. Notes 1 Gender to the Yoruba has nothing to do with character. The culture regards the sexes as equal and complimentary of each other, and characteristics are attributable to the individual and not to gender (Olarinmoye, 2013, 146). 2 Akọ and abo appear to have root connections with okó (penis) and òbò (vagina), respectively. Okó and òbò are the clear-cut physiological difference between the sexes among the Yorùbá. There are overlaps in other characteristics of male and female among the people. 3 Every English translation in this paper is mine. 4 ‘Akọ igi kìí ṣoje’ explains the expected brave posturing of the male gender. It is equal to saying: ọkùnrin kìí sunkún. 5 Odù is one of the 256 literary corpuses of Ifá and numerous verses. Ifá is a deity responsible for providing solutions to human problems through divination and the prescription of appropriate propitiations. It provides information about myths, history, culture, religion, healing, philoso‑ phy, the cosmos, etc. of the Yorùbá. 6 Yemòwó is considered to be the wife of Ọbàtálá when the arch-divinity was leaving on earth. The names Òdù, Oòduà, Yemoja and Yemòwó refer to different manifestations of the same phenomenon (Lawal, 1996, 73). 7 Ọbàtálá is the arch-divinity who is connected to the creation story and the molding of human forms. It is otherwise referred to as Òrìṣà-ńlá (see Awolalu, 1981, 134–77). 8 Òrìṣà here is a reference to Ọbàtálá (Òrìṣà-ńlá), who is believed to be the giver of children.

Ìbà Fún Obìnrin  129

9 Olorì is the title for a woman who becomes an Ọba’s wife or the wife of a man who becomes an Ọba. 10 In recent times, men are also traders in the market but they are called Bàbálọ´jà as opposed to Ìyálọ´jà. 11 Ọ̀wọ́rín méjì is one of the Odù (corpuses) of Ifá. This odù highlights the importance of ẹnu (mouth) as a god and makes reference to Bàbá as Egúngún of the family and ìyá as òòs ̣à in the market. 12 Erelú is an important title given to a woman in the Ògbóni or Òṣùgbó house. 13 Ìyáàgan’ is the title reserved for a woman in ègúngún society. She shares in the secret of the ègúngún society. 14 Aláàágbà, usually male, is the head of the ègúngún society in each community. Hence, he is referred to as ‘Aláàágbà baba ègúngún’. 15 Ìyámọdẹ is a title reserved for a woman in the ègúngún. It is usually next in command to Iyaagan. 16 ‘Great Mothers’ are otherwise referred to as àjẹ´ or eníyán (Abimbola, 1977, 166), and they possess extraordinary powers with which they control the universe. 17 Ère ìbejì carvings may also depend on which of the sexes they are made for. That is, two male, two female, or male and female twins. 18 Pánsá is a calabash tray that serves as a drier of leaves, seeds, etc. It is usually suspended above an earthen stove in a local kitchen. 19 Personal communication on WhatsApp with Moyo Okediji on 5 March 2018. 20 T.S. Braimah states, ‘Firstly, Part 1 Section 61 of the 1999 Constitution should be modified; secondly, there should be a uniform age set for a child to marry in all of Nigeria’s legislation that deals with children; thirdly, while pressure should be put on all Nigerian states which are yet to domesticate the Child Rights Act, there is a need for a new Act (Prohibition of Child Marriage Act) which, if enacted, should automatically apply to all states in Nigeria in order to protect the girl child.’ http://www.saflii.org/za/journals/AHRLJ/2014/24.html (cited June 10, 2022). 21 The five stages of Yoruba woodcarving are ṣíṣá, onà lílé, àlétúnlé, dídán and fínfín (Adepegba, 2007, 20). Moyo Okediji (personal communication) affirms that he makes use of three of the five stages—onà lílé, àlétúnlé and dídán—in his monochromatic mythographs.

Bibliography Abimbola, W. 1977. Ifá Divination Poetry. New York: Nok Publishers Ltd. Abiodun, R. (1989). ‘Woman in Yoruba Religious Images.’ African Languages and Cultures, 2 (1):1–18. Retrieved on 24th March 2021. Abiodun, R. (2014). Yoruba Art and Language, Seeking the African in African Art. African. New York: Cambridge University Press. Adepegba, K. (2007). Contemporary Wood Carving. Lagos: Aramanda Creations. Adepegba, K. (2016). A Study of Agbo Remireke Masquerade Costumes in Agbowa Ikosi, Lagos State. M.A. Thesis in African Studies, O.A.U. Ile-Ife. Adepegba, K. and Abati, O.I. (2017) ‘Yoruba Woodcarving: New Characteristics New Uses.’ Journal of Humanities and Cultural Studies, 2: 341–56. Awolalu, J.O. (1981) Yoruba Beliefs and Sacrificial Rites. London: Longman Group Limited, 134–77. Braimah, T.S. (2014). ‘Child marriage in Northern Nigeria: Section 61 of Part I of the 1999 Constitution and the protection children against child marriage.’ African Human Rights Law, 2: 474–488. Brain, R. (1980). Art and Society in Africa. London and New York: Longman Group Limited. Campbell, Bolaji. 2008. Painting for the Gods: Art and Aesthetics of Yoruba Religious Murals. Trenton, N.J.: African World Press. Cole, H.M. (1985). Mother and Child in African Sculpture. Los Angeles: County Museum of Art. Drewal, H.J. (1978). ‘Art and the Perception of Women in Yoruba Culture.’ Cahiers d’etudes Africanes, 68(xvii–4): 545–67.

130  Kehinde Adepegba

Drewal, J.D. and Drewal, M.T. (1983). Gelede: Art and Female Power Among the Yoruba. Bloom‑ ington: Indiana University Press.  Fagg, W., Pemberton, J., and Holcombe, B. (1982). Yoruba Sculpture of West Africa. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Falola, T. (2018). ‘Gender and Culture in Old and New Africa.’ In The Toyin Falola Reader on African Culture, Nationalism, Development and Epistemologies. Austin: Pan African University Press, 525–46. Isiaka, A. (2020). ‘Nigeria Declares ‘State of Emergency’ on Rape and Sexual Assault.’ Global Voices, 3 July. Lawal, B. (1996). Gelede Spectacle: Art, Gender and Social Harmony in an African Culture. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1997. Lawal, B. (2012). Embodying the Sacred in Yoruba Art. Newark, NJ: Newark Museum. Makinde, T. (2004). ‘Motherhood as a Source of Empowerment of Women in Yoruba Culture.’ Nordic Journal of African Studies, 13(2): 164–74. Olajubu, O. (2004). ‘Seeing Through a Woman’s Eye Yoruba Religious Tradition and Gender Rela‑ tions.’ Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, 20(1): 41–60. Olarinmoye, A.W. (2013). ‘The Images of Women in Yoruba Folktales.’ International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 3(4): 138–49. Okediji, M. (1997). “The Art of the Yoruba.” African Art at The Art Institute of Chicago, 23(2): 164–81, 198. Oyewumi, O. (1997). On the Invention of Women. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Pogoson, O. (1991). ‘The Esie Stone Carving in the Art History of Southwestern Nigeria.’ African Notes, 15(1): 2, 28–38. Sesan, A.A. (2013). Gender Dialectics of Yoruba Drum Poetry. 169–77. www.researchgate.net. Retrieved 2nd March, 2018. Verger, P. (1965). ‘Grandeur et Decadence du Culte de Iyami Osoronga.’ Journal de la Societe des Africanistes, XXXV(I): 141–243. Vogel, S.M. (1997). Baule: African Art, Western Eyes. New Haven: Yale University Press.

10 CREATIVITY AND IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION IN CONTEMPORARY YORUBA ART Michael Olusegun Fajuyigbe

Introduction

The art of creativity, including its processes and products, is enshrined in culture and inextricably linked to the construction of identity, at both the individual and group lev‑ els. Contemporary African artists often draw inspiration from their indigenous back‑ grounds to reflect the values cherished by their people across time and space. This has necessitated the continuity of innovations in the materials, forms, styles and themes that contemporary African artists explore in their works. Using culture and artistic creativ‑ ity as the basis, the Yoruba artist often examines the values of the past to generate an understanding of the present and thereby chart a future that embraces the changing reali‑ ties of the contemporary world. This idea is affirmed by Abiodun (2017) when he states that Yoruba art is not bound by time and space because it has an adaptive mechanism ingrained within its structure. It adapts to current circumstances. The need to construct both personal and group identities is driven by the artist’s capacity to adapt to changes and reflect contemporary ideas. Identity in Yoruba art before contact with the West was homogeneous. In contempo‑ rary eras, identity is the invention of a post-colonial art intelligentsia (Picton, 1994). The modern African artist tries to fashion an identity that combines tradition and modernity, links the past to the present, recreates past values in the light of new ideas and innova‑ tions and articulates a new understanding of past values for contemporary relevance. Identity construction, in other words, can only be actualized within a cultural context through creative activities. Artistic creativity, therefore, is deliberately employed by many contemporary artists to create an alternative platform for aesthetic engagement and urge viewers toward a deeper appreciation of art as image and idea. It is not enough to con‑ struct identity through art; much more, artists must appreciate how viewers perceive such identity. Identity construction is not new in Yoruba art; indeed, it has a profound history. Its existence predates the colonial era, back when the culture provided a favorable ambi‑ ance for artistic creativity to flourish. William Fagg (1900–1978) was the first Africanist DOI: 10.4324/9781003389088-11

132  Michael Olusegun Fajuyigbe

art scholar to have shown passionate interest in Yoruba art and culture. He focused his intellectual efforts on Yoruba sculptures, the northeastern Yoruba country in particular. According to Picton (1994, 4), the results of Fagg’s rich scholarship produced a collec‑ tion of unpublished manuscripts in preparation “for a book to be called ‘Seven Yoruba Masters’.” Picton notes that Yoruba master carvers such as Adigbologe of Abeokuta, Olowe of Ise Ekiti, Areogun of Osi-Ilorin, Agbonbiofe of Efon Alaye, Agunna of Ikole Ekiti and Ajigunma of Ilofa were identified by their personal, group and cultural styles. These masters were much more concerned about creating an identity for their people and culture than about focusing on themselves. In the post-independence era, however, con‑ temporary Yoruba artists not only display and perpetuate Yoruba culture and art forms but also reconfigure them as tools of social transformation, status definition and critical discourse (Fajuyigbe, 2018). This action signaled the quest for individuality and identity construction in Yoruba art. Defining creativity is a humongous task, considering the diversity of connotations and meanings attributed to the term across fields and disciplines of human knowledge. Ac‑ cording to Collins English Dictionary (Online), “creativity is the ability to transcend tra‑ ditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships … and create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods and interpretations.” Creativity is expressively diverse. Ola Rotimi, in his key‑ note address to Diversity of Creativity in Nigeria (Campbell, 1993), states that “the ability to advance novel ideas, or the aptitude to convert concept into distinctive matter, is by no means the singular preserve of a particular race, gender, vocation or strain of individuals” (Rotimi, 1993, xi). Creativity, in essence, is the translation of an intuition of a certain uniqueness into a facility of value. Creativity is a natural and cultural phenomenon. The artist’s creative identity is deter‑ mined by the art forms they produce over time and the impression that such expressions make on viewers. Creativity responds to forces prevalent in a cultural environment.1 These forces are the elements of culture cherished by a people or group and shape the creative expressions of the people. The fact is that people shape culture and are shaped by it, and “no matter how individualistic artists may appear to be; they never create in a cultural void” (Drewal, 1988, 72). Artists have access to diverse cultural elements from which they draw inspiration. In this regard, Ojo (1993) ascertains that cultural diversity is a strong determinant of creative diversity in Nigeria. He identifies a long list of cultural elements: architecture such as houses, palaces, shrines and temples; art and crafts; iron and leather working; textile production; woodcarving; and painting, among others. The diversity of culture and cultural activities accounts for the creative diversity evident among the various cultures in Nigeria and the Yoruba in particular. Indeed, cul‑ tural elements constitute the cultural identities of the people with respect to their creative engagements. The Yoruba of southwestern Nigeria have a dynamic visual culture that responds to the changing realities of the contemporary world. The Yoruba artist’s capacity for adaptation is the basis for artistic creativity in Yoruba art across time and space. Picton (1994, 23) opines that “Yoruba art has always been contemporary,” an assertion sup‑ ported by Abiodun (2017), who states that “Yoruba art is like a river on its course.” Both Picton and Abiodun allude to the Yoruba’s progressive use of imagination to construct identity and produce new ideas that reflect current social, political and economic trends in Yoruba society, and the larger social setting.

Creativity and Identity Construction in Contemporary Yoruba Art  133

Adejumo (1989) describes creativity as the ability to invent new symbols and ideas, to improve on established symbols and ideas, to renovate established organizations and to integrate new or borrowed ideals into previously organized systems or situations. In this context, therefore, creativity is the ability to present an idea in a form that holds mean‑ ing and to think differently and outside the norms that constrain innovation and crea‑ tive possibilities. It is the ability to see things that others have not, thus leading viewers and discourses in new directions. Artists may explore similar materials in their creative engagements; however, the form and function of their creative exercise are bound to be different, depending on their training, ideology, culture and intellectual capacity to innovate. The cultural environment provides a platform for the artist to discover the essence and uniqueness of his culture and cultural values in his quest for identity and to contribute meaningfully to social development. The understanding of his uniqueness as a member of his community guides his operations and relationships, in both the present and the future. He imbibes new ideas and new ways of doing things through daily contact with visual forms. These “contacts” constitute the artist’s visual experience2 and affect his feelings aesthetically. Thus, to an extent, creativity enhances the artist’s ability to visual‑ ize and conceive new ideas. The artist eventually becomes accustomed to using visual forms to represent his people’s cultural values. Sometimes he adapts new ideas, forms and experiences that are foreign to his cultural orientation without losing his originality and identity. The link between creativity, culture and identity is almost indistinguishable, especially when we observe creative persons who explore form, materials and symbols to con‑ struct identity both for themselves and for others. Culture is a determinant of creativity, a wide umbrella term that encompasses people’s social behaviors, including their art, which confers on them a certain identity. Gloveanu and Tanggard (2014) argue that identity is formed, experienced and maintained through constant social interactions and that vibrant creative identity depends on social interactions with others. Creativity is not about the creative person; rather, it draws viewers to the culture (background) that shapes creativity and the creative person. Nwoko (2006, 18) observes, “the infinite va‑ riety of forms, the limitless range of colours and pattern arrangement, are a permanent source of inspiration to the artist.” This origin of innovation and the innovative spirit motivates artistic creativity. Thinking along these lines, Sheba (1993, 169) also notes that “thoughts, observations, visions, dreams, tradition and culture, the environment, myths, fantasy, experiences, imagination and nature are the basis of the creative impulses which motivate the artist into action.” Expectedly, Yoruba artists often draw inspiration from diverse sources, as mentioned. They are motivated by nature, social habits and events. A sizable number of contemporary Yoruba artists at home and in the diaspora now create works based on their observations, responses and interpretations of the people, events and issues that they encounter over time. They also dare to think outside the norms of fossilized, overused and stale concepts and inject fresh, innovative and some‑ times bizarre ideas into their works. Ultimately, new visual and intellectual directions evolve from these experiments. Oguntona (1993, 185) affirms this view when he as‑ serts, “innovation is the greatest instigator of growth and the fastest route to creativity.” Yoruba artists explore elements of culture in their works to herald a new art form that re‑ flects the visuality in Yoruba visual culture. Ultimately, this visuality reflects the creative

134  Michael Olusegun Fajuyigbe

dynamics that distinguish Yoruba art, then and now, from other art traditions in Nigeria and Africa. In this regard, creativity and identity construction are inseparable; they thrive in a sociocultural environment. Creativity in Yoruba Art and Culture

Scholars on indigenous Yoruba arts have discussed the concepts of creativity and aesthet‑ ics among the Yoruba of southwestern Nigeria. The consensus is that these concepts are intricately linked to the people’s culture and worldview, which affirms their distinctive‑ ness and identity in Nigeria. Using Yoruba clothing and architecture, Cordwell (1983) examines creativity and aesthetics from the way Yoruba accept and adapt new forms to their sociocultural life. They create new meaning while maintaining the old patterns and imagery. Examining the visual and verbal arts of the Yoruba, Abiodun (2001) concludes that the products emanate from the people’s aesthetic consciousness and philosophy. Presenting the Ifa corpus as the guiding light, he proffers that artistic creativity among the Yoruba is determined and enriched by the socioreligious perceptions of the people. Thompson (1971) examines the canons of Yoruba art, specifically from the perception of the artists he interviewed during fieldwork, and affirms that the Yoruba already had standards for examining creative tendencies and excellence in works of art long before they had any contact with the West. They also have a standard for appreciating aesthetic imperatives evident in their visual and verbal arts. There is an appreciable level of increased creativity in Yoruba art genres and forms. This development can be attributed to distinctive cultural elements and identities like language, religion, iconography, symbols, motifs and value systems of the Yoruba. The maxim “art is a pivot on which culture rotates” is relevant to appreciating the aesthetic richness and diversity of Yoruba art, which in most cases is a direct representation of the people’s culture and universe (Abiodun, 2001). Creativity in Yoruba art is dependent on the artist’s ability to accurately interpret the cultural values of the people and to reinvent the ideals through forms that enrich viewers’ sensibilities. The appropriateness of materials, their usage and their function in works of art are also vital to appreciating artistic creativity and identity construction in Yoruba art, then and now. This chapter posits that the construction of identity in contemporary Yoruba art is a product of cultural and social identity, which are also shaped by group norms and activities. Yoruba artistic expressions are as diverse as the cultural influences (and sources) that shaped them. Wagner and Wagner (2007) highlight this diversity when they note that “the Yoruba imagination enriches people’s cosmology, rituals, ceremonies, daily life and total culture.” It is evident, therefore, that creative expressions in Yoruba art and culture are inseparable. This notion affirms the synchronization of art, people and existence in Yoruba culture and the symphony of ideas embedded in the art forms. Thus, Carroll (1967, 53) describes Yoruba art as humanist because it “illustrates in profusion and detail the life of the Yoruba people.” Indeed, Lamidi Fakeye’s Wall Panel (ca. 1997) suc‑ cinctly captures this idea (Figure 10.1). As a humanist art, Yoruba creative and cultural expressions are structured to reflect the totality of the people and construct both personal and group identities. These expressions are specifically aimed at identity construction. Yoruba creative culture thrived and survived,

Creativity and Identity Construction in Contemporary Yoruba Art  135

FIGURE 10.1 Tunde

Nasiru, The Triumph of Ogun, front and side views. Terracotta, 1988.

even now, irrespective of the social transformation of the globalized world, and like other African art traditions, Yoruba art is engrained with the sociocultural values and cultural in‑ signias cherished by the people. In summation, Yoruba art is an embodiment of the people’s life and culture; it is a visual language that defines the people’s identity. Contemporary Yoruba Art

Contemporary Yoruba art is rooted in ancient and indigenous Yoruba visual culture, ar‑ tistic expressions, creative ideologies and aesthetics. It is shaped by foreign materials, tools and techniques as well as the prevalent sociocultural debates at the time of its creation. According to Razak Olatunde Kalilu,3 contemporary Yoruba art is essentially influenced by adaptations from popular Yoruba art traditions—namely, Ife, Owo, Esie, Oyo and Ekiti arts. Other traditions with relative influences are Ijebu, Egba and Yewa arts, among

136  Michael Olusegun Fajuyigbe

others. Kalilu argued that these art traditions have their distinct styles and forms and thus provide alternative sources from which contemporary Yoruba artists draw inspira‑ tion. It is true that classical Ife art, more than any other tradition of Yoruba art, enjoyed deep and wide-ranging scholarly attention in terms of grants, research, documentation and publications. Nevertheless, it is a fact that formal configurations and general stylistic tendencies commonly observed in the works of many contemporary Yoruba artists are similar to those obtained in ancient Oyo Yoruba art.4 Evidence of influence from northeastern Yoruba art is also common. For instance, Tunde Nasiru’s5 The Triumph of Ogun (Figure 10.1) is obviously influenced by Gelede and Epa masks. Creativity in classical and indigenous Yoruba art is shaped by the social structure, political climate and communal values. In contemporary Yoruba art, however, creativity is driven by the training, experience, exposure and individuality of the artist, as well as other influences in a cultural environment. The environment has strongly impacted the Yoruba artist6 and contributed to the distinct expressions and styles when compared to other works in contemporary Nigerian art and beyond. As observed by Vogel (1989), the sophistication, variety and purpose of classical Ife and other Yoruba arts generally reflect, strongly, on the styles, uniqueness and diversity of works produced by contemporary Yoruba artists. The artists are therefore the creators of a new art in terms of the stylistic order, formal configuration and material exploration attained in Yoruba artistic heritage. Contemporary Yoruba art is hereby defined as a re-invention of ancient Yoruba (and African) artistic forms and values. It is shaped by a post-independence art intelligentsia of Yoruba extraction on the basis of post-coloniality7 and ethnoaesthetics8 to engineer a new and distinct creative attitude among contemporary artists in Yoruba culture and in the diaspora (Fajuyigbe, 2018). Okediji (2002) asserts that a large number of artists who claim Yoruba ancestry and work within and outside Yoruba land exist in the diaspora of Africa. They produce paintings, sculptures, installations, videos and performances in contemporary media that share semblance with both indigenous and contemporary Yoruba art forms. For instance, Michael Harris, Phoenix Savage and Albert Lavergne are African-American artists who explored Yoruba sacred icons, imagery, colors, religion and cultural philosophy to solve what Campbell (2008, 178) describes as “the issues of identity, history and reclama‑ tion.” Campbell is particular about Michael Harris, who by his adaptations has moved the boundaries of Yoruba shrine painting “beyond its ethnic origin.” Phoenix Savage, in search of distinctive creative and cultural identity, commends her works as “a process of melding the anthropology and philosophies of Yoruba and Southern Black cultures” (Fajuyigbe, 2013). Albert Lavergne, who christened himself “Ogunmola Akinwale,” was also influenced by the need to discover his roots after a chance meeting with Lamidi Fak‑ eye9 in the United States.10 Some contemporary Yoruba artists, mostly painters, have been consistent in reinventing ancient Yoruba art forms, sacred and secular icons, symbols, imagery, color schemes and styles in their works. Examples include Moyo Okediji, Michael Harris, Kunle Filani, Moyo Ogundipe, Tola Wewe, Nike Okundaye, Mufu Onifade, Segun Ajiboye, Ademola Ogunajo and Stephen Folaranmi, to mention a few. Irrespective of their training, culture and geo‑ graphical location, these artists often use available materials to chart new directions for Yoruba art and assert its contemporaneity in terms of materials, forms, values and creativity (Fajuyigbe, 2018). This sense of creativity and materiality is not exclusive to contemporary

Creativity and Identity Construction in Contemporary Yoruba Art  137

Yoruba artists but common to contemporary artists all over the world; however, such con‑ cepts are much more profound and intensely expressed in contemporary Yoruba art. Conscious examination of Yoruba cultural and artistic elements in the works of con‑ temporary Yoruba artists is crucial to understanding the extent of the influences of Yor‑ uba identity in shaping the distinctiveness and framework of contemporary Yoruba art. Such influences are more pronounced in the works of Ona and the Best of Ife11 artists. Since then, there has been an upsurge in creative representations of forms, ideas and values in contemporary Yoruba art. Many of the formally certified artists have explored opportunities presented by their intellectual-cum-creative training and insights to create a continuum of artistic traditions and cultural values that serve as currency for, and carri‑ ers of, Yoruba cultural identity. The indigenous Yoruba artists working in contemporary society have also continued to sustain the primal creative spirit of Yoruba art. Yoruba artists have continued to interrogate and interpret contemporary issues with‑ out compromising the cultural and creative identities peculiar to Yoruba art. These iden‑ tities are unique and diverse, embedded in the people’s folklore, myths, proverbs, songs, imagery, belief system and religion (the Ifa divination corpus in particular). The evolu‑ tion of Yoruba art from its pristine state to modern and contemporary manifestations presupposes that the past is engrained in the present. Contemporary Yoruba art is simply a rebirth of Yoruba artistic culture (Okediji, 2002; Fajuyigbe, 2018). This study, there‑ fore, examines the idea of change and continuity in Yoruba art, in addition to the sustain‑ ability of its forms, meanings and uses in contemporary times. Change and Continuity in Yoruba Art

From its pristine beginning, Yoruba art, like other African arts, retained its uniqueness in terms of form, function, styles and themes until its infamous contact with the West and subsequent exposure to foreign cultures and influences. During the pre-colonial and early colonial eras, the art continued to develop without any significant changes or ex‑ ternal influences; however, landmark change(s) began during the colonial eras with the introduction of Western education and subsequent exposure to Western art forms, styles, techniques, tools and creative ideologies (Mount, 1986; Fajuyigbe, 2018). Of particular importance was Christian missionaries’ interest in the revival of indig‑ enous art in Africa, which promoted adaptations of African art forms and imageries in Christian worship and church architecture.12 Kevin Carroll, in his report, discussed the Oye-Ekiti art workshop experiment in 1947 and its impacts on Yoruba religious (wood) carvings and their adaptations for religious and contemporary uses (Carroll, 1967). This was followed by Ulli Beier’s Mbari Mbayo art workshop in Osogbo and Ori Olokun art center at Ile-Ife in 1962 and 1968, respectively. These experiments were built on Kenneth Murray’s ideological persuasion and neo-traditionalist standpoint, which he propounded and developed between 1927 and 1937. Murray encouraged his students to embrace indigenous African and European art traditions simultaneously, in order to create a new stylistic ideology. His goal was for artists to project past values, generate entirely new art and discover their individuality (Fajuyigbe, 2018). The visual activism at the Oye-Ekiti art workshop laid the foundation for the evolution of contemporary Yoruba art, which was strengthened by the development of formal art schools in 1962 and subsequently by the emergence of stylistic art schools in Nigeria.

138  Michael Olusegun Fajuyigbe

The creativity and richness that permeates contemporary Yoruba art forms can be traced to the earliest indigenous Yoruba art traditions, particularly the three-dimensional sculptures in wood, clay, metal, stone, bronze, etc. These works were produced in precolonial and colonial Nigeria by Yoruba artists who might be described as obi asa (pro‑ genitors of traditions). The indigenous Yoruba artists13 working in contemporary society can be referred to as olutoju asa (custodians of tradition) through whom the primal spirit of Yoruba art has been sustained. For instance, adaptations of Yoruba iconography, imagery, patterns and motifs in the works of Moyo Okediji, Michael Harris and Bolaji Campbell are copiously influenced by the Yeyelorisa,14 who are indigenous shrine paint‑ ers and custodians of the art. Despite the influx of modernity, the indigenous Yoruba art‑ ists remain true to projecting the creative-cum-cultural identities of the Yoruba. Through them, a new generation of Yoruba artists has imbibed the Yoruba creative legacies, hence, their continued relevance in contemporary Yoruba art. Campbell (2008, 165) describes a few of these artists as ajijogun asa (inheritors of tradition), due to their passion and consistency in projecting Yoruba artistic culture and values through the visual arts. He describes Moyo Okediji and Michael Harris as the “significant turn” in the continuity and change that had characterized Yoruba artistic traditions, expressions and creativity since the pre-colonial era. Other foremost Yoruba artists like Kunle Filani, Tola Wewe, Bolaji Campbell, Tunde Nasiru, Jimoh Buraimoh, Muraina Oyelami, Nike Okundaye, Segun Adeku, Wale Olajide and Mufu Onifade also fall into this category. They are not only inheritors but also adept conveyors of Yoruba values, although not as masterful as Okediji and Harris, whose explorations of the Yor‑ uba corpus of sacred images are profound (Campbell, 2008). Altogether, these artists embody the tradition, continuity and change in Yoruba contemporary art. Yoruba artists, over time, have continued to engage in creative experiments, through the use of imagination, available materials and adaptations from their immediate and broader social environment. Consequently, they have evolved new forms and styles in the pursuits of cultural distinctiveness and identity construction, and have propagated cultural, political, religious and social ideals of the Yoruba. This vital function creates a balance between Yoruba concepts of art, creativity and the new directions in contem‑ porary Nigerian art. The creative dynamics of many contemporary Yoruba artists are strongly influenced by the worldview and cosmology of their people in southwestern Nigeria. They are inspired by diverse cultural manifestations and values of the contem‑ porary world, and their works reflect adherence to Yoruba artistic canons and aesthetic principles. Change and continuity in contemporary Yoruba art are being revisited to ascertain the elements of culture that distinguish contemporary Yoruba art from mainstream con‑ temporary art in Nigeria. Thus, based on how they project the identified creative and cultural indicators that distinguish their works from the larger corpus of contemporary Yoruba art, this study focuses on ten contemporary Yoruba artists: Moyo Okediji, Kunle Filani, Tola Wewe, Nike Okundaye, Mufu Onifade, Silas Adeoye, Seyi Ogunjobi, Mi‑ chael Fajuyigbe, Dotun Popoola and Taofeek Badaru. Drawing consistently from Yoruba indigenous art and culture, they create a new visual language to interpret and document current debates in the society. The materials, methods, forms, styles, themes and ideolo‑ gies that the artists explore in their creative experiments validate the thematic focus of this study.

Creativity and Identity Construction in Contemporary Yoruba Art  139

Contemporary Yoruba Artists and Identity Construction

Creative adaptations and identity construction in Yoruba art and its contemporary mani‑ festations have received scholarly attention (Campbell, 2008). The need to constantly re-integrate cultural forms into public consciousness and redirect viewers toward a better appreciation of African values and thought systems has been no easy task for many con‑ temporary Nigerian artists. In the midst of such comatose, indistinct and monotonous styles, a few contemporary Yoruba artists are unrelenting in their efforts to re-enact in‑ digenous Yoruba art forms and values. Works of contemporary Yoruba artists reflect certain aspects of Yoruba cultural iden‑ tity like language, religious objects, iconography, images, symbols, motifs and design. Profuse adaptations of these traits in contemporary Yoruba art affirm the idea of con‑ tinuity with the past as well as the changes necessitated by contemporary realities. This study, therefore, examines the selected works to identify the artists’ sources of inspiration and manner of adaptation that suggests a construction of personal and group identities. Moyo Okediji

Moyo Okediji is a painter, art historian/critic, experimentalist and exponent of Onaism. He has explored the human body as a living canvas for artistic expression. His body art is a classic example of the interrelatedness of creativity and cultural expressions in Africa and the African Diaspora. Okediji explores and adapts Yoruba indigenous materials and color schemes in his paintings, ceramic mosaics, architecture (see Figure 10.2), body art,

FIGURE 10.2 Moyo

Okediji, Ojú E. lé. gba Àkòdì Òrìs. à, Ile-Ife, Nigeria, architecture.

140  Michael Olusegun Fajuyigbe

installations and shrine art. He uses natural color, compounded from different types of soil and hues of brown, yellow, indigo, grey and black, to express his Africanity. Okediji’s works are perhaps one of the finest, most intricate and direct examples of creative adaptations of Yoruba sacred art, symbolism and imagery in contemporary Ni‑ gerian art. His works are permeated by Ifa paraphernalia, sacred images and legends, cultural icons and spirits. He has carved out a strong identity for himself, his people and contemporary Yoruba art. His creative and cultural activism reflect the language and art of the Yoruba. Okediji’s Ogunnic Exploits (2001) and the trilogy Yemoja Protecting Her Children (2021) (Figure 10.5), Past, Present and Future (2021) and Fishing for Afro Culture (2021), all attest to Okediji’s incurable passion for projecting Yoruba cultural identities and values through art. His relentless efforts to reinvent, re-integrate and re‑ position Yoruba art and culture in the consciousness of his people, against the tides of foreign influence—cultures, religions and values prevalent—are unparalleled among his contemporaries. His recent visual engagements at the Akodi Orisa15 in Ile-Ife are a vali‑ dation of his passion for an Afro-Yoruba renaissance toward the making of a total man. Olakunle Filani

Filani is a prominent contemporary Nigerian artist as well as a proponent and leading theorist of Onaism. Strongly influenced by Ona ideals, which provide the theoretical basis and aesthetic platform for his numerous experiments, he is a distinguished creative artist, resourceful administrator, dynamic educator, analytical essayist and critic, quintessential art historian and exemplary mentor of mentors. Filani has deeply influenced the lives and careers of young and established professional artists and academic artists in Nigeria, ir‑ respective of their cultural backgrounds, ideological orientations, training and styles. His personality, art, activism and writings have greatly influenced the fortunes of contempo‑ rary Yoruba art in the history of modern Nigerian art. Ademuleya (2006) sums up Filani’s artistic creativity and contributions elegantly when he asserts that “every great artist, to a certain degree is the child of his age and yet every great artist helps to create his age.” Filani, no doubt, has been highly instrumental in creating a vibrant identity for Yoruba art and artists in contemporary Nigeria. His works are influenced, copiously and in‑ tensely, by Yoruba culture and values, particularly the imagery, symbols, patterns and motifs found in Yoruba fashion, architecture, folklore, history, philosophy and environ‑ ment. He has constructed an identity for himself through his numerous experiments, ex‑ hibitions and writings. The Best of Ife16 series, which he created in 1993 was a highpoint in his visual activism and interest in building a special breed of contemporary Yoruba art‑ ists. Filani is a stellar role model to the heirs and disciples of Ona and Ife ideals. His work such as Fortune Is Mine, 2003 and Egúngún Costume reflects indigenous Yoruba cultural fabrics and imageries like aso-oke patterns, opon ifa (divination tray) and Egúngún cos‑ tumes, among others. Tola Wewe

Tola Wewe hails from Shabomi in Okitipupa, Ondo State, Nigeria. He worked briefly as an art lecturer at Adeyemi College of Education and later as a cartoonist before set‑ tling down as a full-time studio artist in 1991. Wewe is an intellectual artist and culture

Creativity and Identity Construction in Contemporary Yoruba Art  141

FIGURE 10.3 Tola

Wewe, Seven Songs, acrylic on canvas, 2018.

enthusiast. His training at the University of Ife, where learning and culture are taught as the basis for artistic expression and his research into Yoruba carving and Apoi Ijo water spirit masks, have collectively shaped his art. Thus, Wewe’s repute in contemporary Ni‑ gerian art is a product of focused creative experimentation and regular exhibitions. Wewe’s creative identity is influenced by Ona ideals and draws extensively from Yoruba aesthetics, cultural syntax, iconography and body adornment. His works display a rich repertoire of Yoruba gods, goddesses, spirits, legends and images, symbols, geometric/ organic motifs and patterns and color schemes. Fortune of Creation II and Seven Songs (Figure 10.3) (2018) are vivid examples of Wewe’s copious adaptations of indigenous Yoruba forms, colors and Apoi Ijo masks (Figure 10.3). He explores a variety of themes ranging from political and socioeconomic to cultural and personal issues. According to Ajiboye (2003), Wewe’s use of motifs and linear depiction of forms are common features among the Ona and Ife art graduates. Filani (2005) describes him as a bridge between the workshop and academic schools, while Okediji appraises him as the foremost Ona artist in terms of visual activism and visibility in the Nigerian art scene.17 Nike Okundaye

Okundaye is a leading contemporary Yoruba artist of Osogbo art school fame. She is an art connoisseur, art ambassador, cultural icon, fashionista, gallery owner, culture enthusiast, mentor and inspiration in Nigeria and Africa. Nike Okundaye represents a bridge between tradition and modernity, particularly with respect to her adaptations of adire symbols toward creating an authentic contemporary African fashion of dress

142  Michael Olusegun Fajuyigbe

Okundaye, The Quintessential Fashionista, photography, textiles, beads, mixed media, 2020. Collection of the artist. Photo credit: Benjamin Oladapo (2022).

FIGURE 10.4 Nike

(Figure 10.4). She has explored creativity in adire and batik painting and has taken it even farther after a professional and personal interaction with Tola Wewe.18 Her works, which reflect an eclectic approach to art production in form, style, materials and concept, echo a symbiosis of Ona ideals and the Yoruba repertoire of design resources. Mother and Child (2013), for instance, reflects a combination of batik painting, adire and mixed media. Over the years, she has explored different techniques, media and forms to project the Yoruba worldview and contemporary issues surrounding the female gender (Ajayi, 2016). Nike Okundaye has been able to use creativity and culture to construct a largerthan-life identity for herself. Her humongous, elaborately decorated headgear and flam‑ boyant gowns have become her means of identity construction and a sine-qua-non to her influence on contemporary fashion in Nigeria and beyond. Mufu Onifade

Mufu Onifade is an exponent of Araism, an art movement perceived by many schol‑ ars as a “post-Ona concept” (Adepegba, 2008; Fajuyigbe, 2018), due to its similitude to Onaism in terms of ideology and design elements. Araism is derived from ara, the Yoruba word for “wonder,” and connotes creative marvels with a mixture of amaze‑ ment and appreciation, embedded in Yoruba visual and verbal arts. A holistic creative

Creativity and Identity Construction in Contemporary Yoruba Art  143

personality, Onifade is a visual artist, columnist, creative writer, dance-dramatist and actor. The stylistic directions and conceptual framework of Onifade’s creative sensibility and identity are evident in his forms, color schemes, themes, techniques and styles. His figural representation of ideas is strongly influenced by Yoruba cosmology, culture and values, specifically, Ifa literary thought and imagery. The ideas embedded in his paintings are thought-provoking, aimed at reviving and disseminating the moral values of the Ifa odu corpus and Yoruba philosophy (Fajuyigbe, 2012). Some of Mufu’s paintings project Yoruba primordial figures, spirits, masks, masquerades and serve as tools of social com‑ mentary. The artist explores these and other forms as an instrument of identity construc‑ tion and a continuum of Yoruba creative culture. Onifade has constructed an identity for himself and his mentees and revalidated Yoruba cultural values through his annual show, Araism Art Movement. Seyi Ogunjobi

Seyi Ogunjobi demonstrates an insightful and passionate interest in verbalizing and in‑ tellectualizing Yoruba culture, through continuous exploration of Yoruba cosmology, myth, imagery and legend. His works reflect a textual and visual quality attainable in Yoruba sacred art (shrine painting). Ogunjobi explores a variety of materials and plat‑ forms to produce paintings, textile designs and installations aimed at reinventing the Yoruba world of visual imagery, iconographic symbolism and spirituality in which art becomes an instrument, a moral agency. His quest for creative and cultural distinctive‑ ness inspires him to reconfigure the bottlenecks that stifle artistic creativity in contem‑ porary art. Valuation of technical skill, conventional objectiveness, aesthetic content, restrictions of place and display all limit artists’ ability to stay true to their feelings and interpretations of form and idea (Alberro, 1999). Ogunjobi considers such limitations anesthetics to the sensibility of the typical Yoruba (African) artist, for whom esoteric knowledge of African culture, design resources and the cultural environment provides the basis for artistic and cultural expression (Fajuyigbe, 2017). Silas Adelanke Adeoye

Silas Adeoye was born in 1962, Osun State, Nigeria. He took to fine art early, experi‑ menting with various ideas and coming up with innovative techniques even before start‑ ing his primary education. Self-trained, he joined a crew of young, prominent artists at the National Museum, Lagos, where he honed his creative skills while engaging in visual activism at the personal and group levels. Afterward, he evolved a unique style of paint‑ ing and formal composition that reflects the Yoruba world (see Figure 10.5). His works represent a continuum of tradition in Yoruba wood carving, shrine painting and decora‑ tive arts in two-dimensional form. Fajuyigbe (2018) points out the influence of Yoruba color schemes, forms, motifs, patterns, symbols, icons, legends, values, themes and cul‑ tural environment in his works. Cultural elements such as myths, spirits, religious im‑ ages, legends, masks, masquerades, body marks (ila), dance, festivals, market scenes, wall decorations, indigenous and palace architecture are copiously reflected in his works. This ornamented finish distinguishes Adeoye’s works in contemporary Yoruba art. Works such as Adaptation, 2006, and Let No Man Put Asunder, 2015, reflect Yoruba cultural values.

144  Michael Olusegun Fajuyigbe

FIGURE 10.5 Silas

Adeoye, Ladies of the Palace, 2021, oil on canvas. Collection of the artist.

Creativity and Identity Construction in Contemporary Yoruba Art  145

Michael Fajuyigbe

Michael Olusegun Fajuyigbe is a ceramicist and art historian. He trained under Ige Ibig‑ bami and Tunde Nasiru, whose monumental sculptural pottery inspired his new body of works.19 The works resemble some figurative-cum-sculptural pottery in Yoruba fertility shrines. He explores creativity in sculptural pottery with an emphasis on the formal qual‑ ities manifesto,20 Fajuyigbe endeavors to open up pottery by extending its uses beyond its utilitarian value and presenting it as an instrument of critical discourse on culture, politics, motherhood and feminine beauty. He creates a new body of sculptural ceramics that reflects the delicacy of form, plasticity of material (clay) and judicious temperament (ìfarabalẹ`) of the potter. His works such as Aje Oguuluso (2007) and Iwa (2017) resonate with Yoruba values of iwarere (good character), iwapele (gentle character), ewa (beauty), iwalewa (character as beauty), ìwọ`ntúnwọ`nsì (moderation) and otito (truthfulness) in human relations and economic/financial transactions (Figure 10.6). Dotun Popoola

Painter, sculptor and installation artist Dotun Popoola’s works can be regarded as reflect‑ ing a continuum of tradition and innovation or continuity and change, in Yoruba art and culture. His works, particularly his hybrid welded metal sculptures, share an affinity with Yoruba wood sculptures with respect to their evocative forms, profuse use of motifs and embellishments. Popoola’s hybrid sculptures are made of metal products, scraps and fabrications as well as junk of various materials; nevertheless, they serve to represent a continuum of the evocative wood sculptures found in Yoruba kings’ palaces and shrines.

Fajuyigbe, Ìwà, 2017, terracotta, 60 × 30 cm. Collection of the artist. Photo credit: Adedayo Grillo, 2022.

FIGURE 10.6 Michael

146  Michael Olusegun Fajuyigbe

The works also portray generous adaptations of visual elements and aesthetic canons of the Yoruba. Popoola is the archetypal Yoruba artist, who, in line with Yai’s (1999) analysis, might be described as creatively engaging yet ensuring continuity of ideas across time and space. Creativity pulsates from Popoola’s works, as in Yoruba art and culture. As an aesthetic-cum-waste explorer, his works—painting, sculpture, metal art and mixed media—project Yoruba creative and cultural identities. Taofeek Badru

Badru’s creative expressions encompass textile, fashion and installation. He presently ex‑ plores yarn of various colors to create a collection of works saturated with Yoruba motifs, patterns and symbols, which thematically exemplify a Yoruba worldview. Commenting on Badru’s creativity and material experimentation, Fajuyigbe (2019) describes his art and style as “yarn painting”21 and links the artist’s inspiration to his cultural environment, specifically Yoruba cultural values, which are represented in the myths, history, proverbs and religious system of the people. His approach to yarn painting is eclectic and combines Yoruba adire, batik and embroidery techniques with threads of many colors. Badru has been able to create a spotlight for himself as a textile artist in contemporary Nigerian art. Apart from the ten artists profiled above, there are other artists—renowned and ­unsung—who have dared to extend the frontiers of creativity, culture and identity con‑ struction in contemporary Yoruba art through material experimentation, creative expres‑ sion and visual activism. Some, like Jelili Atiku and Yusuf Durodola, have even created what might be described as the “fourth dimension” with their creative and dramatic presentations. Their performative art and visual activism establish an inseparable link between Yoruba visual, verbal and performing arts. The duo of Jelili Atiku and Yusuff Durodola construct identity through creative performances to investigate, interrogate and interpret sociopolitical issues within and outside Nigeria. Their performances draw viewers’ attention to masquerades and masking traditions, as well as the role of spirituality, consultation, confrontation and appeasement in con‑ temporary Yoruba performative arts. These elements underscore the effectiveness of art as social commentary, and what might be described as modern expressions of satire in Yoruba visual culture. In Eleniyan (2012), Atiku uses red as a metaphor for the life force and condemns the danger, suffering and bloodletting that is ravaging the African continent. In Owewe Wee I (Figure 10.7) and II (2020), Durodola uses the calabash and mythographic drawing as vessels of supplication and appeasement to Olodumare to heal the society of all evils (Figure 10.6). Forms, Themes and Inspirations

The artists’ compositions are shaped by the ideas and realities they have experienced in their creative journeys. Through observation, participation and collaboration with indig‑ enous artists, the contemporary Yoruba artist has created a strong cultural identity for their art, ensuring continuity with the past. The formal configuration and thematic foci in many contemporary Yoruba art works can be traced to the Yoruba worldview, irrespec‑ tive of the styles and materials. This worldview and the artists’ experiences constitute the resources that influence form and ideas in contemporary Yoruba art. Thus, viewers’

Creativity and Identity Construction in Contemporary Yoruba Art  147

FIGURE 10.7 Yusuf

Durodola, Owewe Wee, pen on paper, performance, 2020.

visuality and sensibility have been drawn to the indigeneity and contemporaneity of Yor‑ uba art. Moyo Okediji, as ajíjogún às. à (inheritor of tradition), drinks from the mainstream of Yoruba art and culture under the tutelage of indigenous shrine painters, popularly known as Yeyelorisa, or the Akire Group, in Ile-Ife and other parts of Yoruba la. Through these visual journeys,22 Okediji has honed his creative sensibility and mastered Yoruba aes‑ thetic principles (Campbell, 2008). Tola Wewe also had a direct encounter with African aesthetics through a participant observation study of Apoi water spirit masks (Ajiboye, 2003) and a collaborative experiment with Nike Okundaye. Bolaji Campbell, a former student and mentee of Okediji’s, also imbibed the aforementioned creative qualities through his interaction and apprenticeship with the Akire shrine painters at Ile-Ife. Many contemporary Yoruba artists have also examined, interrogated and engaged Yoruba visual culture in creative ways, to re-present the people’s values for the cultural and aesthetic education of viewers. These artists draw inspiration from Yoruba art forms, decorative elements, color schemes and aesthetics. Many have also absorbed the needed creative qualities and skills through formal training, academic research, participant ob‑ servation and apprenticeship under indigenous artists. This has enabled them to do jus‑ tice to the tasks of creativity and cultural rejuvenation. Sources from which many contemporary Yoruba artists derive inspiration include fa‑ cial markings (ila), body adornment and traditional symbols. Other sources include pot‑ tery, wood sculptures, calabash decorations, textile arts such as embroidery, adire colors,

148  Michael Olusegun Fajuyigbe

patterns, symbols and motifs, leather works, murals and shrine painting as well as an‑ thropomorphic and zoomorphic images such as leopards, horses, antelopes, chameleons, elephants, tortoises, lizards, birds, snakes and squirrels (Ajiboye, 2003; Fajuyigbe, 2012). Many contemporary Yoruba artists perceive forms through motifs, infuse Yoruba philosophical ideas into contemporary forms, follow formal compositional orders, rein‑ vent Yoruba cosmology, myths and spirituality and explore Yoruba color schemes. Their works make profuse use of motifs, patterns, symbols and color schemes that are rooted in Yoruba (and African) art and culture. There is also evidence of Yoruba totems, monu‑ ments and pillar posts, architecture and aesthetics being explored as coded forms for the transmission of ideas with profound meanings. Cultural elements obtained in the visual, verbal and performing arts of a people are the foundation for their distinctive identity, especially in a multicultural society. Therefore, the artist must be innovative. The contemporary Yoruba artist, irrespective of their train‑ ing, media, material, style and ideology, is always seeking to improve on their creative expertise in order to build an enduring identity for themselves, for the Yoruba nation and for Africa as a whole. The artists selected for this study represent the best examples of contemporary Yoruba artists who constantly engage creativity, construct identity and rejuvenate Yoruba values to communicate both personal and collective values. Undoubt‑ edly, many artists have extended the frontiers of creativity in Yoruba art in continuity with Yoruba history, culture and value system. Conclusion and Recommendations

For effective continuity of culture, the past must complement the present through a syn‑ thesis of cultural heritage with present-day experiences. It is clear from this study that creativity and culture are effective tools for identity construction in contemporary Yoruba art. The techniques, imagery and thematic thrusts observed in the selected works reflect the artists’ capacity for extending creative possibilities and meanings in contemporary art. They have explored Yoruba art forms, symbols, proverbs and other elements of cul‑ ture to create new perspectives, engage new meanings and ultimately construct identity. Yoruba art has always been contemporary; nevertheless, Yoruba artists never fail to infuse their works with their cultural identity. Through creative adaptations and repre‑ sentations, they continue to rework salient features of Yoruba visual culture to align with changing realities of the contemporary world. Essentially and beyond the Yoruba cul‑ tural prism, contemporary Yoruba artists should continue to explore indigenous African symbols, imagery, iconography and design resources to avoid the monotony of creative expression. They must maintain their cultural distinctiveness through the continuous search for originality and sustainable cultural identity. This is their “Africanness,” their ultimate identity in mainstream contemporary art. Notes 1 The cultural environment provides a platform for the display and appreciation of a people’s identity. The term refers to the spiritual, intellectual, emotional and material traditions and attributes of a people or group. It is the localized platform for expressing the traditions and identity of a people, thereby distinguishing one culture from the others (Fajuyigbe, 2012). 2 Visual experience is the sum total of an individual’s exposures, encounters and interactions with concrete or ethereal forms, shapes, colors, textures, texts, signs and symbols over a period

Creativity and Identity Construction in Contemporary Yoruba Art  149

of time. People, nature, the social environment and even materials and current debates shape the artist’s experience. 3 Personal communication, February 2021. Razak Olatunde Kalilu is Professor of Art and Art History, and a former Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH), Ogbomoso, Nigeria. 4 Ibid. 5 Tunde Nasiru is an icon of the Ife Pottery School, and a former ceramics lecturer at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. 6 The cultural environment as a catalyst for artistic creativity is not exclusive to contemporary Yoruba artists. Indeed, it is one of the factors that shape the intellectual basis of contemporary Nigerian art. 7 Post-coloniality refers to a body of theory, a condition following liberation from a colonial power, or the processes by which a group of people are thus liberated (wordpress.com). It is aimed at dismantling the socio-economic and political structures of the colonial eras and expe‑ riences imposed on Africans (Fajuyigbe, 2018). 8 Ethnoaesthetics is the use of ethnic criteria for the projection of aesthetic ideals in art (Okediji, 2002). It refers to the appreciation of art within its cultural or social context. 9 Lamidi Fakeye (1934–2008) was the iconic Yoruba carver, in the order of Adugbologe and Arowoogun, the renowned twentieth-century Yoruba master carvers. He might be described, appropriately, as the bridge between tradition and modernity in Yoruba art and art history. 10 Albert Lavergne (personal communication August, 2012). 11 Onaism and “Best of Ife” were inaugurated in 1989 and 1993, respectively. 12 The Vatican policy on colonial Africa encouraged the adaptation of the culture of each commu‑ nity to Christian worship as a way of encouraging Africans to embrace Christianity. The Cath‑ olic Church organized art and culture workshops for indigenous African artists and trained them to represent biblical stories using their creative skills. Hence, a subtle change in the forms and functions of indigenous African art began, and African music, sculpture, dance, dress cul‑ ture, among others, became regular features of Christianity in Africa. 13 Moyo Okediji describes the classical and indigenous Yoruba artists as a reservoir of Yoruba artistic knowledge, traditions and cultural values (personal communication April, 2017). 14 Moyo Okediji and Bolaji Campbell spent years researching into and engaging the dynamics, forms, color symbolism, patterns and meanings of the Orisakire Painting School at Ile-Ife and other shrines in Yorubaland. 15 Akodi Orisa is an ecological monument, archive of memory and a sanctuary of Yoruba cultural creativity as a people with their own distinctive sense of values and spirituality (Moyo Okediji, pers. comm. June, 2021). 16 The “Best of Ife” (1993–2003) was a series of exhibitions that showcased the dexterity and diversity of the Ife Art School graduates. The platform was explored to further integrate and showcase the ideals of Onaism and encourage alumni to display their creative works, irrespec‑ tive of the ideology they embrace. 17 Personal communication, March 2017. 18 The experiment-cum-collaboration between Tola Wewe and Nike Okundaye underscored the need for a symbiotic relationship between academic and workshop-trained artists (Fajuyigbe, 2018). 19 See Yoruba Pottery by Fatunsin. 20 Umberto Boccioni was renowned for setting forth the Constructivist manifesto. 21 Yarn painting is the use of thread, of varied colors, for creative expression in two-dimensional form. It is a technique that draws heavily on embroidery techniques and strikes a balance be‑ tween textile art and painting. 22 Moyo Okediji also collaborated with indigenous potters at Ibulesoro, Ondo State, Nigeria, in 2011. The experience inspired his series on ceramic mosaics.

References Abiodun, R. (2001). “African Aesthetics,” Journal of Aesthetic Education, vol. 35, no. 4, 15–23. Abiodun, R. (2017). Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

150  Michael Olusegun Fajuyigbe

Adejumo, A. (1989). “Plato and the Function of Art,” Ife Journal of Environmental Design & Management, vol. 1, nos. 1–2, 280–292. Ademuleya, B.A. (2006). Kunle Filani: Artist, Critic & Administrator. Ademuleya, B.A., Onipede, A.O. & Azeez, W.A. (eds.). Lagos: Culture and Creative Art Forum (CCAF). Adepegba, K. (2008). “Araism: The Making of a Post-Onaism Movement,” Styles, Schools and Movements in Modern Nigerian Art: Proceedings of the 2nd National Symposium on Nigerian Art, 118–28. Lagos: National Gallery of Art. Ajayi, O.E. (2016). Continuity and Change in Nike Okundaye’s Textile Adire. M.A. Thesis (Un‑ published). Ile-Ife: Department of Fine and Applied Arts, Obafemi Awolowo University. Ajiboye, O.B. (2003). The Evolution of ‘Ona’ Artistic Style with Reference to the Works of Tola Wewe, Kunle Filani and Demola Ogunajo. MFA Thesis (Unpublished). Ile-Ife: Department of Fine and Applied Arts, Obafemi Awolowo University. Alberro, A. (1999). “Reconsidering Conceptual Art, 1966–1977,” in Alberro, Alberto & Stimson, Blake (eds.). Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology, xvi–xxxvii. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. Campbell, B. (2008). Painting for the Gods: Art and Aesthetics of Yoruba Religious Murals. Tren‑ ton, J. & Asmara, Eritrea: Africa World Press, Inc. Campbell, B., Ibigbami, R.I., Aremu, P.S.O. & Folarin, A. (1993). Diversity of Creativity in Nigeria. Ile-Ife: Department of Fine Arts, Obafemi Awolowo University. Carroll, K. (1967). Yoruba Religious Carving: Pagan and Christian Sculpture in Nigeria and Dahomey. London: Geoffrey Chapman, Ltd. Cordwell, J.M. (1983). “The Art and Aesthetics of the Yoruba,” African Arts, vol. 16, no. 2, 56–9, 93–4, 100. Drewal, H.J. (1988). “Object and Intellect: Interpretations of Meaning in African Art,” Art Journal, vol. 47, no. 2, (Summer, 1988), 70–4. Fajuyigbe, M.O. (2012). A Study of Iconographic Symbols in the Paintings of Three Contemporary Nigerian Artists. M.Phil. Thesis (Unpublished). Ile-Ife: Department of Fine and Applied Arts, Obafemi Awolowo University. Fajuyigbe, M.O. (2013). “Ethnic Consciousness and Artistic Creativity: Phoenix Savage and Albert La Vergne as Basis.” Seminar paper presented at the Toyin Falola Conference. Theme: Ethnicity, Race and Place in Africa and the African Diaspora. Ibadan: Lead City University. Fajuyigbe, M.O. (2018). Ife Art School in the History of Modern Nigerian Art. Ph.D. Thesis (Un‑ published). Ile-Ife: Department of Fine and Applied Arts, Obafemi Awolowo University. Fajuyigbe, M.O. (2019). “Echoes of Yoruba Verbal Prisms in Badru Taofeek’s Yarn Painting” (Art Review), in Badru Taofeek Okunlola (ed.). Etalelogbon: Intersects and Exploration (September 12–21, 2019 at Alliance Franchise, Lekki, Lagos), 6–9. Filani, K. (2005). Patterns of Culture in Contemporary Yoruba Art. Nigeria: Symphony Print Shop. Glaveanu, V. and Tanggaard, L. (2014). “Creativity, Identity and Representation,” New Ideas in Psychology, vol. 34, 12–21. Mount, M. (1989). African Art: The Years Since 1920. New York: Indiana University Press. Nwoko, D. (2006). “The Aesthetics of Art in Technology: Human Creativity as Inspired by Na‑ ture,” in Symposium on Nigerian Art. Lagos: National Gallery of Art, 18–38. Oguntona, T. (1989). “Diversity of Creativity in Nigeria,” in Campbell, B., Ibigbami, R.I., Aremu, P.S.O. & Folarin, A. (eds.). Diversity of Creativity in Nigeria, 185–92. Ile-Ife: Department of Fine Arts, Obafemi Awolowo University. Ojo, J.R.O. (1993). “Cultural Variety as a Factor of Creative Diversity in Nigeria,” in Campbell, B., Ibigbami, R.I., Aremu, P.S.O. & Folarin, A. (eds.). Diversity of Creativity in Nigeria, 211– 24. Ile-Ife: Department of Fine Arts, Obafemi Awolowo University. Okediji, M. (2002). African Renaissance: New Forms, Old Images in Yoruba Art. Colorado: Uni‑ versity Press of Colorado.

Creativity and Identity Construction in Contemporary Yoruba Art  151

Picton, J. (1994). “Art, Identity, and Identification: A Commentary on Yoruba Art Historical Stud‑ ies,” in Abiodun, R., Drewal, H.J. & Pemberton, J. (eds.). The Yoruba Artist, 1–36. Washington & London: The Smithsonian Press. Rotimi, O. (1993). “The Challenge to Modern Nigerian Creativity,” in Campbell, B. (ed.). Diversity and Culture in Nigeria, xi–xiv. Ile-Ife: Department of Fine Arts, Obafemi Awolowo University. Sheba, E.A. (1993). “Art and Creativity: A Quest for Meaning,” in Campbell, B., Ibigbami, R.I., Aremu, P. S. O. & Folarin, A. (eds.). Diversity of Creativity in Nigeria, 167–72. Ile-Ife: Depart‑ ment of Fine Arts, Obafemi Awolowo University. Thompson, R.F. (1971). “Yoruba Artistic Criticisms,” in Warren L. d’Azevedo (ed.). The Traditional Artist in African Societies. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 19–61. Vogel, S. (1989). “Forward,” in Drewal, H.J., Pemberton, J. & Abiodun, R. (eds.). Yoruba: Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought. New York: The Centre for African Art, 10. Wagner, B. and Wagner, P. (2007). “Collecting African Art: A Personal Odyssey,” in Lawal, B. (ed.). Embodying the Sacred in Yoruba Art: Featuring the Bernard and Patricia Wagner Collection, 7. Atlanta: High Museum of Art. Yai, O.B. (1999). “Tradition and the Yoruba Artist,” African Arts, vol. 32, no. 1, Special Issue: Authorship in African Art, Part 2, 32–5, 93.

Interviews and Personal Communication 1 Razak Olatunde Kalilu (PhD), WhatsApp call, February 11, 2021. 2 Albert Lavergne, Department of Fine and Applied Arts, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, 2014. 3 Moyo Okediji (PhD), Conference Centre, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, 2017.

11 AFRICAN ART, THE VENICE BIENNALE, AND THE POLITICS OF VISIBILITY Janine A. Sytsma

Throughout most of the Venice Biennale’s extensive 128-year history, African visibility has been intermittent at best. Africa made just one early appearance, in 1922 when Vit‑ torio Pica featured a special exhibition of so-called traditional African sculptures, and this exhibition only reinscribed the imperial order of the institution and confined Africa to a timeless past. In addition, even when the Biennale swelled in the 1990s and 2000s to include a massive international exhibition, assembled by an artistic director around a sin‑ gle theme, along with dozens of national pavilions and collateral programs, the program retained a surprisingly Eurocentric framework. Artistic directors continued to privilege artists from the global north in the invitational exhibition, and few African countries joined the program as national participants due, among other things, to the high costs of and logistical challenges involved in establishing pavilions. Fifteen years ago, however, the tides finally started to turn at the Biennale. Against the background of a more globalized art world, a new generation of curators from Africa and the African diaspora turned their attention to the Biennale, often going to great lengths to carve out space for Africa outside the invitational exhibition. African national pavilions and collateral exhibitions gradually increased between 2010 and 2020. And, as a result, even when geographic inequities resurfaced in the invitational exhibition, amid rising nationalism and isolationism in Europe in 2017, African artists fared better across the entire platform than at any previous point in history. On this, the centennial of the first exhibition of African art, this chapter takes stock of the progress made to date in expanding African visibility in the Biennale. I start with an over‑ view of the history of the Biennale and the changes in its composition as it expanded from a cellular exhibition, made up of a handful of autonomous national pavilions in the Giardini di Castello, into a multicellular one, with a large invitational exhibition encompassing eighty to ninety national pavilions spread across Venice. I then trace the history of African involvement between 1938, when Egypt made its first appearance as a guest country in the Central Pavilion, and the present, making the argument that African-focused exhibitions have served as sites of contestation, disrupting the Biennale’s imperial foundation and that together, they have extended, deepened, and, redefined contemporary art discourse. DOI: 10.4324/9781003389088-12

African Art, the Venice Biennale, and the Politics of Visibility  153

The History of the Venice Biennale

The Venice Biennale has evolved and expanded alongside global geopolitics since its establishment in 1893. During the first three editions, in 1895, 1897, and 1899, the works of artists from Italy and twelve other countries, namely, England, France, AustriaHungary, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, Spain, Scotland, Belgium, and the United States, were exhibited together in a large pavilion (then called “Pro Arte”) in the Giardini on the outskirts of the city. In response to increased pressure from the Italian public, General Secretary Antonio Fradeletto then made the decision to allocate most of that space to contemporary Italian artists and invited the foreign countries that had previously occupied the pavilion, to establish separate permanent national pavilions in the surrounding area in the Giardini.1 In the early twentieth century, the Biennale, like the world expositions of the late nineteenth century, thus began to operate as a platform for imperial powers to com‑ pete for international prominence.2 The original pavilion was reserved for a large, ju‑ ried exhibition of Italian art and a series of special exhibitions (historical exhibitions, artist retrospectives, and thematic exhibitions), while new self-contained national pavilions gradually populated the surrounding area from 1907 to 1938. By the out‑ break of World War I, seven countries had established permanent structures in dis‑ tinct architectural styles, described by Lawrence Alloway as “national self-images”: Belgium in 1907; England, Austria-Hungary, and Germany in 1909; France and the Netherlands in 1912; and Russia in 1914.3 After the war, the Biennale reopened under a Fascist government, and those countries were joined by six others: Spain in 1922, Czechoslovakia in 1926, the United States in 1930, Denmark in 1932, Greece in 1934, and Austria (after the dissolution of Austria-Hungary) in 1934. In 1932, Brenno del Giudice’s new complex on the connecting island of Sant’Elena also opened to the pub‑ lic. It had a large central hall, designated for the Venice Pavilion, and smaller exhibition halls on either side, initially occupied by Switzerland (1932), Poland (1932), Romania (1938), and Yugoslavia (1938). Global interest in Biennale participation once again spread following World War II. And, while the Giardini had finite space, the institution was able to accommodate a handful of requests at this time. Switzerland and Israel established pavilions in 1952; Venezuela in 1954; Japan and Finland in 1956; Canada in 1958; Uruguay in 1961; Swe‑ den, Finland, and Norway (under the umbrella of Nordic countries) in 1962; and Brazil in 1964. Egypt secured an exhibition hall in the del Giudice building when Switzerland relocated to its new pavilion in the Giardini in 1952, and, following renovations, Iceland temporarily took over Finland’s former location, near the entrance to the Central Pavil‑ ion. When the Biennale reopened after the war, it also revived the practice of accommo‑ dating select countries without permanent pavilions as guests, and two of these countries, Australia and South Korea, went on to establish permanent pavilions in 1988 and 1995, respectively. Yet, by the 1990s, the inadequacies of the Biennale, with its dated national structure, were coming to light. The completion of the last pavilion in the Giardini in 1995 coin‑ cided with a critical moment in the global history of art. Over the previous decade, the once-narrow borders of the art world had been redrawn. New large-scale perennial art exhibitions had sprung up in every corner of the world, including in Africa, providing

154  Janine A. Sytsma

more opportunities for artists from the majority world.4 Meanwhile, in the global north, Jean-Hubert Martin’s Magiciens de la Terre ushered in a new era of global curation when it opened at the Centre Pompidou and the Grande Halle at Parc de la Villette in Paris, France, in 1989. Unfortunately, in its then-current form, the Venice Biennale was not able to capture the global dimensions of contemporary art, and it struggled to compete with other major perennial exhibitions, such as Documenta, that did not depend on a system of national participation. For the Biennale to retain its position as the crème de la crème of international art exhibitions, it had to adapt. By 1999, it had overhauled the main invitational exhibition, presenting a single international exhibition (rather than a series of smaller ones), which extended from the Central Pavilion in the Giardini to the Corderie dell’Arsenale, an area of the Arsenale complex that had been used on a few other occasions, including for an emerging artists exhibition, titled Aperto. In addition, a few years prior, it had introduced a series of new practices to ensure that national participation would no longer be hin‑ dered by the lack of space within the Giardini. In anticipation of its 1995 centennial, the Biennale had encouraged countries without permanent pavilions, including those that had previously participated as guest countries in the Giardini, to rent properties in Venice for national exhibitions. As a result, within just fifteen years, the number of participat‑ ing nations increased to nearly ninety with pavilions dispersed across the city, and after 2010, some of these countries had taken out short- and long-term leases on newly reno‑ vated spaces, directly alongside the main exhibition, in the Arsenale. Despite these changes, however, many of the structural inequalities that had histori‑ cally plagued the institution remained. The Biennale continued to be tethered to an an‑ tiquated, albeit more encompassing, system of national participation, which obscured the transnational dimension of contemporary art. With the addition of new pavilions in the 2000s and 2010s, the Biennale’s revised topography also began to mirror the very power structure it had sought to dismantle. As David A. Bailey observed, during his time as curator of the Diaspora Pavilion in 2017, the Biennale structure constituted a “gated system.”5 A select twenty-eight countries, including most former European imperial pow‑ ers, had permanent, purpose-built exhibition spaces in the Giardini. Several additional countries, including those that had amassed power within the system of postwar politics, had secured long-term leases within the nearby Arsenale. But others, including many of those that emerged through decolonization, have been forced to settle for less prominent rental options on the outskirts of the city, away from Biennale traffic. And due to the as‑ sociated high costs, logistical challenges, and ideological considerations, some countries have opted to forgo participation altogether. Africa at the Biennale: The First Thirty Years

As Thomas McEvilley explains, in its first sixty-five years, the Biennale served as the “cul‑ tural backdrop for colonial policy.”6 During its early history, the only instance in which African art was included in the program was between the two world wars, when the in‑ stitution adopted a notably more progressive platform dedicated to the avant-garde. For the thirteenth edition in 1922, artistic director Vittorio Pica featured Scultura Negra, a controversial special exhibition of thirty-three African sculptures from the Luigi Pigorini National Museum in Rome and the Ethnographic Museum in Florence. I argue that,

African Art, the Venice Biennale, and the Politics of Visibility  155

while this exhibition contributed to ongoing efforts to reclassify and thus elevate certain forms of African cultural production as art—particularly the wood carvings that could be easily absorbed into the existing art canons in the global north—it had another, more nefarious, ideological function: reinscribing a distinct colonial order. This special exhibition operated much like colonial exhibitions in late nineteenthcentury world expositions. In the context of the Biennale, the display of African sculp‑ tures was surrounded by European modernist paintings and sculptures, some of which had derived inspiration from African art traditions.7 Exhibition curator Carlo Anti high‑ lighted the artistic merits of the African sculptures in the catalog, observing that they were representative of “the absolute ingenuity (author translation)” of art in Africa.8 Yet, in the very same text, he characterized the work in derogatory terms as “primitive.”9 Scultura Negra accordingly advanced the problematic idea that, while reclassified as art, African sculptures were still inferior to the European modernist paintings they inspired. Put simply, the special exhibition reproduced the fictional hierarchy found in earlier colo‑ nial exhibitions, which Tony Bennett acknowledges positioned European imperial pow‑ ers at “the very pinnacle of the exhibitionary order.”10 Early African National Participation: 1938–1968

In the decades that followed the thirteenth edition, the Biennale administration never again included an exhibition of African art in the main program. In the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, the only mode of participation was thus the system of national exhibitions and, because most of Africa was under colonial rule at that time and thus not eligible for national participation, these exhibitions were rare. Egypt held an inaugural exhibition, featuring the work of eighteen artists in 1938, sixteen years after securing its independ‑ ence from England.11 It returned with the support of Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1948 and 1950 and, after acquiring a pavilion in the del Giudice complex in 1952, it went on to participate in nearly every edition.12 South Africa made its debut in 1950 and it quickly became a fixture in the foreign section of the Pavilion, before it was forced to cancel ex‑ hibitions in 1960 and 1962 and was banned from participation altogether amid growing global opposition to the ruling National Party’s apartheid policies in 1968.13 Even during the era of African independence (from the late 1950s to the late 1960s), only a few other countries participated in the Biennale program as one-time guests. One year after declaring its independence from France, Tunisia presented its inaugural exhibi‑ tion in 1958 in a small hall in the Giardini behind the US pavilion, alongside two other exhibitions, including a special exhibition for artists from the British colony of Malta and a national exhibition for Turkey.14 As one of only two African nations not under colonial rule in the twentieth century, Liberia showcased a selection of paintings and sculptures by six artists in the foreign section of the Central Pavilion in 1960.15 And eight years after securing its sovereignty from France, the Republic of Congo included an exhibition featuring sixty works by Pierre-Victor Mpoyo “Mpoy” in the Central Pavilion in 1968.16 In addition to carving out space for the respective countries on the world stage and increasing the global visibility of their artists, these exhibitions enhanced the Biennale program. As African-led initiatives, focused on African modernism, they countered the imperial order of the exhibition and the related notion that modernism was the exclusive

156  Janine A. Sytsma

domain of the global north. Many of the artists included in the Egypt Pavilion in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, produced refreshing alternatives to late nineteenth and early twentieth-century European paintings. One of the artists representing Egypt in the 1950 edition, Youssef Kamal, for example, subverted the orientalist gaze and disrupted narrow definitions of modernism with semi-abstract paintings depicting the daily strug‑ gle in modern Egypt.17 Even South Africa occasionally included artists that countered the hegemony of the art world. Amid the international anti-apartheid movement in 1966, the country included work by two black artists, Sydney Kumalo and Michael Gagashe Zondi, both of whom extended the field of modern art with their highly experimental sculptural practice, grounded on Zulu principles.18 Still, to suggest that these early African national exhibitions radically altered the domi‑ nant narrative of the Biennale would be to exaggerate. These exhibitions were, after all, but small components of an ever-expanding art program. Patterns of exclusion persisted throughout early history, underscoring the structural limitations of a biennial system centered on national participation. For several decades, the invitational exhibitions in the Central Pavilion privileged artists from historic art centers in the north at the exclu‑ sion of artists from the majority world. In the 1950s and 1960s, only a few new African countries elected to use precious state funds to establish national pavilions at the Bien‑ nale, and, in the 1970s and 1980s, at which time many African countries faced new eco‑ nomic challenges resulting from rising foreign debt, African participation only declined further.19 After South Africa was banned in the late 1960s, the only regular participant was Egypt. No new African countries joined the program, even as one-time guests. As a result, Africa was woefully underrepresented in the Biennale, and visitors were generally not privy to the artistic innovation and conceptual engagement occurring across Africa at these critical moments in postcolonial history. Africa at the Biennale: The Global Turn (1990–1999)

Following the opening of Magiciens de la Terre, including at the Expanding Internationalism conference in Venice in 1990, expanding international representation in major exhibitions in Europe emerged as a focus.20 Still, in Venice, artistic directors regularly sidelined African artists from the main exhibition, reflecting what Salah Hassan and Olu Oguibe describe as a “reluctance, even unwillingness” to acknowledge artistic innovation from Africa.21 For example, Harald Szeemann’s celebrated invitational exhibition for dAPERTuttO (based on the Aperto exhibition series) in 1999 fell short in this regard. The exhibition was heralded as a milestone in global curation. Yet, of the 100 artists featured in the exhibition only three were from African countries: Georges Adeagbo from Coto‑ nou, Benin, Ghada Amer from Cairo, Egypt, and William Kentridge from Johannesburg, South Africa.22 At this time, when the invitational exhibition encompassed both the Cen‑ tral Pavilion in the Giardini and the Corderie area of the Arsenale, the Biennale failed to extricate notable historic geographic inequities. In the 1990s and early 2000s, as in the previous five decades, contemporary African art was generally limited to a handful of isolated collateral exhibitions and national pa‑ vilions across Venice. According to the US-based Rockefeller Foundation’s proposal to the Venice Biennale, it sponsored two “African Countries Pavilions” for the forty-fourth edition in 1990 and the forty-fifth edition in 1993 edition (postponed by one year so that

African Art, the Venice Biennale, and the Politics of Visibility  157

the centennial exhibition would take place in 1995), respectively, to bring “into the con‑ stellation of global contemporary art countries which [were] not usually recognized.”23 The first, organized by the Studio Museum, built on Contemporary African Artists: Changing Tradition, featuring artists from Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Sen‑ egal, and Zimbabwe, from earlier that year. In partnership with the National Commis‑ sion for Museums and Monuments in Nigeria and the National Gallery of Zimbabwe, museum director Kinshasha Holman Conwill and curator Grace Stanislaus presented Five Contemporary African Artists, which showcased artists from two of the anglophone countries: Nigeria (El Anatsui and Bruce Onobrakpeya) and Zimbabwe (Tapfuma Gutsa, Nicholas Mukomberanwa, and Henry Munyaradzi).24 The second, organized by Mu‑ seum for African Art director Susan Vogel, was conceived as a complement to the first, focusing on artists from francophone countries, including Senegal (Ousmane Sow, who also served as the commissioner for that country, Mor Faye, and Moustapha Dime) and Côte d’Ivoire (Gerald Santoni, who served as the commissioner for that country, Tames‑ sir Dia, and Ouattara).25 After the conclusion of the Biennale, the exhibition traveled to the museum’s New York location, opening in 1994 under the title Fusion: West African Artists at the Venice Biennale.26 In the early 1990s, the Biennale also extended an invitation to South Africa to exhibit in the program after a twenty-five-year absence on account of the ongoing bilateral nego‑ tiations to end apartheid. In 1993, one year before the country’s first democratic election, South Africa celebrated its re-entry into the Biennale with an ambitious exhibition outlin‑ ing the National Party government’s blueprint for a more inclusive and diverse country.27 Two artists were included in the official exhibition in the Central Pavilion directly beside the Rockefeller Foundation-sponsored African Countries Pavilions (Jackson Hlungwani, a black sculptor, and Sandra Kriel, a white activist mixed media artist); one artist (Bon‑ nie Ntshalintshali, a black ceramicist and sculptor) was featured in that year’s edition of Aperto, and an additional twenty-four artists were included in a collateral exhibition held in the Palazzo Giustinian near the Accademia Bridge.28 Following South Africa’s transition to democracy in 1994, at which it was trying to come to terms with its violent past, it returned for a second edition. At the entrance to the Giardini, it presented a single installation by Malcolm Payne, consisting of three brick walls, including the names of de‑ ceased South African artists who, because of the politics of apartheid, had been restricted from participating in major international art exhibitions.29 South Africa then temporarily ceased participation, this time of its own accord, and shifted its focus to regional initia‑ tives, hosting biennials in Johannesburg in 1995 and 1997.30 These exhibitions departed from recent blockbuster exhibitions (such as “Primitivism” in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern, 1984, and Magiciens de la Terre, 1989), criticized for their continued exoticization of African art. The African Country Pavilion exhibitions were part of a deliberate attempt to decolonize the art establishment. Susan Vogel, for example, explains that they strove to foster an “under‑ standing of African art as outside the realm of ethnography.”31 In addition, regardless of intent, all African-focused art exhibitions extricated Africa from discourse on the time‑ less past. Together, they brought attention to the rigorous artistic experimentation occur‑ ring in Africa and highlighted new vibrant art centers across the continent: The Studio Museum’s African Countries Pavilion received a special mention in the award ceremony for the forty-fourth edition of the Biennale in 1990. After several decades of participation

158  Janine A. Sytsma

in the Biennale, the Egypt Pavilion (featuring works by Akram El-Magdoub, Medhat Shafik, and Hamdi Attia) also received its first Golden Lion Prize for Best National Pa‑ vilion in the forty-sixth edition. Institutional Change in the Biennale (1999–2015)

It was against the background of the continued geographic inequity in the 1990s that stakeholders put increased pressure on the Biennale for broader African representation across the platform. Following the 1997 and 1999 editions, when African artists were once again excluded from the invitational exhibition and heightened economic insta‑ bility, resulting from Structural Adjustment Program measures, further impeded Afri‑ can national participation, a group of mostly African art critics, curators, and scholars formed the Forum for African Arts. With the support of the Ford Foundation, the Forum hosted two large-scale collateral exhibitions, which sought to take greater control of selfrepresentation on the platform and map out conceptual art in Africa and the African di‑ aspora. In 2001, Salah Hassan and Olu Oguibe presented Authentic/Ex-Centric: Conceptualism in Contemporary African Art. In the following edition Gilane Tawadros included Fault Lines: Contemporary African Art and Shifting Landscapes.32 Whether in direct response to the positive receptions for the two Forum for African Arts exhibitions or the growing visibility of African artists in the global artistic sphere, the Biennale finally began to address the geographic inequities in the exhibition in the mid-2000s.33 Robert Storr, the artistic director for the 2007 edition, made a rather be‑ lated decision to put out an open call for an African Pavilion in the Artiglierie of the Ar‑ senale.34 And, in February of 2007, a jury made up of Meskerem Assegued, Ekow Eshun, Lyle Ashton Harris, Kellie Jones, and Bisi Silva selected a proposal for an exhibition titled Check List—Luanda Pop, featuring works from the private collection of Congoleseborn, Angola-based collector Sindika Dokolo.35 To date, much analysis of Check List has centered on the structural issues. As Anthony Downey correctly observed, it was particularly problematic to have a single pavilion dedicated to the artistic production of an entire continent, given the Biennale’s national structure (however outdated and problematic).36 Downey writes, There is the slightly mystifying assumption that contemporary African cultural pro‑ duction can be somehow represented in toto as a geographical totality. Admittedly, the whole concept of the Venice Biennial is based around the centerpiece Giardini with its eclectic and more-often-than-not uneven collection of nationally defined pavilions. Nonetheless, Africa, needless to say, is a continent not a nation and this despite a ten‑ dency to discursively portray it in culturally and historically homogenous terms. And whilst the demands and pitfalls of curating cultural diversity—or, to put another way, differentiating differences—apply to all such geocentrically oriented shows, I would argue that there is more at stake in an exhibition that takes the continent of Africa as its conceptual starting point.37 This was not the first time the Biennale had grouped together artists from an expansive geographic region in a pavilion.38 It was not even the first time that it had included an

African Art, the Venice Biennale, and the Politics of Visibility  159

exhibition highlighting artistic production from multiple African countries. Nonetheless, at this time in history, a single pavilion dedicated to the entire African continent gave reason for pause. Check List was also far from representative of contemporary art in Africa and the African diaspora. Though the decision to draw from a private collection was, I believe, reasonable, given the time constraints, it had its drawbacks. Notably, the exhibition inherited the geographic shortcomings of the collection itself. While an exhibition can‑ not  represent Africa in its entirety, just as  a Biennale cannot adequately represent in‑ ternational contemporary art, these regional disparities were significant. Like Dokolo’s collection, the exhibition focused significant attention on artists from Luanda, Angola at the expense of artists from other vibrant art sectors, including in Dakar, Senegal, and Lagos, Nigeria.39 Focusing on these and other issues, as much scholarship to date has done, however, is to miss the importance of Check List as a major initiative, organized at the behest of the Biennale. It offered the clearest indication to date of the Biennale’s commitment to showcasing more African perspectives. Moreover, the exhibition underscored the various ways that artists from Africa and the African diaspora have enhanced the discursive field of contemporary global art. Thus, as one Forum for African Arts member, Olu Oguibe, remarked, even if it did not compensate for “Africa’s poor representation in the biennial’s main exhibition and the continued inability of African nations to establish pavilions that promote the work of their citizens on the world stage” the African Pavilion marked a critical step forward.40 In another watershed moment in the history of Africa at the Biennale in 2014, the board of directors then invited Nigerian-born curator Okwui Enwezor to take the helm as the artistic director of the fifty-sixth edition the following year. A curator of inter‑ national repute, Enwezor had challenged the status quo of the art world as the artistic director for both the Johannesburg Biennial of 1997 and Documenta 11 in 2002. For the 2015 edition of the Biennale, All the World’s Futures, he expanded the geographic scope of past editions in an invitational exhibition dedicated to global crises and un‑ certainties with a look to the future. Of the 136 artists invited to participate in the international exhibition, twenty-one (or 15%) were from African countries, including Algeria, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, and Tunisia (Figure 11.1); and many of the remaining 115 artists were from other historically underrepresented regions. For the first time in the Biennale’s history, Africa was an integral part of the main program.41 Nationalism, Isolationism, and the Invitational Exhibitions (2019–2022)

Regrettably, progress rarely follows a straight line. No sooner had the Biennale estab‑ lished itself as a truly global art exhibition than it pulled back. Christine Macel’s 2017 Viva Arte Viva indeed abruptly reversed the progress made in the previous invitational exhibition, reaffirming the neo-imperial impulses that had historically underpinned the exhibition. The theme for the edition, designed to celebrate “art for art’s sake,” quite clearly overturned Enwezor’s politically charged 2015 edition.42 Likewise, this shift to

160  Janine A. Sytsma

FIGURE 11.1 Ibrahim Mahama, Out of Bounds, All the Word’s Futures, Venice Biennale, 2015.

formal engagements indicated a return to outdated selection practices. Neelika Jayawar‑ dane argued, this “sort of rhetoric, in which art and the political are set up as mutually exclusive, usually means that black artists are underrepresented, or erased altogether.”43 To this I add, it also generally means that artists from across Africa, black or otherwise, were inadequately represented. Of the 120 artists invited to participate in that year’s in‑ ternational exhibition, only five in total (4%) were from African countries—Jelili Atiku from Nigeria, Abdoulaye Konate from Mali, Younès Rahmoun from Morocco, Hassan Khan from Egypt, and John Latham from Zambia—and only two of those five artists were black.44 Reflecting the geopolitical reality, in which nationalism and isolationism were on the rise in the global north, the Biennale appeared to reestablish its borders. The inroads made in expanding African representation in 2015 took a notable decline in 2017 and, despite recent artistic directors’ commitment to generating inclusivity in the invitational exhibition in the subsequent two editions, geographic equity remained elusive. In Ralph Rugoff’s 2019 edition, May You Live in Interesting Times, only six of the seventy-nine (8%) artists invited to participate in the international exhibition repre‑ sented African countries (including Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa); and in Cecilia Alemani’s 2022 edition, The Milk of Dreams, which was postponed by one year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, only seventeen of the 213 (8%) artists were from Africa countries (including Algeria, Dominican Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Senegal, South Africa, Sudan, Tunisia, and Zimbabwe).45

African Art, the Venice Biennale, and the Politics of Visibility  161

Africa at the Biennale: New National Pavilions (2011–2015)

Nonetheless, the decline in African representation in the invitational exhibition in 2017 did not extend to all components of the Biennale. The success of the African Pavilion in the Biennale ten years earlier had spurred greater African national participation. As a result, even before Enwezor’s seminal 2015 edition, curators from Africa had turned their focus to the Biennale, navigating the bureaucratic maze to establish pavilions and finding private sponsors to fund the exhibitions. In the 2011 edition, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and the Republic of the Congo joined Egypt (the sole African national participant for the previous sixteen years) following long hiatuses of sixteen, twenty-one, and seventythree years, respectively. In advance of the 2013 edition, The Encyclopedic Palace, South Africa took out a twenty-year lease on a space in the Sale d’Armi of the Arsenale, dem‑ onstrating its commitment to regular and ongoing participation. As the curator of the Kenya Pavilion, Jimmy Ogonga has noted, at this time, the curator of the Zimbabwe Pavilion, Raphael Chikukwa, also further motivated others to carve out space for artists from African countries through the establishment of national pavilions.46 In certain instances, in 2013, the inaugural African national pavilions of this period only nominally represented their countries. For example, foreigners effectively hijacked the Kenya Pavilion of that year. Only two of the twelve artists included in the exhibition had strong ties to Kenya and, according to prominent members of its visual arts sector, their works were not representative of the type of experimentation happening in the art capital of Nairobi.47 To be sure, Italian curator Sandro Orlandi Stagl made no serious effort to involve members of the city’s art establishment in the decision-making process. Instead, she used the pavilion to promote artists from elsewhere (namely, China and Italy). As Isabelle Alice Zaugg and Emi Nishimura correctly observed, “while it is not uncommon for a national pavilion to include works by artists from other countries this was a surprising and by some accounts troubling choice” for first-time participants.48 The Kenya Pavilion aside, Africa was better represented at the Biennale in the 2013 edition than any previously, even if by less than 10% of all African countries. That year, three returning countries (Egypt, South Africa, and Zimbabwe) and two additional first-time national participants (Côte d’Ivoire and Angola) hosted exhibitions, which, together, introduced aesthetic and conceptual breadth to the Biennale.49 The Angola Pa‑ vilion, Luanda Encyclopedic City, for example, won the much-coveted Lion Prize for Best Pavilion (Figure 11.2). This single photographic installation by acclaimed Angolan artist Edson Chagas consisted of large piles of poster reproductions of photographs of discarded objects from the Angolan capital of Luanda. In one sense, it recalled the impe‑ rial practice of recording, collecting, and preserving cultural objects. Yet, because the photographs featured only fragments of the city, the installation also underscored the futility of the exercise. Enwezor’s appointment as artistic director for the 2015 edition motivated additional African curators to take up the mantle of representing contemporary African art: Egypt continued its nearly seventy-five-year history of involvement with an exhibition in the Giardini; South Africa returned to its space in the Sale d’Armi of the Arsenale; Zimba‑ bwe and Angola participated once more in rented pavilions outside the Biennale proper, namely in the Santa Maria della Pietà in Castello and in the Palazzo Pisani in San Marco, respectively; Mozambique presented an inaugural exhibition, titled Coexistence of

162  Janine A. Sytsma

Encyclopedic City, Angola Pavilion, The Encyclopedic Palace, Venice Biennale, 2013.

FIGURE 11.2  Luanda

Tradition and Modernity in Contemporary Mozambique, in the Arsenale; Seychelles held an inaugural exhibition in the Cannaregio, outside the Biennale proper; and Kenyan art‑ ists succeeded in pressuring the Kenyan government to cancel that year’s pavilion, Creating Identities, thus retaining their control of national representation, after it was revealed that it would once again represent mostly Chinese artists. Africa at the Biennale: New National Pavilions (2017–2022)

Even after the Biennale appeared to reestablish outdated boundaries in the invitational exhibition in 2017, several African countries joined now-regular African national partici‑ pants, some after long absences and others for the first time, bringing the total to a new record of seven. After nearly having to cancel its pavilion when the government pulled its support for Another Country, Kenya joined returning participants Egypt, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Côte d’Ivoire. And, with curator Jimmy Ogonga at the helm, it made significant strides, featuring the works of six Kenyan artists (unlike the 2013 edition and as had been planned for the 2015 edition, of mostly Chinese artists). Nigeria returned for the first time since 1990, with Adenrele Sonariwo as curator, presenting its inaugural solo pavilion, How About Now?, in a rented space in San Croce, and Tunisia participated for the first time since 1958 with Lina Lazaar as curator, presenting The Absence of Paths, a series of kiosks around the Biennale proper (Figure 11.3). That year, Neri Torcello, Azu

African Art, the Venice Biennale, and the Politics of Visibility  163

FIGURE 11.3  Absence

of Paths, Tunisia Pavilion, Viva Arte Viva, Venice Biennale, 2017.

Nwagbogu, and Azza Satti also established the African Art in Venice Forum as a platform designed to address issues surrounding African representation at the Biennale and to gen‑ erate greater African involvement.50 In the 2019 edition, the number of official African national pavilions rose once more to eight, with Ghana and Madagascar joining Egypt, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Côte d’Ivoire, Mozambique, and Seychelles with inaugural pavilions in leased spaces within the Arsenale. Nana Oforiatta Ayim curated the highly anticipated Ghana Pavilion, Ghana Freedom, featuring an impressive line-up of artists from Ghana and the Ghanaian dias‑ pora, including El Anatsui, Ibrahim Mahama, Felicia Abban, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye (Figure 11.5), John Akomfrah, and Selasi Awusi Sosu (Figure 11.4). Rina Ralay Ranaivo curated the Madagascar Pavilion, I Have Forgotten the Night, with a single installation by Joël Andrianomearisoa. After the Algerian government canceled the country’s inaugu‑ ral pavilion, five young Algerian artists also launched a fundraising campaign to support an unofficial pavilion titled Time to Shine Bright near the Giardini. Finally, when the Biennale returned after the one-year delay due to the pandemic in 2022, African curators and other stakeholders once again focused attention on extending visibility on this platform. Even though the inaugural Namibia and Cameroon Pavilions experienced the fate of the Kenya Pavilion nearly a decade prior, Africa had much to cel‑ ebrate. Seven other pavilions were included in the program, representing only a small de‑ cline consistent with that of national participation in general during the pandemic (which fell from eighty-nine in 2019 to eighty in 2022). Shaheen Merali curated the Uganda inaugural pavilion, Radiance: They Dream in Time, which received a special mention at the Golden Lion award ceremony. Several countries also worked to transition from what

164  Janine A. Sytsma

FIGURE 11.4 Peju Alatise, Flying Girls, Nigeria Pavilion, Viva Arte Viva, Venice Biennale, 2017.

by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Ghana Pavilion, May You Live in Interesting Times, Venice Biennale, 2019.

FIGURE 11.5 Paintings

African Art, the Venice Biennale, and the Politics of Visibility  165

Chika Okeke-Agulu has described as “cameo appearances” to sustained participation.51 Kenya joined the program in 2022, this time with government support, presenting its most successful pavilion to date, Exercises in Conversation, in a large, rented space in Cannar‑ egio. Following one of the most memorable debuts in 2019, Ghana struggled to raise the capital for its 2022 pavilion when government funding was not forthcoming. But, com‑ mitted to defining Ghana’s “place in the world” through participation, it presented Black Star, a more modest but still impressive exhibition centered on emerging artists.52 These exhibitions have given visibility to contemporary African-born artists, many of whom may have otherwise not been represented, and elevated the discursive field of contemporary art. For example, in 2017, the Nigeria and Tunisia Pavilions both coun‑ tered Macel’s formalist narrative for Viva Arte Viva. Nigeria’s How About Now? evoked Enwezor’s more politically focused theme from the previous edition, with work that visualized a geopolitical present shaped by both an understanding of a volatile past and a hope for the future; and Tunisia offered a timely critique of the rising nationalism on display in the Biennale by inviting guests to apply for “freesas”—documents granting access to an imaginary world where “human beings may still flow freely from one na‑ tion to the next.” Similarly, in the Uganda Pavilion in 2022, artists Collin Sekajugo and Acaye Kerunen disrupted the hegemonic “Western” thinking in the Biennale by centering indigenous systems of knowledge from Uganda. Conclusion

In the 100 years that have elapsed since Vittorio Pica included Scultura Negra in an exhibition focused mostly on European modernism, African representation at the Bien‑ nale has gradually improved, reaching a crescendo in Enwezor’s All the Worlds Futures in 2015. Of course, broad geographic equity in the invitational exhibition continues to be far from guaranteed, a fact made clear in the 2017 edition. Ensuring that, even when the invitational exhibition reinstated exclusionary practices, contemporary African art was not completely erased from the program, stakeholders from Africa and elsewhere have continued to go to great lengths to establish African pavilions. In the context of a biennial system that manifests the power dynamics of the art world, these pavilions have functioned as critical sites of resistance to Eurocentrism and have afforded op‑ portunities for African self-representation. Whether held in purpose-built structures in the Giardini, or in rented spaces outside the Biennale proper, they have dismantled the neocolonial logic that has long underpinned the Biennale, allowing new creative narra‑ tives to emerge. Notes 1 Shearer West, “National Desires and Regional Realities in the Venice Biennale, 1895–1914,” Art History, 18:3 (1995): 422; Vittoria Martini, “The Evolution of an Exhibition Model: Ven‑ ice Biennale as an Entity in Time,” in Just Another Exhibition: History and Politics of Biennials, ed. Federica Martini and Vittoria Martini (Milano: Postmedia Books, 2011), 120. 2 Even before this time, it was conceived as a site for competition. Indeed, according to the cata‑ log for the first international art exhibition in 1895, the Biennale would draw crowds because of “the notoriety of the illustrious foreign artists who would be competing” (Quoted in Vittoria Martini, “The Evolution of an Exhibition Model: Venice Biennale as an Entity in Time,” in Just

166  Janine A. Sytsma

Another Exhibition: History and Politics of Biennials, ed. Federica Martini and Vittoria Martini (Milano: Postmedia Books, 2011), 121.) See also La Biennale di Venezia, Seconda Esposizione Biennale Internazionale D’Arte (Venezia: La Biennale di Venezia, 1897); La Biennale di Venezia, Terza Esposizione Biennale Internazionale D’Arte (Venezia: La Biennale di Venezia, 1899). 3 Lawrence Alloway, The Venice Biennale 1895–1968: From Salon to Goldfish Bowl (Green‑ wich, CT: New York Graphic Society Ltd, 1968), 17, 93–4. 4 The phenomenon, often described as biennialization began with the establishment of the Ha‑ vana Biennial in Cuba in 1984. African contributions of note include Dak’Art, a biennial estab‑ lished in Dakar, Senegal in 1990; Bamako Encounters, a biennial established in Bamako, Mali in 1994; and the Johannesburg Biennale, held in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1995 and 1997. 5 Cited in Hettie Judah, “A Series of Rogue Pavilions Wrestles with the Venice Biennale’s Na‑ tional Structure,” Artnet, 2007. https://news.artnet.com/opinion/post-national-art-venicebiennale-2017-953204. 6 Thomas McEvilley, “Fusion: Hot or Cold?” in Fusion: West African Artists at the Venice Biennale, ed., Thomas McEvilley (New York: The Museum of African Art, 1993), 15. 7 Lawrence Alloway, The Venice Biennale 1895–1968: From Salon to Goldfish Bowl (Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society Ltd, 1968), 94. 8 La Biennale di Venezia, XIII Esposizione Biennale Internazionale d’Arte, second edition (Ven‑ ezia: La Biennale di Venezia, 1922), 41. 9 La Biennale di Venezia, XIII Esposizione Biennale Internazionale d’Arte, second edition (Ven‑ ezia: La Biennale di Venezia, 1922), 41. 10 Tony Bennett, “The Exhibitionary Complex,” New Formations 4 (1988): 95. 11 La Biennale di Venezia, XXI Esposizione Biennale Internazionale d’Arte (Venezia: La Biennale di Venezia, 1938), 236–43. 12 For a description of the pavilion, see Gabriele Basilico, Pavilions and Gardens of Venice Biennale (Rome: Contrasto, 2013), 175. For the record of dates participated, see Vittoria Martini, “The Evolution of An Exhibition Model: Venice Biennale as an Entity in Time,” in Just Another Exhibition: History and Politics of Biennials, eds., Federica Martini and Vittoria Martini (Milano: Postmedia Books, 2011), 127. For a discussion of Gamal Abdel Nasser’s role, see Salah Hassan and Olu Oguibe, “‘Authentic/Ex-Centric’ at the Venice Biennale: African Con‑ ceptualism in Global Context,” African Arts 34:4 (2001): 96. 13 Elisa Garnsey, The Justice of Visual Art: Creative State-Building in Times of Political Transition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 134–9. 14 La Biennale di Venezia, XXIX Esposizione Biennale Internazionale d’Arte (Venezia: La Bien‑ nale di Venezia, 1958), 198–9, 356–8. 15 La Biennale di Venezia, XXX Esposizione Biennale Internazionale d’Arte (Venezia: La Biennale di Venezia, 1960), 176–7. 16 La Biennale di Venezia, XXXIV Esposizione Biennale Internazionale d’Arte (Venezia: La Biennale di Venezia, 1968), 78–79. 17 La Biennale di Venezia, XXV Esposizione Biennale Internazionale d’Arte (Venezia: La Biennale di Venezia, 1950), 249–57. 18 In the context of apartheid, South Africa was primarily represented by white artists trained in Europe or elite, white-only institutions in South Africa. For details about the 1966 exhibition, see La Biennale di Venezia, XXXIII Esposizione Biennale Internazionale d’Arte (Venezia: La Biennale di Venezia, 1966), 114–6. 19 As Salah Hassan and Olu Oguibe have acknowledged, for some African countries, the ability to participate in the early years of independence was hindered by inadequate national policies and state funds for the arts. (See Hassan and Oguibe, Authentic/Ex-Centric: Conceptualism in Contemporary African Art (Ithaca: Forum for African Arts, Inc., 2001), 7.) For other coun‑ tries, participating in the Biennale would have meant forgoing other nation-building initiatives. Senegal and Nigeria, for example, both opted to instead invest in major Pan-African festivals that would rival the Biennale. In 1966, Senegal underscored its global standing by investing significant financial and creative capital in a World Festival of Black Arts, a festival that in‑ cluded poetry, sculpture, painting, music, cinema, theatre, fashion, and dance from artists and performers from across Africa and the African diaspora. (See Elizabeth Harney, “FESMAN at 50: Pan-Africanism, Visual Modernism and the Archive of the Global Contemporary,” in The First World Festival of Negro Arts, Dakar 1966, ed., David Murphy (Liverpool: Liverpool

African Art, the Venice Biennale, and the Politics of Visibility  167

University Press 2016), 180–93; Elizabeth Harney, In Senghor’s Shadow: Art, Politics, and the Avant-Garde in Senegal, 1960–1995 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), 75; Premier Festival Mondial des Arts Nègres, Premier Festival Mondial des Arts Nègres (Paris: Présence Africaine, 1967)). In 1977, Nigeria then organized the Second World Festival of Black Arts with the similar ambition of generating international recognition of black artists, writers, and performers from around the world (See Ochegomie Promise Fingesi, FESTAC ’77 (London: African Journal Ltd, 1977), 8). 20 For conference description, see Arts International, Expanding Internationalism: A Conference on International Exhibitions, May 27–28, Venice, Italy, 1990. 21 Hassan and Oguibe, “‘Authentic/Ex-Centric’ at the Venice Biennale: African Conceptualism in Global Context,” African Arts 34:4 (2001): 66. 22 Hassan and Oguibe, “‘Authentic/Ex-Centric’ at the Venice Biennale: African Conceptualism in Global Context,” African Arts 34:4 (2001): 65. 23 Alberta Arthurs, Proposal for African Participation at the 1993 (Venice, Italy: Biennale Ar‑ chive, 1993). 24 Kinshasha Holman Conwill, Contemporary African Artists: Changing Tradition (New York: Studio Museum in Harlem, 1990), 12; La Biennale di Venezia, XLIV Esposizione Biennale Internazionale d’Arte (Venezia: La Biennale di Venezia, 1990), 106–7. 25 La Biennale di Venezia, XLV Esposizione Biennale Internazionale d’Arte (Venezia: La Bien‑ nale di Venezia, 1993), 142–7; Susan Vogel, “West African Artists at the Venice Biennale,” in Fusion: West African Artists at the Venice Biennale, ed., Thomas McEvilley (New York: The Museum of African Art, 1993), 6. 26 Both African Countries Pavilions were the products of extensive research. Kinshasha Holman Conwill had, in her capacity as Director of the Studio Museum, extended the mandate of the museum to include African art, even if informally, and Grace Stanislaus had spent two years in Africa completing research for Contemporary African Artists: Changing Tradition. Like‑ wise, Susan Vogel, an established scholar of African arts, had in May 1991 presented Africa Explores, a large-scale exhibition which showcased a variety of African art forms, presenting a nuanced picture of African art, even if, as scholars such as Olu Oguibe, Okwui Enwezor, and Chika Okeke-Agulu noted, it employed outdated and narrow categories for African art (See Oguibe, “Africa Explores: 20th Century African Art by Susan Vogel,” African Arts 26:1 (1993): 16; Enwezor and Okeke-Agulu, Contemporary African Art Since 1980 (Bologna: Da‑ miani, 2009), 16.) It is noteworthy that while important contributions, critics have argued that these special exhibitions failed to significantly broaden the discourse on contemporary African art. In his critique of the second edition of Fusion: West African Artists at the Venice Biennale that opened at the Museum for African Art in New York the year after the Biennale, for exam‑ ple, Enwezor describes the exhibition as a “homogenous exhibition, free from rough edges that will not disquiet those raised on certain diets of contemporary African art.” (Enwezor, “Fusion: West African Artists at the Venice Biennale,” Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art 1 (1994): 56). 27 In the catalog for the exhibition, then-diplomat to Italy, Glenn Babb, celebrated its return to “one of the most prestigious of the art world’s events.” See Glenn Babb “Introduzione,” in Incroci del Sud: Affinities: Contemporary South African Art (Venezia: XLV Biennale di Venezia, 1993), 7. 28 La Biennale di Venezia, XLV Esposizione Biennale Internazionale d’Arte (Venezia: La Biennale di Venezia, 1993), 190–1.; La Biennale di Venezia, Incroci del Sud: Affinities: Contemporary South African Art (Venezia: XLV Biennale di Venezia 1993), 4–5. 29 For additional analysis of the Payne installation, see Elisa Garnsey, The Justice of Visual Art: Creative State-Building in Times of Political Transition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 145–7. 30 For details on the Johannesburg Biennale, see: Elisa Garnsey, The Justice of Visual Art: Creative State-Building in Times of Political Transition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 147; Candice Breitz, “The First Johannesburg Biennale: Work in Progress,” Third Text 9 (Win‑ ter 1995): 89–94; Okwui Enwezor, Trade Routes: History and Geography: 2nd Johannesburg Biennale (Johannesburg: Thorolds Africana Books, 1997). 31 Susan Vogel, “West African Artists at the Venice Biennale,” in Fusion: West African Artists at the Venice Biennale, ed., Thomas McEvilley (New York: The Museum of African Art, 1993), 6.

168  Janine A. Sytsma

For quote, see La Biennale di Venezia, XLV Esposizione Biennale Internazionale d’Arte (Ven‑ ezia: La Biennale di Venezia, 1993), 140. 32 Salah Hassan and Olu Oguibe, Authentic/Ex-Centric: Conceptualism in Contemporary African Art (Ithaca: Forum for African Arts, Inc., 2001); Gilane Tawadros and Sarah Campbell, Fault Lines: Contemporary African Art and Shifting Landscapes (London: Institute of International Visual Arts, 2003). 33 The absence of African art from the Biennale at this time was especially problematic considering the new wave of blockbuster African art exhibitions, such as Cameroonian-born, France-based art curator of the highly acclaimed exhibition Africa Remix, which opened in Dusseldorf, Ger‑ many in 2005 before traveling to London, England, Tokyo, Japan, and Johannesburg, South Africa. In addition, major museums were expanding their collections of contemporary art to include more internationally acclaimed African artists, such as El Anatsui, Gada Amer, and Wangechi Mutu, to name a few. Sylvester Ogbechie launched Critical Interventions: Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture in 2007, which, together with Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, established in 1994, offered a valuable discursive forum for critical issues in African art (Okwui Enwezor, Salah Hassan and Chika Okeke-Agulu, “From the Editors: Nka at 20,” Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art 35 (Fall 2014): 4). 34 The open call for proposals for an African pavilion stirred controversy between members of the Forum of African for African Arts and other important curators of African art. (For informa‑ tion see Olu Oguibe, Open Letter to Salah Hassan, Forum for African Arts, 2006. http://asai. co.za/open-the-gate/.) 35 The exhibition was curated by curator and art critic Simon Njami, and artist and curator Fer‑ nando Alvin. For a complete list of artists, see Simon Njami and Fernando Alvim, Press Release for Check-List Luanda Pop (Njami and Alvim, Press Release for Check-List Luanda Pop, 2007, 12. http://demo.fondation-sindikadokolo.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/african-pavilion_52venice-bienal_en.pdf.) 36 Anthony Downey, “Belatedness All Over Again: The African Pavilion at the 52nd Venice   Biennial,” Third Text 21:6 (2007): 779–83. 37 Ibid., 780. 38 In the 1990s the Biennale included a series of Italo-Latin American Institute exhibitions featur‑ ing artists from Central and South America, including Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru. 39 Christine Eyene, “Africa’s ‘First Official Pavilion’ at the 52nd Venice Biennale.” BBC/Africa Beyond, 2007, https://eyonart.org/2015/04/19/vb07. 40 Olu Oguibe, “Open Letter to Salah Hassan, Forum for African Arts,” 2006. http://asai.co.za/ open-the-gate/ 41 Okwui Enwezor, All the World’s Futures: 56th International Art Exhibition (Venezia: La Bien‑ nale di Venezia, 2015). 42 Christine Macel, Viva Arte Viva: Biennale Arte 2017, 23.05–26.11 (Venice: La Biennale di Venezia, 2017), 2–3. 43 Neelika Jayawardane, “Venice Biennale: African Pavilions and the Politics of Space,” Mail and Guardian, 2017. https://mg.co.za/article/2017-05-19-00-venice-biennale-african-pavilionsand-the-politics-of-space. 44 Christine Macel, Viva Arte Viva: Biennale Arte 2017, 23.05–26.11 (Venice: La Biennale di Venezia, 2017), 7–9. 45 The 2019 exhibition included Michael Armitage (Kenya), Njideka Akunyila Crosby (Nige‑ ria), Zanele Muholi (South Africa), Julie Mehretu (Ethiopia), Otobong Nkanga (Nigeria), and Kemang Wa Lehulere (South Africa). The 2022 exhibition included Monira Al Qadiri (Senegal), Igshaan Adams (South Africa), Merikokeb Berhanu (Ethiopia), Cosima von Bonin (Kenya), Simnikiwe Buhlunga (South Africa), Ibrahim El-Salahi (Sudan), Safia Farhat (Tunisia), Kudzanai-Violet Hwami (Zimbabwe), Ficre Ghebreyesus (Eritrea) Bronwyn Katz (South Af‑ rica), Antoinette Lubaki (Democratic Republic of Congo), Baya Mahieddine (Algeria), Sandra Mujinga (Democratic Republic of Congo), Amy Nimr (Egypt), Magdalene Odundo (Kenya), Elias Sime (Ethiopia), and Portia Zvavahera (Ethiopia). 46 Cited in Tess Thackara, “Despite Obstacles, African Countries Shine at the Venice Biennale,” Artsy, 2017. https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-despite-obstacles-african-countriesshine-venice-biennale.

African Art, the Venice Biennale, and the Politics of Visibility  169

47 Christine Eyene, “First Word: Africa at the 55th Venice Biennale: Of Achievements and Illu‑ sions,” African Arts, 47:1 (2014): 5. 48 Isabelle A. Zaugg and Emi Nishimura, “Angola and Kenya Pavilions in the 2013 Venice Bien‑ nale: African Contemporary Art and Cultural Diplomacy in the ‘Olympics of Art,’” The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society 45 (2015): 141. 49 Côte d’Ivoire was represented as a national participant along with Senegal in 1993 and was returning with a national pavilion. 50 The African Art in Venice Forum returned in 2019 and 2022, with an expanded platform, ad‑ dressing the arts of Africa and the African diaspora broadly. 51 Chika Okeke-Agulu, “On Ghana’s First Pavilion at the Venice Biennale,” Ọfọdunka: Art. Life. Politics, 2019. http://chikaokeke-agulu.blogspot.com/2019/02/on-ghanas-first-pavilion-atvenice.html. 52 Nana Oforiatti Ayim, “Black Star: The Museum as Freedom. Introductory Exhibition Panel, Ghana Pavilion,” 59th Biennale Arte, The Milk of Dreams, 2022.

12 THE SPIRIT OF FI YI YI AND THE MANDINGO WARRIORS Africa in New Orleans Cynthia Becker

Drummers chanting the phrase “Fi Yi Yi” performed with Victor Harris and the Man‑ dingo Warriors at the Congo Square Rhythms Festival in New Orleans. Located on the Edge of the Vieux Carré or French Quarter, during the nineteenth-century Congo Square was a gathering place for people of African descent on Sunday afternoons. In 2022, the Congo Square Festival celebrated African music, food, and dance, and included perfor‑ mances by Black Masking Indians, including Victor Harris who is known for his Africaninspired designs. Harris, regarded as The Spirit of Fi Yi Yi, wore a face mask adorned with gold, black, and white beads, cowrie shells, and leopard skin fabric. Pheasant feath‑ ers and raffia radiated from his mask, and he carried a shield made from a piece of palm tree bark in one hand and a tall staff in the other. The overall color scheme of his ensem‑ ble was gold, white, and black, intended to replicate the color of Malian bogolonfini or mud cloth, which he also incorporated into his suit (Figure 12.1). Harris’s use of face masks and his adoption of African-inspired designs and materials distinguish him from other Black Masking Indians in New Orleans, who, despite us‑ ing the term “masking” to refer to their practice, do not cover their faces. Rather they adorn their suits with feathers and beaded patches that typically feature images of Native Americans as stoic chiefs in feathered headdresses or as warriors riding horses and engag‑ ing in battle against white soldiers. For example, in Figure 12.2, in 2011 Big Chief Nelson Burke of the Red Hawk Hunters wore a headdress made of ostrich feathers dyed a light blue that radiated around his face. Like most Black Masking Indians, Burke painted his face but did not cover it with an actual mask. Harris was one of the first to find inspiration from African visual culture and, in the 1980s, he was the first to cover his face with an African-inspired mask, transforming a 100-year tradition with this innovation. In an interview with the author, Harris empha‑ sized the importance of Africa to his designs: I love doing this. It’s my heritage … my ancestors … my elders. I think about Africa and the ancestors. That is why my work is different from the rest of the guys. I did not study African art. I work through the spirit that commands me to do this work. I DOI: 10.4324/9781003389088-13

The Spirit of Fi Yi Yi and the Mandingo Warriors  171

FIGURE 12.1 Victor

Harris, leader of The Spirit of Fi Yi Yi and the Mandingo Warriors, poses for a photograph at the Congo Square Festival in New Orleans, 2022.  Photo by the author.

172  Cynthia Becker

try to get the projection of Africa from within. I imagine being there [in Africa] but it is not anything from books or anything I saw before. This is why it’s creative work.1 Harris defines masking on Mardi Gras as an expression of his ancestry and his deep spir‑ itual connection to the African continent. This essay considers how Africa has been seen and understood in New Orleans in relation to racial politics through the lens of Black Masking Indians. African Americans began dressing in suits inspired by Native American dress in the 1800s to pay homage to the indigenous people who gave shelter to enslaved people who ran from bondage and often intermarried with them. Dressing as a Native American was a means of recogniz‑ ing one’s heritage and challenged the narrow and restrictive racial categories imposed by Jim Crow laws. By the mid-twentieth century, the relationship of Black New Orleanians to Africa began to change “from one based on racism and unequal power relations to one where Africa signals cultural performance, preservation, creativity, and resistance.”2 The Black Power and Civil Rights Movement in New Orleans increasingly emphasized Africa as an organizing strategy for challenging oppression and racial segregation. As the founder of The Spirit of Fi Yi Yi and the Mandingo Warriors, Victor Harris understands his performances as an essentially African practice that engages with the local community through call-and-response singing and interactive street processions. His masking style reconfigures African designs, recognizing them as expressions of spiritual significance, racial pride, and social activism that confront struggle and adversity through community celebration. Black Masking Indians in Historical Context

According to New Orleans’ oral history, Black Masking Indians, who are also referred to as Mardi Gras Indians, originated in the 1880s after the end of Reconstruction when federal troops left the city and harsh Jim Crow laws were imposed. The origin of the practice has been attributed to a Creole man named Becate Batiste, who formed a group known as the Creole Wild West, which originated in the Seventh Ward of New Orleans, a neighborhood that borders Tremé. As members of the Creole Wild West moved to dif‑ ferent parts of the city, they formed new neighborhood-based groups, which they referred to as “tribes” or “gangs.” During this period, Black Masking Indians dressed in suits reminiscent of those worn by Native Americans in the Plains region, such as the Sioux, Crow, Blackfoot, Arapaho, and Cheyenne. Scholars and filmmakers Maurice Martinez and James Hinton assert that African Americans who wear such dress on Carnival are the cultural and biological de‑ scendants of enslaved people who ran away from plantations and were given shelter by indigenous people. In their film, The Black Indians of New Orleans, they assert that people could not adopt the name or dress of their indigenous group because the white population would have perceived this as threatening. Rather, they substituted Plains In‑ dian dress for the dress of indigenous groups in Louisiana and created fictional names, such as Creole Wild West and Yellow Pocahontas.3 The period of the late nineteenth century coincided with the intense racial segregation and discrimination that accompanied the end of Reconstruction and resulted in the im‑ plementation of harsh Jim Crow laws. Parades organized by all-white, male Mardi Gras

The Spirit of Fi Yi Yi and the Mandingo Warriors  173

groups known as Krewes traveled through prearranged routes down the tree-lined boule‑ vards of St Charles Avenue and Canal Street. The city’s elite dressed as kings, queens, dukes, and princesses. They wore crowns, carried scepters, and showered screaming crowds with glass beads and doubloons meant to mimic the distribution of wealth to the masses. African Americans were largely prohibited from participating in these parades and relegated to the periphery. Due to the increasingly limited opportunities for people of African descent in post-­ Reconstruction New Orleans, many individuals resisted white supremacy through infor‑ mal acts of resistance. As noted by James C. Scott in his book Domination and the Arts of Resistance, groups marginalized from power often engage in performative expres‑ sions that simultaneously conform to and react against dominant forms of hegemony. He wrote that “subordinate groups manage to insinuate their resistance, in disguised forms, into the public transcript,” explaining that the vulnerability of subordinate groups did not permit them the “luxury of direct conformation.”4 Scott interprets the skillful guises that marginalized groups adopt as strategic attempts to confront and counter unequal power relations. It is through this interpretation that we can understand the historical use of Native American-inspired costumes on Carnival by African Americans. In the late nineteenth century, Native Americans were understood in popular culture to be warriors who fought against subjugation at all costs. They were willing to die to protect their land and their way of life. Black Masking Indians can be understood through what Scott refers to as “the arts of political disguise.” As Victor Harris explained to me, We [Black Indians] maintained the culture from Africa but we did not know that it was African. We had to maintain ourselves on Mardi Gras Day by playing Indian but we were really representing our culture … so we would not get ripped up or burnt up or whatever.5 Dressing as a Native American was not seen as threatening to the white majority popula‑ tion of New Orleans, since Native Americans were no longer a threat to white society.6 Written accounts of Black Masking Indians from the late nineteenth and early twenti‑ eth century are rare, and when they do occur, they typically feature pejorative language, indicating that the white-controlled media disregarded them as inconsequential. For example, the Standard History of New Orleans Louisiana from 1900 described Black Masking Indians as follows: The favorite disguise with the negroes is that of the Indian, doubtless from the facility with which it lends itself to a complete transformation of the personality without the use of the encumbering and embarrassing mask; and in war paint and feathers, bearing the tomahawk and bow, they may be seen on Mardi Gras running along the streets in bands of from six to twenty and upwards, whooping, leaping, brandishing their weapons, and, anon, stopping in the middle of a street to go through the movements of a mimic war-dance, chanting the while in rhythmic cadence an outlandish jargon of no sensible import to any save themselves.7 The author used patronizing and pejorative language to describe Black Masking Indians and specifically mentioned how they did not cover their faces. Instead, men and women

174  Cynthia Becker

created headdresses from turkey feathers gathered from neighborhood grocers. They cut beads, buttons, and sequins from secondhand clothing and used bottle caps, shells, and even fish scales to sew decorative patterns on pants, shirts, and vests that they wore, producing relatively inexpensive outfits, referring to them as “suits” and feathered head‑ dresses called “crowns.” Black Indian Masking as Community Activism

Black Masking Indians organized into neighborhood-based groups, which they referred to as “gangs” or “tribes,” and had a hierarchical structure that was male dominated. A man referred to as the Big Chief led the group and served as a type of mentor and elder. The Big Chief taught those who masked with him how to construct a suit and even helped them in everyday life by providing guidance. Members of the tribe included the Spy Boy, who led the tribe through the streets wear‑ ing a lightweight outfit that made movement easy. The Flag Boy followed him, using signals to let other tribe members know that a rival group was approaching. Historically, rivalries between different Indian tribes sometimes led to violent confrontations, as one tribe was expected to humble themselves or “bow down” in front of another. Several chiefs formed a buffer between a rival tribe and the Big Chief, including a trial chief, first chief, and second chief. The Wild Man cleared a path through onlookers on the streets for the Big Chief to pass without damaging his suit, which is the largest and most elabo‑ rate of the entire tribe. While men dominated membership, women also participated as Queens, with the Big Queen accompanying the Big Chief and wearing a suit that was less elaborate than his but followed his color scheme. In the 1850s, when the first all-white carnival krewes began to hold public parades that included horse-drawn floats down the city’s main arteries, the Black presence was limited to flambeaux, the name given to Black men who carried torches to light the parades at night. This changed in 1909 when The Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club created its own parade that processed through the city’s Black neighborhoods. By 1909, members were wearing grass skirts and painting their faces with black with white rings around their eyes, noses, and mouths, adopting dress associated with American blackface minstrelsy. At the time, the word Zulu was linked to pejorative ideas about Africa, as the term Zulu was used in popular culture to denounce someone as a gaudy, uncivilized, and bloodthirsty barbarian, and many of the actions of The Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club reinforced these stereotypes. Unlike the all-white parading groups in the city, they did not follow a fixed route but crisscrossed the city early on Mardi Gras morning with members riding on mule-pulled wagons decorated with palm fronds. The all-white elite carnival krewes such as Rex, which was created in 1872, featured a king that imitated European royalty. Rex celebrated white dominance as it processed down the city’s main boulevards, following a set route each year. The King of Rex became known as the “King of Carnival,” riding on a float while holding a scepter and sitting on a throne. On the contrary, the Zulu king wore a lard can for a crown, carried a banana stalk as a scepter and dressed in a grass skirt with a burlap sack cape, while wearing blackface. As scholar Felipe Smith explained, Zulu was the most visible African American tra‑ dition in the city “but also the most ambivalent and controversial acknowledgment of the city’s African heritage.”8 Zulu evolved into a satire of blackface as an alternative to

The Spirit of Fi Yi Yi and the Mandingo Warriors  175

whites-only Carnival activities, but it was a subtle form of protest that did not cross the line of what was acceptable racialized behavior, as it was congruent with white suprema‑ cist fantasies. By the 1960s Black Civil Rights and civic leaders in New Orleans began to criticize Zulu as feeding into white stereotypes of African Americans and a series of boycotts were organized against the group; Zulu paraded anyway to smaller crowds of African American supporters.9 Zulu was granted permission to parade on the historic route of Rex and other white parades in 1969. While Zulu forges a space for Black people within mainstream Mardi Gras, Black Masking Indians limited their performances in the working class African American neighborhoods of New Orleans, aiming to create a carnival tradition inde‑ pendent and separate from white society. Harris explained that when he was growing up in the 1950s, Black people did not attend white parades in the center of the city. White people were known to push, shove, and even beat up African Americans who attended Carnival parades in white-dominated neighborhoods. Harris explained: We [African Americans] did not have any rights. I did not like that, so I did not go there [white areas]. We had a whole community and segregation back in the day meant that we masked in the neighborhood. People dressed as crazy things. It was so funny. They did not buy shit but they created stuff. If they had a deck of cards, they put the cards on them. [Black Masking] Indians used garfish, beads from dress, buttons. Mama had to hide her jewelry, so we did not find it and use it to make our suits. Peo‑ ple were poor but we had greater prosperity than today. They cared about each other. It was like a village.10 Harris described the sense of community inherent in the carnival traditions practiced within Black neighborhoods. While African Americans were historically excluded from official Mardi Gras celebrations, they celebrated Carnival in their segregated neighbor‑ hoods. Black Masking Indian tribes marched with second-liners, a name used to refer to the friends, neighbors, and family who followed them, singing call-and-response songs and playing syncopated beats on tambourines. Victor Harris grew up in the Seventh ward of New Orleans, which, along with the ad‑ joining Sixth ward, emerged as a center for Black political resistance in the 1960s. Jerome Smith, a prominent Black political activist in New Orleans, member of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and a Freedom Rider during the Civil Rights Movement, founded Tambourine and Fan, a community-based youth organization in the Sixth and Seventh Wards.11 Tambourine and Fan was dedicated to educating young people about the history of Black culture and establishing a sense of pride in the community. Smith focused on exposing the city’s youth to the Black Masking Indians, understanding the Big Chief as a mentor for the city’s African American youth. In a 1977 interview, Smith described the Black Masking Indians, jazz music, and street parades as mechanisms that gave Black New Orleanians a means to express themselves. He understood these cultural expressions as African retentions that brought together the community, stating that: Much of what we see in the Mardi Gras Indians is transferred from the African expe‑ rience in terms of dance, costume construction, and the whole spiritual significance

176  Cynthia Becker

of sharing oneself with one’s community, just for the goodness of doing that and not looking for any prizes in return.12 Black Masking Indians spend months working on their beaded and feathered costumes, self-funding the cost of materials and labor. Until the mid-twentieth century, they wore them on the streets of New Orleans twice a year, on Mardi Gras Day and St. Joseph’s Night, the latter a religious festival brought by Sicilian immigrants to New Orleans. Dispersed within Black neighborhoods of the city, these Sicilian immigrants and Afri‑ can Americans took the opportunity to celebrate together. By the 1900s, various Black masking groups marched through the streets on St. Joseph’s night, which usually falls within Lent, the Catholic period of fasting before Easter. As a Catholic-majority city, New Orleans observed St. Joseph’s Night as an evening free from the requirements of Lent and it allowed the public to view the suits of Black Masking Indians one last time by the light of small lanterns that the maskers carried. By the early 1960s, the practice of Black Masking Indians parading on St. Joseph’s night had all but ended. Jerome Smith worked to revive this tradition as a means of pro‑ moting and preserving New Orleans Black culture. He persuaded Allison “Tootie” Mon‑ tana, Big Chief of the Yellow Pocahontas tribe, to parade through the city on St. Joseph’s Night. A prominent figure in the community, Montana’s support contributed to the even‑ tual popularity of the event as he united disparate groups of Black Masking Indians who respected him as a local leader. By the mid-1970s, Smith and Montana added a daytime parade of Black Masking Indians to follow St. Joseph’s Night, designating it as Super Sunday.13 A 1973 article in The Louisiana Weekly, an African American newspaper pub‑ lished in New Orleans, indicated that the daytime parade was intended to draw attention to the drug problem among the city’s African American community, and participants car‑ ried signs with anti-drug slogans.14 The act of claiming public streets for cultural, social, and political expression was an overtly political act and allowed those barred from white sections of the city to claim their own public space. Super Sunday continues to be a very popular event and is held in the city’s various neighborhoods (Uptown, Downtown, and the West Bank) on different dates with large crowds lining the streets to watch. With the inauguration of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in 1970, the popularity of Black Masking Indians grew considerably and spread into the white com‑ munity. Some groups professionally recorded their music and played in music festivals, gaining a new space for performance outside of Mardi Gras, St. Joseph’s Night, and Super Sunday. Furthermore, the suits constructed each year became more elaborate, with the use of hanging tassels, more extensive beadwork, and larger feathers to create a more visible stage presence. It was during this period that two distinct neighborhood styles of Black Masking Indian dress became known as the Uptown and Downtown styles. Although innovations within this dichotomy exist, the Uptown style is characterized by the use of ostrich feathers to construct headdresses (known as crowns), flat pictorial beadwork patches with Native American scenes, and ribbon-trimmed cuffs. This is the style worn by Big Chief Burke from the city’s Lower Ninth Ward (see Figure 12.2). In the Downtown section of New Orleans, Big Chief Allison “Tootie” Montana has been cred‑ ited with initiating a new three-dimensional style, which was inspired by architectural elements typical of that neighborhood, including plaster ceiling medallions and brackets found on New Orleans’ shotgun houses.

The Spirit of Fi Yi Yi and the Mandingo Warriors  177

FIGURE 12.2  Big

Chief Nelson Burke of the Red Hawk Hunters, St. Joseph’s Night, 2011. Photo by the author.

Montana lived in the Seventh Ward and worked as a master builder, which inspired him to create three-dimensional beaded patches that jumped off the surface of his apron. Rather than wear the Uptown style crown with feathers projecting backward, Montana created a new style of headdress that radiated horizontally from shoulder to shoulder, being held up by the head and shoulders of the masker. People referred to this style as a mummy crown since it was not very flexible and was difficult to move quickly while wearing it. Black Masking Indians in New Orleans continue to create suits in the Downtown style today. For example, Big Chief David Montana was a former member of Yellow Pocahon‑ tas and Big Chief Allison “Tootie” Montana’s nephew. In 2009, he made a yellow feath‑ ered suit with a headdress topped by an open-winged eagle. He carried a wooden staff shaped like a large yellow python. Like the work of his uncle and his father, who also masked, Big Chief David Montana formed shapes out of cardboard and covered them with fabric and beads, using them to adorn the apron of his suit with a three-dimensional pattern that included five green fleur-de-lis shapes rotating out from a central circle. Fur‑ thermore, none of those dressing in this style covered their faces with masks, choosing instead to wear a feathered headdress (Figure 12.3). When a Black Masking Indian dressed, the headdress was the final piece of the ensem‑ ble placed on the body. The term “crown” suggests its transformational qualities, and a Big Chief never removed his crown while masking, regardless of its size and its heaviness. The crown became an emblematic symbol of the Big Chief, his leadership, and his artistic skills. The phrase “My Big Chief’s Got a Golden Crown” was transformed into a popular

178  Cynthia Becker

FIGURE 12.3 Big

Chief David Montana of the Washitaw Nation. 2009.  Photo by the author.

song performed by Black Masking Indians to praise their Big Chief and elevate him to the status of royalty, countering the image of European royalty that dominated white carnival groups in New Orleans. Victor Harris: From a Crown to a Mask

Victor Harris’s Afrocentric style developed in 1984 after he left the Yellow Pocahontas Tribe. Harris participated in the recording of the song “Shotgun Joe” for the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, who subsequently listed the name Yellow Pocahontas on the record label. Since Harris had not requested permission from the Big Chief, he was accused of profiting from the tribe’s name, angering members. Harris recounted this experience to me in an interview: I was in the tribe [Yellow Pocahontas] for eighteen years. These were my relatives and I went to school with them. I was abandoned by my people. I spent all my life with these people … this was my community and they did not even talk to me and they did not give me the opportunity to redeem myself. I did not know what I was going to do because this was my life and something that I always loved. I had to go to the spirit.15 As a result, Harris entered a period of deep reflection, until the spirit of Fi Yi Yi revealed his new path.

The Spirit of Fi Yi Yi and the Mandingo Warriors  179

The year Harris left Yellow Pocahontas he wore a suit that featured a small mask that covered his face. When he put the mask over his face, Harris explained to me that he became a vessel for the spirit. The year Harris began to embody Fi Yi Yi was 1984, the same year the Louisiana World Exposition, which included an Afro-American Pavilion designed by New Orleans-based artist John Scott. Scott had plans to raise funds and transform the pavilion into an African American museum and cultural center to include art and artifacts from Africa and audio-visual presentations, including music, dances, and lectures, with the intention of exposing the public to African American contributions to the history of the United States.16 While the museum never came to fruition, it clearly represented a moment in New Orleans history when people of African descent felt that it was possible to recognize their heritage without retaliation from the city’s white popula‑ tion. Harris performed at the World’s Fair, and his adoption of an African mask was also an expression of Black self-empowerment. For centuries, anti-Black rhetoric had dominated popular, scientific, and political discourse in New Orleans, which drove away many remnants of African heritage un‑ derground or into disguise.17 Harris explained that there was no pride associated with African heritage in New Orleans, a city that was once the largest slave market in the United States Some people didn’t want to be African people, even today. But that is where our an‑ cestors are from. People did not have pride in that because people were so deprived of being human and people did not want to identify with being Black. And it stayed like that for a long time. We had a problem with our own people because they were lighter skinned Creoles. But I will not be deprived of who I am myself. I am going to be proud of who I am.18 The Afro-American pavilion was seen as controversial by many visitors, as it publicly confronted the history of slavery in a city that historically engaged in the buying and sell‑ ing of human beings, a history people preferred not to discuss.19 While Civil Rights activists in New Orleans encouraged African Americans to embrace their African heritage, according to Harris, many New Orleanians preferred not to do so. As Harris recounted to me, the mixed-race Creole population in New Orleans histori‑ cally forged closer ties to Europe to escape the social stigma associated with African ori‑ gins, dividing the city’s Black population. Harris explained that “People did not want to identify with being Black. I want to be identified for being Black … for my race. I think of my ancestors and that is why I started doing this.”20 Harris’s desire to identify as African led him to wear a mask that covered his face. Harris moved away from the geometric Downtown style started by his mentor Big Chief Allison “Tootie” Montana, a style associated with the city’s Creole tradesmen who often worked as builders, and as previously discussed, were inspired by elements found in New Orleans architecture. When Harris first covered his face with a mask, he adorned his suit with black feathers, adding beads and sequins and using colors associated with Pan-Africanism: red, green, and yellow. The Downtown style was deeply rooted in New Orleans history, but Harris abandoned the feathered crown and created a new Afrocen‑ tric aesthetic complete with a face mask, a shield, and designs and motifs drawn from

180  Cynthia Becker

FIGURE 12.4 The

Spirit of Fi Yi Yi and the Mandingo Warriors marching on Mardi Gras Day, 2014.  All rights reserved © Jeffrey David Ehrenreich.

African art objects. Harris saw his suits as conveying a sense of Black pride rooted in a connection to the African continent (Figure 12.4). Creating New Masking Traditions

In addition to creating a new style of dress, Victor Harris has also incorporated several new traditions into his public performances. First, Fi Yi Yi and the Spirit of the Man‑ dingo Warriors pass by the home of Big Chief Allison “Tootie” Montana each Mardi Gras morning. In 2012, Harris stood on the front steps with Montana’s wife Joyce, hold‑ ing her hand to honor the fact that Joyce helped her husband sew his suits for the more fifty years that he masked (Figure 12.5). Fewer women than men join Indian tribes and mask as Queens, but many, such as Joyce Montana, spend hundreds of hours at home helping their husbands, sons, and other male relatives sew their suits each year. Each year the suit worn by Harris has a special meaning, such as the yellow suit that he wore in 2007 to honor Big Chief Tootie Montana, referencing the Yellow Pocahontas. Big Chief Tootie Montana passed away from a heart attack in 2005. He had been testifying about police violence against the In‑ dians at a New Orleans City Council meeting, making his death profoundly meaningful for the local community and resulting in a massive funeral in his honor that was attended by dozens of Black Masking Indians.

The Spirit of Fi Yi Yi and the Mandingo Warriors  181

FIGURE 12.5 Victor Harris, leader of The Spirit of Fi Yi Yi and the Mandingo Warriors, stands

on the front porch of the late Big Chief Allison “Tootie” Montana. He honors Montana’s wife, Joyce, by holding her hand high in the air, 2012.  Photo by the author.

The blue suit Harris wore in 2012 was meant to honor Collins “Coach” Lewis, who passed away the year before. He named the suit “Bumpy Blue,” one of Coach’s nick‑ names.21 Coach was one of a group of ten or so designers, referred to as the Committee, who devoted hundreds of hours to the creation of the suit for Fi Yi Yi each year and, due to his dedication, became known as the Ambassador of the Mandingo Warriors. The Committee sewed on beads and sequins by hand with each member creating a different section of a suit, but Coach held the role as one of Harris’ primary designers and Harris honored him through his use of blue the year that Coach passed away. Another tradition created by Harris was the procession that Fi Yi Yi and the Man‑ dingo Warriors would make to the Backstreet Cultural Museum each Mardi Gras morn‑ ing, standing on the front porch and making a short speech to the community who gathered there (Figure 12.6). In 2009, dozens of people waited for Harris to make an appearance and he explained: “I talk about life and people and what is going on … I am talking about us as one. We are all coming together.” A non-profit museum and cultural center, The Backstreet Cultural Museum was run by the self-motivated historian and vid‑ eographer Sylvester Francis until he passed away in 2020. Francis’ daughter now man‑ ages the museum and has relocated it, but the museum continues to be filled with jazz funeral relics and items from African American benevolent societies popularly known as Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs. It is filled with several suits donated by Black Masking Indians, including several donated by Victor Harris.

182  Cynthia Becker

FIGURE 12.6 Victor

Harris, leader of the Spirit of Fi Yi Yi and the Mandingo Warriors, stands on the front porch of the Backstreet Cultural Museums, Mardi Gras Day, 2009.  Photo by the author.

The Spirit of Fi Yi Yi and the Mandingo Warriors  183

The red suit worn by Harris in 2009 intentionally channeled the colors of the Yoruba orisha Shango, and his designers beaded a cruciform symbol or double-headed axe into the suit’s apron. While his color scheme changes each year, every ten years Harris wears a suit that recreates the pan-African colors that he first wore in 1984 to celebrate the com‑ ing of the Spirit of Fi Yi Yi. The suit worn by Harris in Figure 12.4 represents the fourth decade of the Spirit of Fi Yi Yi and features Pan-African colors. Harris informs members of his tribe of the color scheme that he plans to use each year, instructing them to use the same so that when they parade in the city streets, they represent a united front. However, he does not share the details of his suit, nor does he dictate how their suits should be designed. The only requirement is that their color scheme match his. Harris moved away from the traditional structure of a New Orleans Indian tribe and rejected the traditional title of Big Chief, preferring to be called The Spirit of Fi Yi Yi. Harris was one of the first Black Masking Indians to march with drummers, while other groups were accompanied by rhythms played on the tambourine. He marched with fam‑ ily members, including his children and his niece Big Queen “Cutie” Kim Boutte, whose dress visually complemented the one worn by Harris. Boutte, seen to the right of Harris in Figure 12.4, typically wore a lightweight suit so she could dance easily. While her suit did not outshine the one worn by Harris, Boutte was a larger-than-life presence on the street who devoted herself to teaching Black Indian cultural traditions to the next genera‑ tion; Boutte tragically passed away in 2020. Black Masking Indians historically have a hypermasculine hierarchical and patriarchal structure with a Big Chief leading the group. The Big Chief expects the other members of his tribe to support and protect him, and each has a very precise role to play. Parading on the side of the Big Chief is a Big Queen, who assists in the creation of suits and provides support for the group, yet she is often treated by the male members of her group as a mere embellishment. The Big Queen is expected to wear a less elaborate suit and smaller crown than that of the Big Chief, allowing him to outshine her. Big Queen Rita Dollis from the Wild Magnolias explained that women’s suits are never as elaborate and their crowns are never as large as the Big Chief, because “that is tradition and some things you need to leave alone.” Despite this, Dollis founded the Queens of the Nation Indian Council in 2010 to draw attention to the role that women play in tribes and give them the same respect as men.22 Scholars Tiyi Morris and Virginia H. Cope write that Big Queen is “an embrace of a position that values Black womanhood, and a quiet insistence of their importance in a tradition designated to celebrate Black men.”23 Black women consciously take a second‑ ary position to Black men, as they recognize the need to support Black manhood and publicly defer to black men in a society that strictly controls the Black male body. More specifically, the title of Big Queen rejects the limited roles for Black women in American society and articulates a powerful definition of Black beauty. The roles of women in the Spirit of Fi Yi Yi and the Mandingo Warriors have expanded a great deal in recent years. For example, in Figure 12.4, Resa “Cinnamon Black” Bazile can be seen to the left of Fi Yi Yi, performing as a Voodoo Baby Doll Second Queen, a role that does not exist among other Black Masking Indian tribes. Bazile’s role repre‑ sents a fusion of different Black New Orleans parading traditions. First, the Baby Dolls

184  Cynthia Becker

are a Black women’s carnival tradition that emerged in the early 1900s from Storyville, a red-light district of a Black section of New Orleans that operated during this period. Black women flaunted norms of respectability by dressing in short silk skirts, wearing bonnets and bloomers, smoking cigars lit with money tucked in their garters, drinking whiskey from baby bottles, and dancing to bawdy rhythms. Baby Dolls historically chal‑ lenged normalized race, gender, and class constraints imposed upon them.24 Voodoo is a religious practice associated with the enslaved in New Orleans, and Bazile works as a cultural historian at the Voodoo Historical Museum in the French Quarter.25 Bazile originally paraded with the Tremé Million-Dollar Baby Dolls, but she was drawn to Fi Yi Yi and the Mandingo Warriors because of their spiritual connection to Africa. She acknowledges her Baby Doll roots by wearing a short, tulle skirt, white lacey socks, a laced collar, a decorated bonnet, and a beaded baby bottle tied to her waist. When Bazile began to parade with Fi Yi Yi, she merged her multiple identities as a Voo‑ doo Queen, a Baby Doll masker, and an Indian Queen, as is evident in Figure 12.4.26 Each year, a group of percussionists follows Victor Harris, playing tambourines, cow‑ bells, and drums, including the professional drummer Wesley Phillips. Phillips first saw the Spirit of Fi Yi Yi perform at the 1984 World’s Fair. As an African drummer, Phillips had performed with many groups throughout the city, playing jazz, gospel, Brazilian, and West African music. He began to play for Fi Yi Yi in 1992, developing a unique rhythm that merged his different musical experiences. As Phillips explained: I established a different type of beat and when Victor [Harris] puts on a suit and the drums are playing, the suit takes on a life and an energy. Victor calls on the drummers to play faster, play louder, because we have to give him the energy through the music and that brings out the motion and movement that he adds to the suit. Fi Yi Yi is more than just Mardi Gras. It is something from the community.27 Phillips recognizes that music keeps the community together. Big Queen “Cutie” Kim Boutte would make certain that each child masking with Fi Yi Yi and the Mandingo War‑ riors carried a drum, contributing to the music generated by the group. Although he is no longer a member of Fi Yi Yi and the Mandingo Warriors, in 2012 Ronald Dumas performed the role of a moss-wearing Wild Man. From a rural Creole family, Dumas was attracted to Fi Yi Yi and the Mandingo Warriors because it allowed him to share the culture of his ancestors and pay respect to the indigenous people in Loui‑ siana.28 He covered a cloth with moss, deer antlers, racoon tails, and wore work boots to evoke the swamps found in rural Louisiana. In Figure 12.5, he can be seen standing in front of the Montana house; in addition to moss, his back was covered with a large tor‑ toise shell. Dumas also carried a bag of white powder that he blew in people’s faces as he passed them, blessing them, but at the same time, reminding people to keep a respectful distance away from the Spirit of Fi Yi Yi. After the passing of Kim Boutte, Resa “Cinnamon Black” Bazile has become the Big Queen of the Mandingo Warriors and her suits feature more African designs than before. Several other women have joined the Mandingo Warriors, including Sula Evans, who cre‑ ated the position of Medicine Queen. Evans is a healer and priestess of Mami Wata who was initiated in Ghana, and she joined the Mandingo Warriors after a period of great reflection. She began parading with a different Black Indian Masking group but felt that

The Spirit of Fi Yi Yi and the Mandingo Warriors  185

the Spirit of Fi Yi Yi allowed her to best honor her Native American ancestors, as well as invite the power of her African ancestors, especially the nurturing and healing power of Mami Wata. When she became part of the Mandingo Warriors, this not only increased the number of women in the tribe but also signaled that Fi Yi Yi and the Mandingo Warriors were understood by Black New Orleanians as a sanctuary for those seeking to emphasize their African spirituality and culture. When Evans performs with the Black Masking Indians, she typically covers her face with a mask and often references Yoruba orisha through the colors and designs of her suits. Conclusion

Over the years, the African-inspired creations of The Spirit of Fi Yi Yi and the Mandingo Warriors have captured the attention of the museum world and Harris’s suits have been displayed in the Ogden Museum of Southern Art (2006), in New Orleans’s first biennial art exhibition Prospect 1 (2008), and at the exhibition “Black Indians of New Orleans” at the Quai Branly in Paris (2022). Although Harris’ artistic creations have crossed into the museum world, the act of parading through New Orleans’ Black community remains central to his identity. For Harris, dressing as a Black Masking Indian emphasizes a history that centers on the city’s African heritage and conveys self-respect in the majority Black city of New Orleans. Harris does not strive to create a suit that references one group within Africa, but Africa has taken on a symbolic quality that describes a certain way of living in the world. Harris brings to life the words of civil rights activist Jerome Smith, who recognized that suits of the Black Masking Indians were only one aspect of the entire process, stating that: There’s a whole thing about lifestyle, a whole philosophy of it, that is in the African communal, a community value system is a part of that and that’s the thing that tends to impress me more than just the dress and the dancing, that is, to be able to bring joy in the situation that says joy ain’t supposed to be there.29 The appeal of Black Masking Indians lay in their capacity to counter the experience of in‑ justice associated with enslavement, but also in their ability to bring people together. The use of dress, music, and singing to express an African identity in New Orleans acknowl‑ edges agency, as people are actively participating in crafting and asserting their own selfrepresentation through their choice of beadwork, clothing, and props. Victor Harris and his Committee spend hundreds of hours hunched over fabric, sewing thousands of seed beads and cowries onto its surface. They create intricate designs, channeling the spirit of their African ancestors and bringing together the community. The result is a high ornate and original suit beautiful enough to be inhabited by the Spirit of Fi Yi Yi. Notes 1 Author’s interview with Victor Harris, January 7, 2009. 2 Becker, Cynthia, Rachel Breunlin, and Helen A. Regis. 2013. “Performing Africa in New Orleans.” African Arts 46 (2), 19. 3 Martinez, Maurice, and James E. Hinton. 1976. The Black Indians of New Orleans. DVD. Wilmington, NC: DoorKnobFilms.

186  Cynthia Becker

4 Scott, James C. 1990. Domination and the Arts of Resistance. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 136. 5 Author’s interview with Victor Harris, January 7, 2009. 6 Turner, Richard Brent. 2009. Jazz, Religion, the Second Line, and Black New Orleans. Bloom‑ ington, IN: Indiana University Press, 55. 7 Rightor, Henry. 1900. Standard History of New Orleans, Louisiana. Chicago, IL: Lewis Pub‑ lishing Company, 631. 8 Smith, Felipe. 2013. “ ‘Things You’d Imagine Zulu Tribes to Do’: The Zulu Parade in New Orleans Carnival.” African Arts 46 (2), 22. 9 Smith 2013, 151. 10 Author’s interview with Victor Harris, June 21, 2021. 11 Barnes, Bruce, and Rachel Breunlin. 2014. Talk That Music Talk: Passing on Brass Band Music the Traditional Way. New Orleans: Neighborhood Story Project at the University of New Orleans Press, 16. 12 Interview with Jerome Smith by Connie Gmelle. 1977. St. Marks Community Center Ethnic Heritage Project. Amistad Research Center. Tulane University. Collection no. 327. Box no. 2. 13 Tom Dent papers. 1981. Amistad Research Center. Tulane University. Collection no. 117. Box no. 36. 14 The Louisiana Weekly, May 6, 1972. 15 Author’s interview with Victor Harris, January 7, 2009. 16 Marcus, Frances Frank. 1984. “New Orleans Blacks Plan Museum After Fair.” The New York Times, April 27, 1984. In a 1984 interview, Scott, explained his motivation: “My greatest inspiration for doing this was someday I will have to face my ancestors and they are going to ask what did you do. And I don’t ever want to say I should’ve or I could’ve. At least I can say I tried.” http://ladigitalmedia.org/video_v2/asset-detail/LFOLK-330. John Scott was intimately linked to the Yellow Pocahontas tribe, and Scott designed a staff carried by Big Chief Darryl Montana in 2008. 17 Smith 2013, 23. 18 Author’s interview with Victor Harris, June 21, 2021. 19 http://ladigitalmedia.org/video_v2/asset-detail/LFOLK-330. John Scott mentioned in an inter‑ view that some people thought it was negative to talk about slavery and other visitors cried when they went through the section that discussed the Middle Passage. 20 Interview with Victor Harris, June 21, 2021. 21 Breunlin, Rachel, editor. 2018. Fire in the Hole: The Spirit Work of Fi Yi Yi & The Mandingo Warriors. The Neighborhood Story Project, New Orleans: University of New Orleans Press, 127. 22 Author’s interview with Big Queen Rita Dollis, July 21, 2021. 23 Morris, Tiyi, and Virginia H. Cope. 2022. “Protected: ‘All hail the Queen’: Cultural Bear‑ ing, Civic Engagement, and the Mardi Gras Indian Queens.” The Scholar and Feminist Online 18 (1). https://sfonline.barnard.edu/all-hail-the-queen-cultural-bearing-civic-engagementand-the-mardi-gras-indian-queens/ 24 Vaz, Kim Marie. 2013. The “Baby Dolls”: Breaking the Race and Gender Barriers of the New Orleans Mardi Gras Tradition. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press. 25 Breulin 2018, 130, 167. 26 Author’s interview with Resa “Cinnamon Black” Bazile, March 31, 2022. 27 Public lecture at the New Orleans Museum of Art, “Roots of the Fi Yi Yi,” January 14, 2009. 28 Breulin 2018, 87. 29 Interview with Jerome Smith by Connie Gmelle. 1977. St. Marks Community Center Ethnic Heritage Project. Amistad Research Center. Tulane University. Collection no. 327. Box no. 2.

13 SPEAKING INTO BEING The Resonance of Empathy in the Work of Elizabeth Catlett Melanie Anne Herzog

Over the course of more than sixty years, in the United States and Mexico, Elizabeth Catlett (1915–2012) produced aesthetically compelling and politically charged figural sculptures that resonate as declarations of radical and enduring empathy. Catlett’s work is grounded in what she regarded as the historically based necessity to speak into be‑ ing the inner understanding that sociologist Patricia Hill Collins terms “Black women’s knowledge,” a counter to the historical absence of Black women’s perspectives in art history and visual culture.1 Grounded in her embodied knowledge, these representations of her subjects’ lived experiences and states of mind call for responses from our own embodied selves. Speaking into being conjures multisensory responses, as that which has been unspoken is given voice and visual form. The trope of voice pervades Elizabeth Catlett’s expressions of resonant and embodied empathy with Black women and other oppressed peoples who have historically been too often forced into silence. Catlett invoked the resonance of voices raised in song in works that span her lengthy artistic career: in early prints, such as I Have Given the World My Songs, a linocut in her Negro Woman series of 1946–1947, later retitled The Black Woman; a sculptural Singing Head that she constructed in clay in the early 1960s and cast in bronze in 1968; the abstracted black marble Singing Head (1980), now in the Smithsonian American Art Museum, that recalls various African mask traditions; and Singing Their Songs (1992), one of six lithographs that accompany Mar‑ garet Walker’s poem For My People, reissued in a portfolio by the Limited Editions Club to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the poem’s publication. Exemplary of the blending of cultural influences that characterizes much of her sculpture, Catlett reinter‑ preted the small Singing Head from the 1960s, which echoes the form of the expressive, open-mouthed terracotta figurines from the pre-Hispanic Remojadas culture of Veracruz, on Mexico’s Atlantic coast, in The Black Woman Speaks of 1968. Elegantly carved in cedar, with subtle curves and planar turns that highlight the grain and sheen of the wood, The Black Woman Speaks embodies the agency of Black women as speaking subjects. Resonance, a term often used in discussions of visual expression, signals a connection to multi-sensorial reverberations felt deep within the body. Among the forms of artistic DOI: 10.4324/9781003389088-14

188  Melanie Anne Herzog

expression to which Catlett looked for inspiration, resonant wellsprings for her were the pre-Hispanic arts of Mexico and the art of sub-Saharan Africa. Primarily figurative, in its substantive and tactile materiality, Catlett’s sculpture resonates with her own embodied knowledge and her deep empathy with her works’ subjects and audiences and with the formal language that calls to her in the rounded volumes of ceramic figures from various Mexican sculptural traditions and the expressive eloquence she witnessed in African art. When Professor Henry Drewal arrived at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I was immersed in research for my dissertation, “‘My Art Speaks for Both My Peoples’: Eliza‑ beth Catlett in Mexico.” One question in particular confounded me: in what ways was Elizabeth Catlett influenced by “African art”? Clearly, in some instances, she drew in‑ spiration from specific works. For example, the faces of the mother and children in her lithograph Madonna (1982), an Afrocentric return to the theme of Black maternity that she had explored in prints and sculpture since the 1940s, bear a striking resemblance to the Dan mask that hangs in her living room in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Such direct refer‑ ences appear only rarely in her prints. In Black Unity (Figures 13.1 and 13.2) (1968), an embodied invocation of Black Power, Catlett borrowed from several African sculptural sources. While she replicated none of these, the subtly differentiated paired faces, carved in cedar, are simultaneously reminiscent of Congolese masks, Bakuba double-headed cups, and Baule masks—evidence of her abiding interest in the expressive and evocative potential of African sculptural form rather than in cultural specificity.

Catlett, Black Unity, 1968.  Cedar, 21 × 12 ½ × 23 in. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas, 2014. 11. Photography by ­Edward C. Robison III. Elizabeth Catlett, Copyright Mora-Catlett Family/­ Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY

FIGURE 13.1 Elizabeth

Speaking into Being  189

FIGURE 13.2 View

from the back.

During the course of my research, I had the honor of spending time with Ms. Catlett at her home and studio in Cuernavaca and at her apartment in New York City. From our interviews, discussion of particular pieces in her studio, and casual unrecorded conversa‑ tions, I learned that she looked to multiple African artistic lineages for inspiration. This is because, more important to her than specific lineages within African art, she sought in African art the resonance of form as expression of feeling. I do not recall that our Profes‑ sor Henry Drewal had yet spoken into being the term “sensiotics,” but what I came to understand was this: Catlett’s deep regard for the formal resonance of African sculptural form fused, in her own artistic practice, with the bodily knowledge that was integral to her creative process.2 When Catlett visited museums such as the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art—a museum she lauded as one that Black people visit the way that white people visit the Metropolitan Museum—or perused published reproductions of African art, what mattered to her was how meaning is expressed through form—what she called “form that would achieve sympathy.”3 The elegance of an angular turn, the interplay of concav‑ ity and convexity, the abstraction of anatomical or physiognomic form to its essential components, the sculptural rendering as a singular object of two figures joined in pro‑ found intimacy, a pose or a gesture that conveys sorrow, resilience, empathy, dignity— this is what spoke to her. Was it imperative that, as a young scholar, I demonstrate my knowledge of the mul‑ tiplicity and diversity of the arts of the vast continent of Africa by identifying particular

190  Melanie Anne Herzog

influences on Catlett’s work? Trust the artist, Professor Drewal reminded me, assuring me that this was not scholarly slovenliness. Catlett’s embrace of abstraction, “born,” she often said, “in Africa,” exceeded the attraction of form to resonate as an embodiment of the cultural legacy that Catlett saw as her rightful artistic heritage—what the eminent artist and art historian David C. Driskell referred to as “heritable sensibilities.”4 “I look for the relationship between African art which I cannot live without and the relation of that to Black people,” she said, “And I see in their faces and bodies African sculpture. … It’s something I’ve been living with all my life.”5 Catlett’s sculpture was simultaneously informed by African and pre-Hispanic Mexi‑ can sources as well as modernist abstraction—which, she consistently pointed out, has roots in African sculpture. Some of her figures bear suggestions of multiple and fluid diasporic and transnational ethnicities, material manifestations of Catlett’s own sense of self, shaped by the play of location and her relocation—from the United States to Mexico. Figures with titles that mark them as Black women are imbued with referents to Catlett’s pre-Hispanic Mexican influences; figures designated as Mexican echo Afri‑ can stylistic sources. Her sampling and remixing of visual elements in African sculpture enriched her figurative vocabulary and affirmed what she knew in her own body about how pose, stance, and gesture can signify meaning. Along with the attention she devoted to these sources, she said, I am a Black woman. I use my own body in working. When I am bathing or dressing, I see and feel how my body looks and moves. I never do sculpture from a nude model. . .. Mostly, I watch women.6 For Catlett, the female body was a subject represented—and felt—from within, an em‑ bodied connection with sculptural traditions of dignified figuration within and across her subjects’ ancestries. In addition to illuminating the expressive potential of form, Catlett’s sculpture also manifests the tactile sensuality of her materials. She exploited the plasticity of clay as she modeled ceramic figures that appear to swell and breathe from within, and she incorpo‑ rated into her carvings the patterns of wood grain as well as the roughness, sheen, and translucency of different types of stone. In a range of stylistic interpretations of maternal intimacy and women’s agency, Catlett most often deployed a simplified, monumental re‑ alism infused with an approach to abstraction that is grounded in her perception of the el‑ egant and nuanced formal language of African and pre-Hispanic Mexican sculpture. Her standing figures are solidly grounded; their robust forms swell with the substantial curves of mature women’s bodies. She sculpted many representations of ­motherhood—women who cradle their children lovingly, defiantly, and determined to protect them against the forces arrayed against them. Poses and gestures convey pride, anguish, staunch resolve, and assured self-possession. No single African art source was her reference; rather, she said, “I am impressed by the use of form to express emotion … by the life and vitality achieved through form relations … the variety is unending. All African art interests me. I see such force, such life!”7 Catlett’s figurative sculpture counters the historical objectification of Black women’s bodies and claims space for Black women’s embodied subjectivity. At the height of the Black Power movement, Catlett’s stylistic and thematic “Afrofemcentrism”—the term Frieda

Speaking into Being  191

High W. Tesfagiorgis, also a greatly respected professor at the University of Wisconsin-­ Madison, famously spoke into being—became a declaration of embodied solidarity.8 Homage to My Young Black Sisters (1969) demands witness for women’s role in move‑ ments for Black liberation. The abstracted concave and convex forms of this life-size figure, carved in cedar, allude to but do not replicate the anatomical female body. Rooted in Catlett’s own bodily knowledge, the figure’s firmly grounded stance and suggestions of musculature in tension convey the potential for dynamic movement. The figure’s force‑ ful gesture, carrying upward the energy of the body’s central concavity, is one of radical empathy. This concave ovoid is a womb space and a heart space, and Catlett has trans‑ formed its energy into a signifier of dynamic activism. Catlett told me during one of our visits that she had envisioned carving a heart to place within this cavity but decided not to. Perhaps she concluded that this woman’s heart, her commitment to justice for her people, cannot be bound within this physical space. Catlett’s later figurative sculpture represents passionate, determined, resilient women who stride forward with confidence and gesture expansively. They appear self-assured, serene, and composed. Invoking the African figures to which she continued to look for inspiration, anatomy and physiognomy are pared down to essential, elegant forms; sharply defined angles are juxtaposed with subtle curves. While Catlett continued to speak of her sculpture as representing women of the African diaspora, the often-ambiguous faces of these women recall the manner in which, throughout her years in Mexico, she melded her multiple influences into the visual language with which she spoke into being her transna‑ tional solidarity and radical empathy in figures that resonate with her Black woman’s bodily knowledge. This lifetime of work marks her place as a foremother in the lineage of reclama‑ tion and re-presentation of the Black female body by contemporary Black feminist artists.9 My own practice as a scholar and educator owes much to Professor Henry Drewal, who affirmed for me the value of relationships with the artists whose lives and work interest me, and the fundamental importance of taking seriously what these artists share so generously with me. Privileging the words of these artists in my research and teaching extends beyond the notion of the artist as speaking subject and the interview as a primary source. With his years of experience working and being with artists, Professor Drewal nurtured my conviction that it is an honor when an artist invites me into her world and trusts me with the truths of her life experience. Much gratitude to you, Professor Henry Drewal, for affirming the importance of being present with the artists who teach us and the sanctity of the spaces in which truths are shared, where conversations and revelations happen in their own time. We honor you, too, for naming the bodily knowledge that is integral to the creative process of artists like Elizabeth Catlett and the multisensory sensa‑ tions that their art can invoke. We thank you for your mentorship throughout the years as we, your students, spoke ourselves into being. Notes 1 See Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (New York and London: Routledge, 1991). 2 See Henry John Drewal, “Sensiotics, or the Study of the Senses in Material Culture and His‑ tory in Africa and Beyond,” in The Oxford Handbook of History and Material Culture, eds. Ivan Gaskell and Sarah Anne Carter (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2020), 275–294.

192  Melanie Anne Herzog

3 Elizabeth Catlett, quoted in Michael Brenson, “Form that Achieves Sympathy: A Conversation with Elizabeth Catlett,” Sculpture 22, no. 3 (April 2003): 33. 4 David C. Driskell, “Black Aesthetic Directions: Without Critical Portfolio,” in Choosing: An Exhibit of Changing Perspectives in Modern Art and Art Criticism by Black Americans, 1925– 1985, ed. Arna Alexander Bontemps (Washington, DC: Museum Press, 1986), 14. On the ways that African Americans establish symbolic Pan-African linkages due to a lack of “specific real connections to Africa,” see Sheila S. Walker, “Africanity versus Blackness: The Afro-Brazilian/ Afro-American Conundrum,” in Introspectives: Contemporary Art by Americans and Brazilians of African Descent, curated by Henry J. Drewal and David C. Driskell (Los Angeles: California Afro-American Museum Foundation, 1989), 21. 5 Elizabeth Catlett, quoted in Martha Kearns, “Elizabeth Catlett,” in Gumbo Ya-Ya: Anthology of Contemporary African American Women Artists (New York: Midmarch Arts Press, 1995), 46. 6 Elizabeth Catlett, untitled and undated handwritten manuscript for a presentation on her work, in the artist’s personal files, Cuernavaca, Mexico. 7 Elizabeth Catlett, letter to Timothy D. Brown, April 23, 1987, in response to questions regarding African sources for her sculpture; in Elizabeth Catlett archives, Amistad Research Center, Tulane University, New Orleans. 8 See Freida High W. Tesfagiorgis, “Afrofemcentrism and its Fruition in the Art of Elizabeth Catlett and Faith Ringgold: A View of Women by Women),” Sage 4, no. 1 (Spring 1987): 25–32, republished in The Expanding Discourse: Feminism and Art History, eds. Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992), 475–85. 9 On the representation of the black female body by African and Africa-descended women artists, see Black Womanhood: Images, Icons, and Ideologies of the African Body, ed. Barbara Thomp‑ son (Hanover, NH: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, in association with University of Washington Press, 2008); and Janell Hobson, Venus in the Dark: Blackness and Beauty in Popular Culture (New York: Routledge [2005] 2018).

14 SACRED SPACES Antonius Roberts and Public Sanctuaries Moyo Okediji

My oldest daughter is nefertiti   the tears from my birth pains    created the nile   I am a beautiful woman I gazed on the forest and burned   out the sahara desert    with a packet of goat’s meat   and a change of clothes   I crossed it in two hours I am a gazelle so swift   so swift you can’t catch me   For a birthday present when he was three I gave my son hannibal an elephant    He gave me rome for mother’s day Nikki Giovanni1 “I know the variations and the hues of the blues, and greens of the ocean, and the beauti‑ ful deep blue indigo skies and seas,” says Antonius Roberts, the celebrated painter, sculp‑ tor and installation artist of the Bahamas. The people of the Bahamas inhabit one of the earliest sanctuaries for Black bodies seeking freedom.2 Many enslaved peoples looked to these islands as the bastion of freedom. It has now become a global haven to which people all over the world journey as a vacation destination, to rejuvenate their tired bod‑ ies and spirits, to revitalize their minds in a landscape that colorfully celebrates courage, valor and survival against all odds, both naturally and supernaturally invoked. It is a space where the sun rise is brightest. It is also a land where the dark clouds of hurricanes precipitate the fiercest windstorms. The winds and the waters sweep clean the previous seasons, leaving a clean slate for creativity and liberation. Antonius Roberts, OBE, is a resident muse of these organic islands. Because their lands are sacred sites where freedom is a given, the Bahamians have ample reason to sing, DOI: 10.4324/9781003389088-15

194  Moyo Okediji

dance and jubilate. The wind, the sea and the land breed an ecology of liberty, unlike any other place, as these are islands where the Black body was first guaranteed freedom in the Americas.3 The sea spreads far and wide around this sanctuary, as the canticles of freedom ring loud and clear throughout the hundreds of islets anchored to the bed of the Caribbean Sea. Like a string of emerald and blue lace agate, the cluster of islands glitters from the sky. Broad-winged birds unfurl their feathers to glide above the rippling waves, over the golden white beaches, soaring above the hillsides where fruit trees release their fragrance. With song, percussion, wind and string instruments, the warm nights burst into color‑ ful spectacles as flames leap from burning logs, turning the darkness into day along the beach in Nassau, the Bahamas. Dancers, both men and women, perform captivating choreography, their bodies brightly painted and bedecked in fabrics, feathers, shells and a wide range of homegrown and imported articles from the Bahamas. The dancers and musicians celebrate life, love, peace, prosperity and health, as they gather around the tall, larger-than-life sculptures fashioned by Antonius Roberts. The community has claimed and renamed these forms as their Sacred Space, which Roberts collaged from wood with other materials, including some of the same items the dancers wear on their bodies and use for their performances. It was as if the community had been waiting hundreds of years for Roberts to build this space of transcendence on their ancestral land. Roberts transformed tragedy into victory. The howling forces of a cleansing hurricane tore through the islands in 2005, giving birth to a series of cenotaphs envisioned by Rob‑ erts. Defiantly triumphant, twelve immigrant casuarina trees stood firmly rooted, unlike the other trees that fell in the storm. But the hurricane that raged across the Bahamas, like a mother rampaging for her abducted daughter, stripped the casuarinas, branch by branch, leaving just twelve trunks standing. The invasive turbulence of the storm swept away the foliage without a trace. The casuarina trees remained upright, at the site of the ancient port where, before abolition, captive Black bodies stepped for the first time onto the white sands of the diasporas in chains.4 Without their leaves, the casuarina trees project an altered state of being, as if in a trance, transporting their sacred spirits into the sky, while firmly rooting their bodies in the ground. “They spoke to me,” said Roberts, and as he listened to their silent words, they transformed him spiritually. Roberts saw them for what they were: an opportunity to appease the winds. He also recognized the need for mother nature, Iyami, to balance the past and the future by adjusting the landscape in whatever way possible. Roberts, since his childhood, has scouted the islands for such signs of the Iyami, the chthonic mothers who do their writing within the wombs of the green wood, the white wind and the blue-green waters that bathe the islands. His scouting became a pattern of creative activities for him. In 2005, his vigilance reached a crescendo when he sculpted the first set of the lactating bodies out of the island plants. That was when it dawned on him that he was in fact a witness to events larger than himself. As a child, the Iy‑ ami rendered him speech-deficient in order to hone his ability to communicate in visual forms, through drawing and painting.5 It was only as an adult that his tongue found the release enabling him to speak more easily. By that time, however, his hands had learned the power to speak for him through the rendering of images as pictorial idioms. He in‑ creasingly realized as he grew up that he was being bred into a transformational force through the hands of the mothers who birthed him as a love child.6 He was learning as

Sacred Spaces: Antonius Roberts and Public Sanctuaries  195

he processed what he was making; as a tutored builder, he followed the invisible yet rec‑ ognizable marks of his maternal ancestors as he formed the surviving casuarina plants into feminine figures. The casuarina forms had for innumerable years harbored these female forms within. They had grown inside these plants and become rooted in the air, water and soil of the Bahamas, waiting for the right moment to emerge. The 2005 hurricane was the turning point when they materialized from the limbs of the casuarinas, spurred by a tempest that raged across the sea. Nude but unbending and unperturbed, the casuarina trees revealed themselves to Roberts as primordial models and vessels of the powerful mother, the Iyami. Lovingly, though raked by the windswept waters, she showed Roberts how and why she resides on the islands—to guard the people, the animals, the plants, the waters, the rocks and the winds that form a harmonious tapestry, woven by history (Figure 14.1). The Iyami is the maternal power that the Afro-Atlantic voices pronounce as Àje´ ̣ in hushed tones. The audacity of the Àje´ ̣ resides in the verb j.é, a word that eliminates all ideas of impossibilities. J.é, among the Yoruba cultures of West Africa, crossed the seas ` s ̣un and Ọya—the three elements which activate the with the wind, buoyed by Yemaja, Ọ hurricanes that seasonally chase after Iyami’s stolen children trafficked into Argentina, Peru, Brazil, the Caribbean islands, Puerto Rico, North America, even as far as Europe and the Pacific islands. Àje´ ̣ is the power that resides in words, images, flesh and plants,

Roberts, Sacred Space, Clifton Heritage Park, Nassau, The Bahamas, 2005.  Mixed media.

FIGURE 14.1 Antonius

196  Moyo Okediji

activating time and space in cyclical rotations, beyond the boundaries of linear thinking. It is the j.é of the Àje´ ̣ that trips the voice of Nikki Giovanni into an Iyami invocation, in her poem, where she pronounces, “I am a gazelle so swift/so swift you cannot catch me.”7 She is the gazelle that you cannot catch because she is both ahead of and behind all recognition; therefore, she is beyond cognition. Only those whom she anoints does she empower to recognize that to which others are blind and deaf. To her lovechild, Antonius Roberts, the Iyami gave the power to recognize the hidden form and bring it to bear. Immediately after the hurricane passed in 2005, Roberts rose early in the morning, heeding the irrepressible call to write in image forms the presence of the Iyami. In a few days of working like a bee, Roberts produced twelve cenotaphs in the form of female figures, as a vessel for his visual re-membering of a dismembered gender. In his own words, Roberts articulates the physical and creative process: Every day, for one week, every morning at 5:30 in the morning. And when the sun came up and it started to get hot, I stopped. And I did that for seven days until they were all done. . . . I was able to get in and get out. The chainsaw was my paintbrush. It was my instrument. It was my carving tool. I just flowed with the essence of the wood, with nature.8 Free-flowing and triumphantly monumental, the Iyami figures project the energy of re‑ silient and proven people, many of whom had come from Africa. In the transatlantic Yoruba tongue, Iyami means “my mother,” the one from whom everything comes, and to whom all returns; she is the one that manifests the beginning but embodies the end without interruption. With the first twelve cenotaphs that he made in 2005, Roberts celebrates the Baha‑ mian flora and fauna, the waves and wind, the white sands and black rocks and the water both tranquil and angry. These natural and spiritual Bahamian energies feed Roberts’s installations. Roberts remarks that, Those trees are really not native to the land. They were casuarina trees. I’m not sure if they were planted there, or it was through pollination that they grew there. They grew wild throughout the islands. There is a national plan to eradicate as many casu‑ arina trees as they possibly can. But, then, it was not the kind of tree that I was con‑ cerned with. It was the image that these trees afforded me because they were rooted in some sort of a circle, leaning toward the ocean and I was reminded of my connection through that image to Africa. Because I knew of the stories of the freed slaves going to the highest point, looking toward the ocean, looking toward Africa, and their spirit would be free, and would be carried back to the motherland.9 Employing these female cenotaphs, Antonius concocts the totemic portraits of his biolog‑ ical Black mother, Zelma Louise Bowe Roberts, while simultaneously portraying every Black mother within and beyond the Bahamas. The cenotaphs, therefore, are the Iyami, the existential mother, the first woman from whose being all else emerges, the matron of anyone born of a woman’s womb. Roberts’s work stands as a spiritual and topographic representation of the Bahamian space at Nassau, from where it has migrated to all islands of the Bahamas. Like a single

Sacred Spaces: Antonius Roberts and Public Sanctuaries  197

body sprawled across nearly one thousand islands, the Bahamas stretch forth with a youthful exuberance that time only kindles and makes stronger. It is a unified body in‑ vigorated with centuries of human cultivation that makes her a welcoming entity which visitors understand as the totality of their experience of the conglomeration. Roberts tells the story of a single body fractured into twelve sculptural pieces. The work relates a visual narrative of a dismembered female history, that he re-envisions, re-collects and re-members as love incarnate. The timeless suite that, after completion, Roberts called The Genesis was received by the people of the Bahamas and translated into Sacred Spaces. “I made two installations in Nassau,” Roberts says, “one on the island of Grand Bahama, and one on the island of Eleuthera.” What unites them is the unique spiritual signification that the Iyami breathes daily into the physical bodies, converting the spaces into vessels that protect visitors while providing aesthetic pleasure. Recognizing art as a cultural and personal translation of reality, Roberts has taken his creative cues from the energy that nature supplies, with every moment, even the 2005 hurricane, coming with its own thorns and roses. Without the hurricane that devastated the islands, it is doubtful that Sacred Spaces would have been born. As he credits others for the making of Sacred Spaces, Roberts insists that the mother images presented themselves to him when he saw the stripped casuarina plants in the calm after the 2005 hurricane. He was not searching for them. They were searching for him and appeared to have discovered him and given him the honor of seeing them. He said, The reality of the spirits revealing themselves through the trees to me has always been something difficult for me to articulate to others when I’m telling them the story. Because when I say that the trees told me what they wanted to be, they engaged me, they revealed themselves to me, people look at me like, “What are you talking about?” Therefore, I’m careful how I talk. But then, when I sat there and saw those trees, it was as clear as day what they wanted to be. I did not see the tree, I saw the spirit.10 The Iyami spirit rode the storm to the Bahamas. As with all aftermaths of passing storms, feelings of excitement followed the exhaustion from the fury of the water and winds. It was within that shift between exhaustion and excitement that the stripped casuarina mothers removed their masks and showed him their bodies. He saw them in their totality, together with the scars they have carried across time, from one generation to the next, as the protectors, witnesses and natural chroniclers of the islands (Figure 14.2). The 2020 pandemic is another hurricane, but one of global proportions and inestima‑ ble dimensions. It has taken its toll on the spirit of the Bahamas, while also extending maternal values and protections. The borderless Iyami spiritual mother, manifesting in nature, trains all her children to lead productive and wholesome lives on the islands and beyond. When they stumble and fall, Roberts asserts, she supports them with survival tools that enable them to weather the storm and emerge stronger. As he personalizes the experience of the 2020 pandemic, Roberts thinks that a positive charge is inherent in the negative burden: The pandemic has provided me with the space to further explore who I am, to more fully reevaluate my values and clarity. Because being locked down forces one to come

198  Moyo Okediji

Roberts, Welcome, inspired by Sacred Space, John F. Kennedy Drive and Blake Road, Nassau, The Bahamas, 2007.  Mixed media.

FIGURE 14.2 Antonius

to terms with the reality of what is meaningful and what is not and to do away with a lot of the distractions. You are able to do so much more with less. Also, to explore the bare necessities that we need to focus on to survive. As an artist, it has forced me to really look at the Bahamian culture and economic structure, the need to be more economically independent, more resilient, and [to place more value] on our natural resources; focusing more within than without. So, it’s been an amazing time for me personally. I have been so productive as an artist, going into the studio and just mak‑ ing art. This really is a period to strip down all that is not so necessary, to focus on productive value and meaning. That economy of process, which in the Iyami aesthetics is called sókí, informs Roberts’ works. The chainsaw, the tool he uses frequently, suits this sókí approach that demands a gestural concision, specificity of action, boldness and courage. As he brings out the images of the mothers from the plants, he listens to instructions that come from decades of body memory. His fingers, hands and limbs perform with autonomous intelligence in conjunction with the other parts of the body as they communicate with the brain and the spirits. He listens to forces from within and outside his body as they lead him to exert just the right pressure on the wood, without removing any more than necessary. He has developed a trust in the wood, and as he interacts with the materials, their activities be‑ come a dance to which the buzz of the chainsaw supplies the music. This maternal music of shaping the casuarina plant weaves together the seemingly unfathomable and mysterious pattern of loss and gain: as the chainsaw presses down

Sacred Spaces: Antonius Roberts and Public Sanctuaries  199

FIGURE 14.3 

 ntonius Roberts, Welcome, inspired by Sacred Space, John F. Kennedy Drive A and Blake Road, Nassau, The Bahamas, 2007.  Mixed media.

on the wood, the plant loses parts of its body, while gaining new anatomy. Each touch that enacts a howl of exclamation results in a measured transformation of the wood. The wood submits to the pain of this birth with grace. Roberts, as he cuts the wood, experi‑ ences throughout his body the vibration of the plant birthing the maternal figures with which she has been pregnant for many years, unnoticed until the sculptor came along (Figure 14.3) This same process informs the paintings that Roberts executes on canvas, and the installations that he designs for various places, including the international airport at Nas‑ sau. He allows the picture plane to inform him of what lies invisible within the canvas. It is therefore not surprising that what often emerges are female forms which he escorts out of the panels with chivalrous acuity. In some instances, the female figures arrive in the form of lines, shapes and colors that are poetically suggestive. In other canvases, the shapes are literal renditions of feminine bodies in tones of chocolate, with cocoa butter shades, or the lightest tones of tan. These are all homages to the Iyami mothers and the waters that carry and wash them. Without hesitation, Roberts asserts that: My work, from as long as I know, has always been inspired by and in celebration of women of color. Coming from a home where my mother was everything, and also growing up in a community where the ladies of the community were the ones who looked after me, who took care of me, who protected me, I was always mindful of how kind they were. And how it took a community to raise me and to protect me. There‑ fore, naturally, these people constantly come up in my work because for me, they

200  Moyo Okediji

Roberts, Sacred Space, Clifton Heritage Park, Nassau, The Bahamas, 2005.  Mixed media.

FIGURE 14.4 Antonius

were the ones who helped to shape me. They were always positive forces in my life. I always celebrate women of color, particularly Bahamian women, and my relationship with Black women. Sacred Spaces are reflections of love that emerged from his adoration of mother nature. The people of the Bahamas have received and lionized Roberts’ work, ranging from his canvas paintings to indoor sculptures, including outdoor installations, as sacred spaces. In these consecrated arenas, Bahamians and their guests worship, conduct weddings and meditate. Roberts has wrought these sanctuaries from the storms of life, inscribing the histories of Bahamian struggles, the patterns of their hopes and the colors of their aspira‑ tion, as they firmly plant their flags of freedom on a thousand islands strung together in the blue-green waters (Figure 14.4). Notes 1 Nikki Giovanni, excerpts from “Ego Tripping: There May Be a Reason Why,” My House (William Morrow, 1974). 2 See Howard Johnson, The Bahamas from Slavery to Servitude, 1783–1933 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996). 3 James Wright, History of the Bahama Islands, With a Special Study of the Abolition of Slavery in the Colony (New York: The John Hopkins Press, 1905), 451. 4 In an interview with the author, Roberts said, “But you know that space that we speak of is one of the few spaces where, when you clear the bushes, when you go behind the bushes, you see the remains of a plantation. You’ll see the great house, and you’ll see the little huts. And now,

Sacred Spaces: Antonius Roberts and Public Sanctuaries  201

all of a sudden, people see the value they need to preserve,” January 23, 2021. Other quotes are from this interview and other correspondence with Roberts. 5 Roberts said, “I always had a speech impediment growing up. And, kids being kids, they teased me quite a bit, and so during my school days, from primary straight up to junior high school, I would, as opposed to going out to play with the kids during the recess, I would be encouraged to stay inside with my teachers, and encouraged to draw. And so I started to draw, to doodle. What was so interesting was that the kids, whenever they came in, would be more interested in whatever I was sketching or drawing than my impediment.” January 23, 2021. 6 “I was a love child. My mother was a married woman, married to a man who was twenty years her senior, and who was not very well during his last years, and he became bedridden because he had sickle cell, a cancer, and was incapacitated. The story goes that he reached out to his first cousin, who was a well-to-do Bahamian, who worked with the government at the Ministry of Works. And during the time my mother’s husband was still alive, his first cousin impregnated my mother. … [M]y mother’s husband accepted me as his own. He said that his cousin who took care of the family while he was incapacitated was flesh of his flesh, and blood of his blood. But that was between my mother’s husband and my mother. But the extended family, and the other community at the time I was born, saw that as shame and scandal to the family. ‘Your daddy is not your daddy, but your daddy don’t know, but the whole world knows.’ I grew up in that kind of shame environment, from a small community, in the initial community that I was born in. My mother always said to me, ‘Remember you are a love child. And always remember that the stone that the builders reject will one day become the corner stone.’” Roberts in an interview with author, January 23, 2021. 7 Nikki Giovanni, “Ego Tripping.” 8 Roberts, interview with the author, January 23, 2021. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid.

15 REFLECTIONS AND REMINISCENCES REVISITED Indigenous Knowledge Systems, African-Based Worldviews, and Cross-Cultural Diasporic Connections Andrea E. Frohne

Chike Aniakor’s ink drawing Reminiscences Revisited (1996) is a work that has signifi‑ cance for me in that it represents aspects of my experience at the University of WisconsinMadison from 1991 to 1994. In the drawing, bodies are both interconnected and distinct (Figure 15.1). A graphic communication system reminiscent of uli from Igboland covers the outer skin of the depicted bodies, which are delineated through thick lines that serve as outlines of both externalized and internalized motifs. The faces and figures depicted on and inside of the bodies suggest connections that become apparent upon personal reflection. This image brings to mind the interconnected reminiscences that those of us in the Drewal family carry with us and revisit in this volume. We also carry internalized knowl‑ edge systems that we articulate as we move through what in Yorùbá is known as ayé or the physical world. Aniakor’s Reminiscences Revisited embodies for me my encounters with the foundational knowledge imparted by Drewal and my navigation of the acad‑ emy. It is also about how I am connected to each of the contributors in this volume through shared experiences in Madison. Additionally, this image and the reminiscences it evokes for me embody the future. As I pass down the knowledge that Henry Drewal imparted to me through my interactions with the hundreds of undergraduates and gradu‑ ate students that I teach and the dozens of MA, MFA, and PhD students whom I mentor through their theses and dissertations, I am reminded of how Drewal’s legacy is a part of these future generations. In this reflective essay, I would like to explore two facets of my experience under Henry Drewal’s guidance that significantly impacted me. One focuses on indigenous knowledge systems and African-based worldviews. The other explores cross-cultural components of diaspora studies. Indigenous Knowledge Systems and African-Based Worldviews

Drewal’s teaching foregrounded the importance of studying indigenous knowledge sys‑ tems and African-based worldviews with the goal of understanding African arts from DOI: 10.4324/9781003389088-16

Reflections and Reminiscences Revisited  203

C. Aniakor, Reminiscences Revisited, 1996. Ink on paper. Courtesy of Smithsonian Museum of African Art.

FIGURE 15.1  Chike

the perspective of the artists and communities making, performing, and engaging them. Decontextualized museum objects and seemingly static works of art come to life when placed in interdisciplinary contexts, such as those that engage gender, linguistics, form, color, religious tradition, and aesthetics. As a graduate student, I observed the rich interdisciplinary ways that Drewal engaged African arts and indigenous worldviews. His boundless energy, coupled with meticulous organization, still impacts my own approach as I curate exhibitions and extend invitations to artists and scholars. A particularly influential moment for me was the exhibition African Reflections: Art from Northeastern Zaire, organized by the American Museum of Natural History and curated by Enid Schildkrout and Curtis Keim. Henry Drewal hosted the exhibition in 1993 through what was then the Elvehjem Museum of Art and is now the Chazen Museum of Art at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. The exhibition also traveled from New York’s AMNH (1990) to Washington DC’s National Museum of African Art Smithsonian Institution (1991), the Denver Art Museum (1992), and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta (1993). Drewal turned the exhibition into a semester-long mega-event in 1993. He taught a class around the exhibition and lined up a dizzying array of Africanist scholars who arrived, it seemed, almost weekly to share their expertise. The lectures were open to the university and the wider community. We were introduced to curators Enid Schildkrout and Curtis Keim, as well as specialists Robert Farris Thompson, Ramona Austin, Allen

204  Andrea E. Frohne

Roberts, David Binkley, Patricia Darish, and Mbala Nkanga. At an all-day symposium at the Madison campus, coordinated by Michael Schatzberg, additional scholars gath‑ ered, including Jan Vansina, Crawford Young, Bruce Fetter, Bennetta Jules-Rosette, Wyat MacGaffey, and Aliko Songolo. Building on the vision of interdisciplinarity, storytelling lectures by Harold Scheub and Kasiya Banda were coordinated with the exhibition. The main library’s Africanist bibliographer David Henige organized a semester-long exhibit titled Perceiving Africa: Books, Maps and Manuscripts. Finally, traditional Mangbetu court music was performed by Kazadi wa Mukuna, and musicians were invited from Kent State. During one of the events, there was an outdoor demonstration of central African musical instruments where the audience could join in and play. Henry Drewal’s thoughtful attention to combining education with such an invitation to the African arts was an instructive model. After attending a meeting where he talked with the museum docents about problematic and positive terminology in the context of the exhibition, I was given the opportunity to lead docent tours of African Reflections and join training workshops. Drewal supported outreach to the surrounding school dis‑ tricts and hosted a symposium titled “African Reflections: Connecting the Curriculum,” sponsored by the Elvehjem, the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, the Wiscon‑ sin Alliance for Arts Education, and the UW-Madison African Studies Program, which was attended by more than eighty Wisconsin elementary and secondary school teachers. Harold Scheub of African Languages and Literature presented the keynote address on “Africa’s Rich Oral Traditions.” Other presentations were made by Marilyn Little from Geography, Linda Kreft Abdel-Khalek, Multi-cultural Coordinator at the Milwaukee Public Schools, Herbert S. Lewis, Chair of the African Studies Program, Thomas Spear from History, Betty Wass from African Studies, Michael Afolayan, Outreach Coordina‑ tor of the African Studies Program, Lois Anderson from Ethnomusicology, and Julie Koza from Music Education. Artist and art historian Moyosore Òkédìjí presented “An Artist Speaks: The Contemporary Arts Amidst Changing Traditions.” All in all, the exhibition hosted by Drewal is said to have brought together 40,000 peo‑ ple from schools and communities throughout southeastern Wisconsin1 for activities that were coordinated with the exhibition to help establish a layered context of worldviews grounded in indigenous knowledge systems. My own experience with African Reflections imparted to me the use of interdisciplinarity to build comprehension, appreciation, and knowledge around indigenous worldviews, facilitating access to African art, helping to create lived knowledge that is literally experienced through the body and the senses (to identify a concept that Drewal would iterate a decade or so later). One way in which lived experience engages the body and the senses in particular is through taste. Food was an important component of my graduate school education in African art history. We gathered on innumerable occasions, devoting time to cooking and eating as well as music and dancing. As I look through my photos from this time, I am reminded that Henry Drewal also opened his home to non-Africanist students, increasing the impact of our studies on a wider community of art historians. Audrey Smedley defines worldview as “a culturally structured, systematic way of look‑ ing at, perceiving, and interpreting various world realities.”2 In my teaching, I have found that students have a hard time getting away from the idea of a singular imagined authen‑ tic insider when thinking about the arts in global contexts. I endeavor to help them iden‑ tify and unpack the construction of a worldview across age, social class, gender, heritage,

Reflections and Reminiscences Revisited  205

and region by asking them to generate lists of qualifiers that determine worldview from the physical location we inhabit in Athens, Ohio. This exercise illustrates the complexity of identity as it informs not only the work of art but also the positionality of any given audience. Striving to access their own immediate worldviews opens students to the con‑ sideration of indigenous knowledge systems. They are asked to ponder the relationship between our classroom in southeast Ohio and the arts of the African world, generating comparative worldviews that can help them remove the barriers of negative stereotypes that hamper their understanding of other places and cultures. Cross-Cultural Components in Diaspora Studies

The second major facet of my studies with Henry Drewal that has informed my own academic contributions was his devotion to cross-cultural components within diasporas. During the second half of my studies at UW-Madison, Drewal was researching Brazilian arts while learning Portuguese and teaching a 1994 course titled “Arts of the African Di‑ aspora.” In preparation for the course, he received a UW-Madison faculty development grant to build a curriculum, bringing in experts to catalyze interdisciplinary experience. Sally and Richard Price each gave a presentation following a class on Suriname. Capoeira was highlighted throughout the semester with performances and demonstrations, includ‑ ing a fascinating debate between scholar Danny Dawson and practitioner Bira Almeida, moderated by Drewal. Although my graduate student cohort at Madison and I were all moving in varying directions in 1995, half a dozen of us decided to attend the 10th Triennial Symposium on African and African Diaspora Art, organized by the Arts Council of the African Studies As‑ sociation and hosted by New York University. Drewal was working with Babalòrìṣà John Mason, who also presented at the Triennial, on what would become my favorite illustrated publication, Beads, Body, and Soul: Art and Light in the Yorùbá Universe (LA: Fowler Mu‑ seum of Cultural History, 1998). Through John Mason, Henry caught wind of a ceremony that was being performed for a new initiate of Shàngó. We headed off to Brooklyn to visit. Again, the objects and photographs I had studied in the classroom took on new meanings within the actual domestic space and among the people and cuisines we encountered. We compared observations, and one memory that stands out for me was Moyo Òkédìjí’s ques‑ tion as to why we had not removed our shoes at the initiation site. Didn’t having our shoes on inhibit our ability to absorb through our feet the lifeforce, or aṣe in Yorùbá terms, that pervaded the ground of the sacred space? I recalled Henry’s acknowledgment of the ques‑ tion and silence as an answer. To me, this illustrated that one worldview did not outweigh another. How would we then as scholars account for diasporic cross-cultural connection in the face of undeniable, inevitable artistic and performative variation? Georges Collinet, host of the radio program Afropop Worldwide, deejayed the ACASA conference dance party in New York City. I entered my raffle ticket for the grand prize: two roundtrip tickets to Africa. I had been preparing to travel there in search of a dis‑ sertation topic. Amazingly, I won! I backpacked across West Africa learning about òrun, or in Yorùbá terms, the otherworld. The spirit worlds that I encountered in West Africa and Morocco became the basis for my dissertation. I would finally settle on the method of crossing cultures and delving into diasporas by studying a production of spirituality from a New York City worldview at the African

206  Andrea E. Frohne

Burial Ground at 290 Broadway. This journey led me to trace diasporic art history in the making by documenting the process of memorializing 15,000 eighteenth-century Af‑ ricans and African descendants who were buried in a six-to-seven-acre communal cem‑ etery in lower Manhattan. African arts were inscribed through a complicated process of memorialization that I documented at the African Burial Ground. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, I attended demonstrations, hearings, open houses, and updates in New York. In research notes that I took on grassroots activism, complex politics, and conflicted commemora‑ tion, the acknowledgement of Africa was a consistent common denominator. Sometimes the discourse focused on specific countries and cultures of Africa, but often conversations evoked the entire continent as an overarching concept. As a result, visually evident in the artworks commemorating the site are Èṣù’s crossroads, Mande Ciwara, Vodun vèvè, adinkra, Kongo cosmograms, Ifà divination trays, and Bamana bogolanfini. Addition‑ ally, incorporating Africa into the commemorative process extended to honoring the ancestors. Among African Americans who took part in the events of the 1990s and early 2000s, I observed offerings being given, libations being poured, shrines being built, and discussions taking place about genealogical descent between the deceased in the Burial Ground and living concerned citizens. As a result, the discourse around ancestors in New York City differed from my experiences in Drewal’s classroom and my research in Ghana. Moving forward in my understanding of the events required that I reposition the ances‑ tral discourse I had learned in my studies within a knowledge system based in New York City. This enabled me to document that All of the deceased in New York have been elevated to the ancestral rank because they or their relatives suffered through the Middle Passage. … Additionally, as a result of the genealogies being obliterated, anyone today could be a blood relative of the deceased. Accordingly, many engaged in the [African Burial Ground] project used the term ‘descendant,’ or the ‘descendant community,’ of Africans from the burial ground.3 The book that I eventually wrote looks at the diasporic experience in the reverse di‑ rection, from the United States to Africa, by exploring how Africa was represented in late twentieth-century and early twenty-first-century artworks and discourse, and how eighteenth-century Africans and first-generation African Americans buried their loved ones, weaving strands of indigenous knowledge systems, African-based worldviews, and cross-cultural diasporic connections together. I conclude twenty-five years later, in February 2020, with the symposium “Bound Together: Papers in Honor of Henry Drewal” at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, organized by Shannen Hill and Cynthia Becker. It has brought to light reminiscences stored in our collective bodies, as depicted by Chike Aniakor. It has also revealed new networks, such as the one that has formed through meetings with Henry Drewal’s recent graduate students. And, of course, it ends with Henry on the dance floor (Figure 15.2)!

Reflections and Reminiscences Revisited  207

FIGURE 15.2 Henry

Drewal on the dance floor at the reception for “Bound Together: Papers in Honor of Henry Drewal,” Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, February 27–28, 2020.  The cap donned for the event features symbols of the cosmos or the crossroads with delineation of the physical and spirit worlds (ayé and òrun). Photo by Andrea Frohne.

Notes 1 Kathleen Smythe and Betty Wass, “Zaire Symposium,” UW-M News & Notes, no. 41 (Winter 1993). https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Newsletters/UW_41.html. 2 Audrey Smedley, Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a Worldview (Boulder: West‑ view Press, 1993), 17. 3 Andrea E. Frohne, The African Burial Ground in New York City. Memory, Spirituality, and Space (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2015), 11.

16 AKWAABA/CONTINUUM Manifesto of an African Artist Rikki Wemega-Kwawu

African art, indeed one of the greatest artistic traditions of all time, is arguably Africa’s most significant contribution to world culture. Contrary to Picasso’s assertion that he was never influenced by African art, it is an irrefutable fact—confirmed by irreproach‑ able sources, including Andre Derain, Maurice Vlaminck, Henri Matisse, Apollinaire and Gertrude Stein, all close associates of Picasso—that it was his encounter with African sculpture that profoundly transformed his work, culminating in the painting “Les Dem‑ oiselles d’Avignon,” which broke completely with the traditional Graeco-Roman forms and heralded the advent of Modern Art. This landmark painting in the history of art unequivocally inscribes the influence of African masks and alludes to Egyptian painting. The years 1907 to 1908, chronologically described as Picasso’s “Negroid Period,” also distinctly reflect the influence of the grave markers of the Bakota tribe of Ivory Coast. A classic example is the “Ballerina” of 1907. There are other pieces like the “Head,” which fall within this period and strongly benefit from the figurative stylizations of several groups from Africa. The simple truth is that Picasso’s persistent denial of any influence of African art is a brutal revision of the truth. There is compelling evidence that his discovery of African art exercised a decisive influence on the destiny of twentieth-century art. The subtle control of composition and inherent understanding of abstract forms in African art led to the break from perceptual naturalism in Western art. African art cannot be codified into a system of rules and forms. It invariably offers an infinite variety of styles, reflecting the manifold spirit of the continent. All the seminal movements of twentieth-century art have their antecedence in African art. In fact, the corpus of the traditional art forms is so wide-ranging that even a twentieth-century art movement like Op Art was anticipated by the Ba Songye, Ba Congo and Ba Luba tribes of lower Congo in their initiation masks. Junk Art, made from the scraps and detritus of industrialized urban life, was prefigured by the agricultural and war god, Gou, of the Fon tribe of Dahomey, and the Congo Minkisi. These statues are constructed from worthless materials—textile and leather scraps, rusted tin, nails, discarded tools, weap‑ ons and so on. DOI: 10.4324/9781003389088-17

Akwaaba/Continuum: Manifesto of an African Artist  209

The possibilities in Africa’s cultural and artistic heritage are singularly inexhaustible. Within Ghana alone there are many cultural, historical and artistic traditions we have not discovered or explored. Traditional African art is modern and contemporary in feel‑ ing. Like the societies that nurtured it, our ethnic art is eclectic, innovative, creative and constantly absorbing new influences to evolve. Because “primitive” cultures were too far removed from Europe for any direct, mean‑ ingful contact, the modern European masters who stumbled upon our African ethnic carvings only superficially engaged with them; they appropriated its external forms with‑ out the least understanding of the metaphysical substructure underlying them. Their works reveal a purely external assimilation of tribal art. The Cubists, for example, were only interested in the pure plasticity and rigorous structure of African sculpture. They studied it to reinforce their own concepts of design. In fact, their interest was purely academic and, in most respects, lacked emotion. Be‑ cause twentieth-century Western artists only exteriorized what they took from Africa, most of them, except in rare cases, failed to inform their work with any religious content. Their work thus lacked that authentic religiosity which ethnic African art possessed in its magic and awe. They emptied our art of its dramatic content. All the mystical, mythical, symbolic and intellectual elements were thrown overboard. The only common denomi‑ nator between our ethnic art and twentieth-century Modernism was the technical means of execution. There is always a proclivity toward abstraction. Even then, whereas to the native artist the technical aspects of the work were merely of contingent interest, to the Modern artist, they were the prime reason for creating. The technique is, in fact, a fun‑ damental condition of twentieth-century Western art. Abstract art just for the sake of abstraction is also not enough. Abstraction should serve only as a means to an end and not as an end in itself. Abstract art should thus neces‑ sarily have content, and this content is the expression of the inner states and tensions of the artist, which is the only tangible reason for the creation of a work of art. It is not the subject that counts but the genius of the person behind it. The creation of a work of art is therefore a state of being. A painter paints what he is and has to obey his inner vitality. He expresses himself to create and does not create to express himself. The moment abstraction becomes the external and extrinsic reason for creating, the work ceases to be of any significance but rather becomes an intellectual exercise, uninspiring, mechanical and sterile. In this high-tech age, abstract art is the best means to express the abstract thought of the times—not abstract art for abstract art’s sake but abstract art infused with religiosity. The Demise of Traditional African Art?

It is often bemoaned that the great classical traditions of African art are dead and gone; that they died with colonialism. That is absolutely false! Traditional African art is as fully alive and potent today as it was before; it is only struggling for new forms of expression. Two centuries of colonial domination is too brief a period to totally vanquish a cohesive culture, which has really stood the test of time—over 5,000 years old! Our art was only temporarily subjugated by colonialism with its religious appendages of Christianity and Islam. Happily, it has already extricated itself from the stranglehold of colonialism and imperialism and begun to re-assert itself on the world.

210  Rikki Wemega-Kwawu

However, some contemporary practitioners of African art have totally turned their backs on the art of the past. They portend that the conditions which necessitated the birth of classical African art do not exist today, and for the contemporary African artist to turn to the past for inspiration smacks of falsity and pretension, as a romantic revisita‑ tion. His work would invariably lack such spontaneity, as it is only a studied imitation. This school of thought argues that the true traditional society is quickly vanishing. It is undergoing a transition, imbibing Western styles of living. The typical African village is almost non-existent now. The current social, political, cultural, religious, economic and technological factors, which impinge on the psyche of contemporary African artists living in urban areas are completely at variance with what existed in the past; as such, the present African environment is not authentic enough to motivate the contemporary artist to elicit the primal spirit, which informed the art of the past. At best, our tribal art can only serve as a borrowed formula for the artist of today, a collection of canons to be imitated, a vital language reduced to superficial aestheticism. I do not agree with that viewpoint. These symbols and forms of African antiquity are enduring, solid and eternal. They express man’s basic psychological ideas and are borne out of his primitive fears and motivations about his existentialist condition. For our forefathers, there was nothing like art for art’s sake. Art was an integral part of daily life. They lived so close to nature that religion, existence and art were closely linked with the “primitive” forces that governed day-to-day survival in the jungle. The society’s strong spiritual belief in transcendental and immanent powers beyond threedimensional reality was total. Originally, the tribal societies were situated in the thick of the rain forest. Our ances‑ tors lived face to face with the brutality of the natural world. There was always the con‑ stant awareness of powerful, unpredictable forces and the immediate presence of terror and fear—lightning, thunder and torrential rain. There was always the incessant threat of being wiped away by natural disasters like floods, drought or an epidemic outbreak. They constantly faced the danger of being eaten up by ferocious animals, which shared the forest with them. There was also the threat of being attacked and vanquished by more belligerent and antagonistic tribes. Hence, it was only reasonable to live from day to day and hand to mouth. In this existentialist state of perpetual tension, cognition was just incomprehensible. These eternal insecurities gave birth to a religion and an art firmly rooted in the rituals and imagery of transcendence. The foreboding presence of these invisible and invincible forces, often malevolent in character in an indifferent and hostile world, was palpable; the old societies felt and believed wholly in them. By maintaining constant contact with these forces through art and religion, the tribal communities sur‑ vived. Their socio-religious system was reciprocally supportive of their art. Art became central to their very existence. There were no demarcations separating art from life. In spite of all the outward changes of life and man’s scientific and technological ad‑ vancements, there are incontrovertible parallels between conditions in the modern world and “primitive” times. There is nothing new in the world; nothing in human existence has actually changed. All the apparent changes are merely cosmetic. The stark reality is that the world is no safer than it was during those predatory times. The world is at the brink of a plausible extinction itself, worse than any nuclear holo‑ caust ever imagined, what with the wanton destruction of the rain forests, desertifica‑ tion, exploitation and consumption of other scarce environmental resources. This is not

Akwaaba/Continuum: Manifesto of an African Artist  211

to mention the arbitrary degradation of the environment through toxic and radioactive waste dumps and general industrial waste disposal, industrial pollution of the atmos‑ phere, sea pollution through oil spillage on a massive scale, endangering aquatic life, depletion of the ozone layer caused by the chlorofluorocarbons in aerosol sprays, refrig‑ erators and fast-food cartons, resulting in global heating, the greenhouse effect caused by carbon dioxide, methane and other gases released into the atmosphere. Moreover, we are facing acidulation of the soil, rivers and lakes by acid rain, excessive fertilizer and pesticide usage in farming, in a desperate bid to increase food yield to meet the world’s alarmingly growing population, eventually spilling into the lakes, rivers and drinking wa‑ ter. We are indeed sitting on an ecological time bomb. The 1991 World Summit on the En‑ vironment in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, belies the tipping point at which we have arrived and the general concern about bequeathing an uninhabitable world to the next generation. Natural disasters like floods, droughts, earthquakes, tornadoes, landslides, hurricanes, cyclones and volcanic eruptions are taking their toll and killing people en masse and rendering millions homeless. Moreover, at any point in time, there is always a war some‑ where on the globe with its resultant refugee problems. There is a fragile peace effort in the Middle East. In the industrialized West, divorce, the collapse of families, unemployment, racism, bleakness, regimented style of living, physical and psychological pressures, domestic violence, street violence, crime, addiction, prostitution, abortion, rape, incest, pornography as a consumer product—all of this re‑ grettably forms the status quo. The 1992 racial clashes in a supposedly civilized city such as Los Angeles were as barbaric as any in the jungle. In Africa, the bizarre story is told of the inhumane decades of apartheid in South Africa; the population explosion; the world trade imbalance with its unfair commodity prices for Africa’s produce, which had untold repercussions for African economies; the marginalization of Africa in the post-Cold War era, the unification of Europe and the fos‑ tering of East-West economic links; despotic military rulers with their repressive regimes; the staggering debt burden; unstable governments; political upheavals, civil unrest, cor‑ ruption in the public sector and high places, gross economic mismanagement; fratricidal wars, ethnic conflicts and tribal massacres; religious fundamentalism; brain-drain to the West, which leaves the continent even more impoverished; the perpetuation of Western imperialism; poverty, deprivation, drought and famine. Millions of Africans have died or are dying of malaria, diarrhea and other pestilent outbreaks like cholera and typhoid. Sanitary conditions are deplorable and health facilities are simply inadequate. Infant and maternal mortality rates are disproportionately high. A pernicious but seemingly innocuous evil eating into the moral fiber of African society today is teenage pregnancy and child abuse. There is also the new canker of armed robbery in major African cities. The world is witnessing religious bigotry and fundamentalism on such a massive scale. Terrorism has reached unimaginable proportions, culminating eventually in the horren‑ dous September 11 attack on America. Now there is the long-drawn-out global war against terrorism; nobody knows how far this will go. As if these problems were not mind-boggling enough, the world is now saddled with finding a vaccine for AIDS. There is despondency, desperation, bewilderment, frustra‑ tion and agony all over the place. The world is not a gentle place to live. Man is a lonely ephemeral being in this vast universe with all of its complexities and oddities, impersonal and frightening. He is imprisoned in this brief span between birth and death.

212  Rikki Wemega-Kwawu

As a physical being, Man sees himself as insignificant matter, an embodiment of atoms and molecules, which will soon be condemned to dust after this brief lifespan and be for‑ gotten. Yet man feels he is more than this mortal being, that his real essence is immortal. He instinctively feels he is a divine being made in the likeness of the Divine, an undivided unity, from which he has strayed and to which he ultimately must return. This conscious‑ ness, the awakening to one’s divine self, is the unquenchable divine light within every man which propels him to strive for something beyond physical reality, a union with the ultimate reality, which has been referred to as “Salvation,” “Redemption,” “Eter‑ nal life,” “The Kingdom of God,” “Christ Consciousness,” “Krishna Consciousness,” “Heaven,” “Cosmic Consciousness,” “Tao,” “Nirvana,” “Union with God,” “Satori,” “Yoga,” “Samadhi,” etc. “Nobody teaches the child God,” the Akan proverb literally translates. In art, I see a powerful tool for man to break free from the shackles of this bondage and stake a claim on eternity. Our forefathers used their art to access this indivisible essence, which has been called varied names: the Absolute, the Universal Intelligence, Cosmic Consciousness, Nyame, Elán Vital, etc. They used the power of art to make sense of their existential life, to placate and control all the unholy forces that pitched against them. For our forefathers, the works of art they created were the visible expression of the absolute. For a moment, it halted the passing of the arbitrary and capricious aspects of his life and produced an enduring work. Out of time, man has fashioned space, which he encloses within an outline. Within this space, he seizes upon some element in all its con‑ tingency and immortalizes it by giving it an almost abstract expression. The impulse of his inner emotion impels this expressive form. The work of art becomes the visible order, the unity and the equivalent in form to his feelings. Man has found a haven, a place of rest amongst the fleeting aspects of his life. Wilhelm Worringer expounds on this phenomenon in his 1908 book Abstraction and Empathy. He states that “the work of art as an independent organism stands on an equal footing with nature and, in its deepest innermost being, has no connection with it.” Worringer set out the following principle: the less mankind is able to understand the phenomena of the external world and, consequently, the less kinship he feels with them, the stronger the impulse that drives him to create a powerful and abstract beauty. It is not that “primitive” man is searching for laws in nature, nor that he feels them more keenly than another. To the contrary, he experiences an even greater desire to free these phenom‑ ena from arbitrariness and chaos, because he feels lost and overpowered by them. So he endows them with the urgency and the value of Law. Easel Painting as a Modern Idiom of Artistic Expression in Africa

The fundamental but, unfortunately, erroneous contention in the West is that painting is essentially not an indigenous African art form. Yes, easel painting, strictly speaking, may not be an original African art form, but what is sadly forgotten is that Africa has cen‑ turies of a rich tradition in painting from wall painting to human body painting to cave wall painting. Nonetheless, to the West, the African artist is traditionally a sculptor, and what is conceived of painting in the West does not in any way fall within the African’s

Akwaaba/Continuum: Manifesto of an African Artist  213

cultural domain; it simply does not belong to him. The African artist is thus cautioned to stay away from the “white man’s art.” It is stereotypically reductive and racially condescending for the West to perceive mod‑ ern African art in this light, and I see a design to propagate segregationist ideals. Such racist viewpoints deserve utter condemnation. As a matter of fact, this is what has been largely responsible for museums and galleries in the West sidelining, by-passing and ig‑ noring contemporary African painting as if nothing worthwhile were happening on the African continent. Exhibitions, therefore, by Africans and Diaspora Africans are largely confined—“gettoized”—in small, specialized Black galleries. No mainstream gallery is interested in showcasing Black artists. A few Black artists like Jean Michel Basquiat have successfully penetrated the heavily guarded white art establishment, but his career was sadly short-lived; he died prematurely from a drug overdose at the tender age of twentyseven when he was riding high after such a meteoric rise to the top of the art world. This color barrier against the modern African artist is underpinned by the notion that because painting on canvas traditionally is not the natural medium for Africans, he is bound to encounter technical problems, as well as vividly interpret his ideas and experiences of his rapidly changing political, economic and social milieu, a medium which, for his counter‑ parts in Europe and America, comes naturally. However, in instances when painting by Africans is carried through to completion with real understanding and feeling for the medium, the so-called Western art connois‑ seur then says it could but have been by a European or American. He unhesitatingly and unabashedly mentions some European or American master (old or contemporary) in Paris or New York that the African is parodying as if the latter were incapable of original vision and dexterity in swirling the brush. The world has shrunk considerably into a global village, what with worldwide in‑ ternational air transport and mass telecommunication with its instant dissemination of news via satellite, facsimile, telex, the Internet and so on. Ideological differences as well as geographical and cultural barriers are fast disintegrating. The dismantling of apart‑ heid in South Africa, the collapse of the Soviet Block with the demise of communism, the emergence of a uni-polar world, the fall of the Berlin Wall bringing the two Germanys together, and a united Europe are just the beginning of the times to come. Apparent dif‑ ferences between one society and another were only superficially imposed by Man. In essence, we are all one with a common destiny—a homogeneous whole with each man his brother’s keeper. There is a need for global interdependence—a critical issue that the international system cannot gloss over. There is a fervent cross-pollination of cultures and ideas currently taking place. Major world cultures are gravitating into one common cultural cauldron, where they coalesce into an amalgam. The world would see only the much-desired peace which has eluded man for so long, only when the white man gives the long overdue recognition to his fel‑ low Black man as an equal, Homo Sapiens brother to cohabit the earth with. The world is rapidly approaching the point when the scourge of White Supremacy Theory will be buried. European countries are now proudly parading Black African athletes as Europe‑ ans in their Olympic squads. African footballers are having distinguished soccer careers in Europe. The development of international sports is healthy and a step in the right direction and should be extended to the arts.

214  Rikki Wemega-Kwawu

In this era of information technology, Africans cannot help but be deeply affected by the developments going on in Europe, America and Asia. African countries have felt the wind of political change blowing throughout the world, and have initiated democratic processes, too. Our social set-up is undergoing a vigorous transition, imbibing Western styles of living. All the major foreign religions, from Christianity to Islam to Eastern philosophy, have found fertile ground in Africa and won many adherents. In many in‑ stances, the new religions have totally supplanted the traditional African religion, which miraculously still thrives. The African today lives in an air-conditioned home, rides in the very latest car, watches the latest videos by satellite and works with the most sophisti‑ cated computers. He reads novels, newspapers and magazines—both local and foreign— and listens to music from cassettes, compact discs and MP3 players. African economists are studying fluctuations in international trade patterns and the politics attending them and how to adjust African economics vis-á-vis world inflationary trends. It is increasingly difficult to talk of the traditional African village today. It is almost non-existent now with the rapid urbanization. The artist is the spiritual antenna of his society. He is the soul of his people and cannot ignore the influence of the social dynamics of his environment. The artistic developments at the international level are all foreign imports, which impinge directly on the sensibility of the African artist. He is informed, directly or indirectly, of what is happening in the Western World. A tradition is alive only if it constitutes a resource to be re-interpreted and not a frozen eternity. African traditional art is a living and dynamic entity. It has evolved and metamorphosed over the years to keep abreast with the times. It is interesting to note that the distinctive characteristic of most contemporary African art today is an emphasis on two-dimensional forms and the employment of Western art materials and techniques, which are the antithesis of the traditional medium of wood and the three-dimensionality of most African sculptures. The contemporary African artist no longer caters solely to the needs of his ethnic community. He has become a world citizen, catering to the needs of an integrated global community. Belonging to the world, the African artist is adopting Western styles to deal with traditional themes and everyday life. This development is a positive one. After all, didn’t twentieth-century Western Modernist art consciously derive from Af‑ rican tribal art? And is it not perfectly legitimate also for us, with some degree of innova‑ tion, to borrow, adopt and adapt ideas from the West? This is not plagiarism! Art is the most effective way to bridge the different cultures of the world. It is a uni‑ versal language that transcends all ethnic and racial barriers. So there is no such thing as art for Africans and art for Europeans. Art is art. Above all, to the true artist there is only one art—and it belongs to the whole of humanity. On our part as Africans, we do not have to be caught up in our own prejudices and concepts of what constitutes African art today. To be complacent with what we are currently doing, as if that were all there is to art, I am afraid, borders on dilettantism. This does not foster growth one bit. We are bound to find ourselves in a blind alley. For growth to be possible, we must be exposed to what others have done and are doing. We need to extricate ourselves from our ethnic straightjacket, from parochialism and regionalism, and open ourselves to influences and ideas from every corner of the world and all ages. We can embrace these exotic influences and ideas without losing our African

Akwaaba/Continuum: Manifesto of an African Artist  215

identity. In fact, there is no need to search for an African identity. Africanness is inherent within us—nobody can dispose of it. We have to bear that in mind. Attempting a synthe‑ sis of traditional and Western art forms is the only way we can hope to directly translate a specific ethnic tradition into the contemporary globalized idiom. Painting in Ghana—The Way Forward

Painting as a fine art has a solid history with centuries of tradition behind it. Every brushstroke today is loaded with art historical precedence. As modern African artists, we should know where painting comes from, and where it is heading. Then we would know where in the wheel to fit our spoke. We would know what positive contributions we can make to its advancement. We in Ghana cannot continue painting as if what we are doing here is the only do‑ main of art, oblivious to what has gone on before in the Western world and what is cur‑ rently going on there now. We cannot go about trying to re-invent the wheel of art and philosophy. Most of our art is strongly tethered to illusionistic naturalism, with cracker-barrel narrative content. We are all so intent on capturing the life and scenery around us—the genre of the Ghanaian social environment—as if that is what art is all about. If it is not the beach, then it is the market panorama, the “tro-tro” station or durbar procession of some sort. We are all guilty of it; I have my fair share of the blame. Art goes far, far beyond the genre. It is not tied to phenomena of the visible world alone. In fact, a great deal of the styles we indulge in, in the advanced art circuit, will only pass for illustration. They are described as kitschy. They are moribund in the annals of art history. Story is of no real significance today. Nobody is interested in it. A work with narrative content is looked at with grave suspicion. It has been argued that the anecdotal point of view debars the work of its fullest aesthetic contemplation. The corridors of art history are overcrowded with superlative examples of representational paintings and literary, social, historical and religious themes—Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Velázquez, Goya, El Greco, Tintoretto, Titian, Brueghel, Giotto, Masaccio, Caravaggio, Géricault, Watteau, Delacroix, Van Dyke, Frans Hals, Rembrandt, Constable, Turner, Toulouse Lautrec, John Singer Sargent, Winslow Homer, Whistler, Manet—the list gets boring fast. These old masterpieces, which were once meant to describe significant human experi‑ ences, are now, interestingly, interpreted formally. They are distilled into forms, shapes, lines, values, colors, textures, space, light, movement, design, rhythm, perspective and technique. The two-dimensional picture surface has now become an arena for solving pictorial problems. This is what twentieth-century Modernism has predisposed us to. The market forces in Ghana and elsewhere in Africa are greatly responsible for this degenerate trend. Unfortunately, most of our patronage comes from the expatriate com‑ munity, many of whom, I am sorry to say, know next to nothing about art. They are not the real art connoisseurs we encounter in books. But because they happen to be foreigners—Europeans, Americans and Japanese, mostly—we get carried away by their enthusiasm for our work: the familiar mental stupor in which the African finds himself in relation to the white skin. These buyers have their own values and aesthetic preferences, and because we constantly need money to keep working, we easily succumb to their whims and idiosyncrasies. This buyer, due to the power of his convertible currency, easily

216  Rikki Wemega-Kwawu

acquires our work at the price of peanuts. This buyer, deeply enchanted by the rusticity of the African environment, often wants a painting that will remind him of his sojourn in Africa, a piece of the life and scenery, in graphic detail or impressionistic treatment to tell those back home what Africa looks like. We must be wary of these buyers. The highest purpose of art today is not to remind anybody about anything. The Africans who should be the ones patronizing our art find themselves not in the least position to afford art, which many consider a luxury item, because they are saddled with serious economic problems—providing food, clothing, shelter and school tuition for the family. Helpless, our paintings have now become good only for buying and selling, prostituted into a neo-airport art for the expatriates passing through Africa. What we need for our art is a well-informed audience, seasoned and cultivated collectors, and not the quasi-art enthusiast, the charlatan with philistine taste, pretending to know about art. It is precisely the overtly pictorial narrative content and not just the question of race, in the work of leading African American artists like Romare Bearden, Hughie Lee-Smith, Jacob Lawrence and Henry O. Turner, that has largely caused their total neglect by the art establishment. Their work didn’t fall into the mainstream of international art in their day. It is only recently that their works have been accorded a modicum of recognition through museum retrospectives in the States. If we in Africa want the art we are doing today to win any amount of respect and suc‑ cess, if we want to bring it into the mainstream of international acceptance as a modern aesthetic expression, it is imperative that we first know what has gone on in art before now. In this respect, we should never regard the study of art history as a drag. The his‑ tory of art is not just a record of human civilization but a vital resource for the artist. It is intrinsic to our development. Art is the only human discipline where the study of its history ranks on parity with the current practice of the day. Aesthetic appreciation and thought are as ancient as the history of man. What we need to do as contemporary African artists is to first steep ourselves in the great traditions of Western Art. Not only the practice and the technical aspects of the different schools but their philosophical basis as well. We should deeply study the argu‑ ments put forth in favor of and against the different schools as well. All the great styles of Western art, especially the artistic traditions of the twentieth century—Fauvism, Cubism (Analytic and Synthetic), Dada, Constructivism, Futurism, Concrete Art, Suprematism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, Minimalism, Conceptualism and Geometric Abstraction—have vital lessons to teach us. Of course, each has its strengths and weaknesses. While being receptive to what the old and modern masters have thought and done, we should cultivate the habit of critical analytic think‑ ing. We should ask questions about a particular style, challenge every feature of it and sift out the sound parts from the unsound. While being critical, we should get adventurous in extending and developing new ideas. We should not simply accept what they have done as the ultimate. We should stretch the imagination to its limits and innovate. This is what divergent thinking in creativity is all about. Armed with knowledge from Western art, we should now turn our attention full-swing to the study of aesthetics in the context of the history of African aesthetics and traditional African art in all of its multifarious forms: African classical sculpture in wood, metal and clay, pottery, basketry, proverbs, poetry, folklore, music, dance, textiles, coiffure,

Akwaaba/Continuum: Manifesto of an African Artist  217

cicatrization and scarification and other body ornamentation and architecture. We can broaden our vision by interpreting our traditional art through Western formalist theories of art and vice versa. Such comparative aesthetic studies equip us with a vivid and open-minded sense of his‑ tory. We can then make the past serve the present and make foreign things serve Ghana and, for that matter, Africa. We can elevate our work to meet some criteria of world art without losing its identity. We would know what to repudiate and what to selectively accept and assimilate from the West. As contemporary African artists, what is expected of us at this point is to eschew the uncompromising and the extravagant in Western art and, left with the cream, to create a fusion of our cultural artistic heritage and Western Modernism and Postmodernism. In addition, with lessons from the West, we can combine the “real” and the subconscious to produce an art that is wholly representative of our age. Modern African art is on the verge of a renaissance. The future of world painting rests on the shoulders of Africa. We hold the beacon for art in the twenty-first century. In short, the greatest challenge facing contemporary African painters today is how to preserve the past while forming the future and how to maintain a sense of tradition and quality while selecting something new with an innovative function. Innovative ideas and images can only evolve through conflict and confrontation. We need to break through the surface and reach beyond to find the roots. We will discover that traditional African art whose demise has been pitifully bemoaned, after all, is alive and germinating, maintaining a continuum of energy. Then it will be seen that the wooden sculpture of African art is imbued with the same ambience as the most living modern painting by an African artist. Problems in Contemporary Ghanaian (African) Art

The patronage of contemporary Ghanaian art, as I have intimated earlier, lies mainly with the expatriate community, mostly the diplomatic corps and the few businessmen who want a painting to bring home with a subject matter typically described as Ghana‑ ian, like the proverbial market scene, to remind them of their sojourn. This group of col‑ lectors is largely uncritical. Of course, through their patronage, they have enabled many an artist to earn a decent living and keep his head above water. But is that all there is to our art production—buying and selling? Obviously, because of Ghana’s (and Africa’s) economic woes, we have no viable or vibrant local art industry. The art industry com‑ prises practitioners (i.e., artists), collectors, dealers, galleries, museums, art critics, art historians, art literature (i.e., journals and books) and a general art audience who are not necessarily collectors. The few art galleries we have in Ghana operate more like retail shops where art works are displayed with the hope that some buyers will stumble upon them. The gallery does virtually no promotional work for the artist. In reality, therefore, the percentage cut by the gallery from the proceeds of the sale (typically 35% of the selling price) is the rent the artist paid for the space occupied by his or her work in the gallery. Because of the high cost of printing, most exhibitions go undocumented. Very few exhibition brochures or catalogs, worthy of being called that, have been published on the work of Ghanaian artists. Meanwhile, we abound in talents and artistic production.

218  Rikki Wemega-Kwawu

We live in artistic backwaters in our part of the world. It is difficult to keep abreast of what is actually happening on the international art front. Reading material is terribly scarce. Not a single contemporary journal on international art is in circulation here or can be found in any of our run-down and ill-stocked public libraries. In fact, there are no journals here devoted specifically to art. Because of the absolute lack of exposure to what is currently going on elsewhere, there is generally a dearth of knowledge on con‑ temporary art practices and the intellectual discourses informing them. When it comes to art and history, you would be surprised to learn that the only thing that most of our artists, including even the academically trained, know of twentieth-century art is Cub‑ ism and Picasso. And, perhaps, Surrealism and Dali. Beyond that, nothing! So, what do you find? A host of artists who are naturally gifted. They exhibit great technical proficiency but fail to create unique art that would contribute something significantly new to world art history. Our artists have become complacent in their artistic ideas and production. They are content with what they do as if that were all there is to art. They will not set any new challenges for themselves. Of course, there is nothing to compare themselves with. Apart from the need to be receiving international art journals like “Art in America” and “Art News” to keep abreast with what is going on outside of Africa, we also need to have critical journals, exhibition catalogs and books on the arts, published by Africans on African soil and circulated not only in Africa but in the rest of the world. The Nigeri‑ ans have been instrumental in setting the pace in that direction. With the publication of Glendora: An African Quarterly on the Arts and the Cornell University–based Nka: A Journal of Contemporary African Art, the latter co-founded by Professor Salah Hassan and the pre-eminent African art historian, critic and curator, Okwui Enwezor. No doubt, Glendora and Nka are excellent magazines on the contemporary arts of Africa but, un‑ fortunately, are published in the UK and US, respectively, and are not in circulation here. Generally, books on contemporary African art are published in the West and never reach the continent for African practitioners of art to read. So the average Ghanaian artist is totally ignorant about what is going on in La Côte d’Ivoire next door. Compared to America, which has a long history and tradition of art criticism, there is no gainsaying the fact that contemporary African art is bereft of any critical writ‑ ing and commentary—some attempts by a few of our journalists to cover art exhi‑ bitions only betray their dearth of knowledge of art theory and practice. They hail every artwork at an exhibition as a masterpiece. Our art colleges, co-jointly with our departments of English and French, and probably the School of Journalism, need to specially train people to be art critics, people who have studied art history, generally, and African art history and theory more specifically, with the command of the English or French language, to address incisively all aspects of our artistic production. Art criticism has now become very specialized, and we need very qualified critics to be able to discuss new forms of art like installation and performance. Of course, not every art‑ work can be a masterpiece. Reviews of art exhibitions and other forms of art like films and videos must necessarily go beyond mere description, which has been the practice in the past. Reviews are needed to relate the works under scrutiny to the current state of African art studies. Beyond the general descriptions of content, reviews should deal critically with concepts, objectives and theoretical models. A good review should ad‑ dress these salient questions:

Akwaaba/Continuum: Manifesto of an African Artist  219

i Does the work raise any critical issues? If so, how do you address them vis-à-vis the current polemics in that field? ii What approach has the artist or curator used? Is it conventional or novel? How effec‑ tively does the message come across? Is the work an intellectual appendage by which to expand our understanding of African art and art in general? iii How does the visual presentation of the work itself contribute to the communication of ideas and the final realization of the project’s aims? iv How important is the exhibition, film or video to its audience? Biennales

In biennials held on the African continent—like Dak’ Art, which takes place in Dakar, Senegal every two years, and the now defunct Jo’burg Biennale and other major art events like South Meets West, which was held in Accra, Ghana, and traveled to Bern, Switzerland, all of which were meant to promote contemporary African art—African representation among the curators was disproportionately small in comparison to their Western counterparts. In a situation like this, it is difficult to discuss dispassionately and promote authentic African art when our critical input is so small in number; the exchange of opinions can never be fair. There will always be an imbalance, and Western opinion will hold sway. If critics and curators from Africa were to come together and form an independent organization, holding regional and continental conferences and symposiums to discuss the state of African art and strategies to place it on a more equal footing with Western art, then the continent would benefit greatly. Because a biennale like Dak’Art is financed primarily by the European Union, it will inevitably be tailored to look like the biennales in Europe and America, with a preponderance of installation work. This does not reflect what is happening on the ground in Africa, as a minuscule percentage of contemporary African artists are into installation and video art. The Carnegie International and The Whitney Biennale are meant to mirror what is currently happening in contemporary art in America. However, I get the impression that fairs like South Meets West and the recent Dak’Art festivals are instead meant to tell Africans which direction they should point their art. So, has globalization in art become a new form of colonialism? Typical postmodern genres such as technology art, media art, feminist art and other installation works that engage issues and ideas such as sexuality, religion, gender, the body, popular culture, political, social and economic history have yet to take root in Ghana, at least. South Meets West, indeed, came as a shock to many Ghanaian artists and their audi‑ ences. Many of my colleagues found the works too alien and uninspiring for their liking, not something they would want to embrace as a new form of artistic expression. The Second Johannesburg Biennale in 1997 was highly controversial and generated heated debate. Debates of that nature have become characteristic of the foreign-tailored exhibi‑ tions being imposed on Africa and wrongly heralded as the new art from Africa. Many South African artists and critics at that time felt terribly alienated by the Biennale, and that the theme of “Trade Routes” was at variance with their own sense of reality; it had rather stemmed from the Western context into which they were being forced to fit. It is important that a biennale like Dak’Art—which is currently the only surviving one in Africa (there is the Cairo Biennale, but that is devoted to the art of the Middle East and

220  Rikki Wemega-Kwawu

the Islamic World) and has become an important platform for showcasing contemporary art from Africa—find its own unique voice and not become like one of the many bien‑ nales on the international art circuit, displaying always the same things wherever. Moreo‑ ver, the discussions that this important biennale generates should not be dominated by Western hegemonic critical theory. Africans should generate their own discourses perti‑ nent to their own experiences. Contemporary African Art (Post-Colonial African Art)

Contemporary African art (Post-Colonial African art), as I suggested earlier, can only define itself through vigorous experimentation. Experiments would have to be made with the hope of stumbling upon something powerfully new, exciting and, importantly, uniquely ours but with global appeal. This experimentation should derive consciously from the African art of the past. It behooves contemporary African artists to delve into their cultural past and artistic history to bring African art to a logical present. The natu‑ ral evolution of our art was brutally truncated by colonialism. Contemporary African artists are duty-bound to pick up the pieces and go on from there. To effectively do this, the tribal sculptures which were taken out of African en masse at the turn of the twenti‑ eth century to Europe and America and are gathering dust in storage in Western museums should be brought back out of storage; the doors of the Western museums housing these traditional artworks should be thrown open to enable contemporary African artists to engage in dialogue with the artworks of their ancestral past. Pictures in books about these tribal sculptures are not enough for the contemporary African artist. African artists should not succumb to the varieties of postmodernist thought without first questioning them critically. African art and societies actually never experienced the wave of Modernism that swept the West. The big question therefore is: is the contempo‑ rary African artist going to skip that phase and jump straight onto the postmodern band‑ wagon just to be fashionable, or will we go through modernism and systematically arrive at our own postmodernism? Would the train of postmodernism not have left us behind? I believe, personally, that Modernism as a pillar in twentieth-century art still has many great lessons to teach the African artist. Modernism drew its impetus from the Western artist’s contact with African art. What I advocate is, instead of hurrying to jump onto this postmodernist bandwagon, which could vaporize tomorrow, like all other movements, we should systematically build on the unique intellectual contribution that our ancestral art had on the development of visual art in the twentieth century. Possibly through a direct encounter with our own ancestral art and lessons gained from the West, we should be able to preserve, restore and develop our own art while aspiring to the world stage. As for now, the postmodernist gimmickry being exhibited by some contemporary African artists only smacks of falsity and pretension. Every culture in this world has its own unique identity. Culture is, therefore, that es‑ sential ingredient that distinguishes one group of people from all others, making them essentially what they are. The culture of a people becomes the racially shared experi‑ ence that shapes how the people think and act. Chinese culture is distinctly different from Indian culture, which in turn is different from Japanese culture. Similarly, we have an African culture. This culture is an important part of the racial identity which gives

Akwaaba/Continuum: Manifesto of an African Artist  221

Africans—no matter where they are on the globe—a sense of pride and defines who we are and where we come from. Unfortunately, because of its pervading influence on the rest of the world, apparently buttressed by its economic strength, the Western view of art is fast becoming the global view. This is wrong. African artists must not pander to Western notions of what art should be without questioning them. They should not compromise their unique cultural identity in order to become acceptable to the West. This is a very disturbing ­development—that in order to enter the global mainstream, African art has to adapt itself to its new audience, thereby losing its unique identity. What Is Contemporary African Art? What Is Its Place in Its Culture?

As I have submitted earlier, traditional African art did not die with colonialism. It is alive and still being created and transformed in modern Africa. To understand the phenom‑ enon of African art today, we should bear in mind that throughout its checkered history, Africans have frequently and selectively adapted and incorporated into their culture ex‑ ternal ideas and aesthetics. It is the African sensibility and indomitable spirit which has ensured the survival of this very ancient culture in the face of the onslaught from foreign cultures, and it is this same sensibility and resilient spirit which is guaranteeing today that certain aspects of African culture are preserved, and foreign ones selectively adapted despite cultural bombardment from the West. Contemporary African art actually is part and parcel of the past, as well as a reflection of the sociopolitical and economic cultural issues of the moment. There is no dichotomy whatsoever between the art of the past and the various contemporary idioms of African artists. Only the purveyors of contemporary artistic taste, of course, Western-dominated, fail to give due respect to what is currently going on in Africa. As a result, Western art establishments have overlooked many of Africa’s most talented and important art‑ ists currently living and working in Africa. It is almost impossible for an African artist, well established in his country and highly respected, too, to get to show his work in a mainstream gallery in Europe or America. This limited presentation of works by con‑ temporary African artists in major Western art institutions and fairs is part of the larger problem of discrimination that affects artists of color in the United States. The modern African artist, indeed, is no different from his Western counterpart. He is also a citizen of the world, using international materials and stimuli for his work. He is tied into an international system of museums, galleries and patrons. He is featured on the Inter‑ net. Some have had the privilege of attending the most prestigious art schools in the West. The arts played a pivotal role in the shaping of traditional African societies before, but the story is quite different today. Contemporary African arts have not been given their due place in post-colonial African societies. Artists and their works do not get the recog‑ nition and respect they deserve. Africa is saddled with too many economic problems. The day-to-day struggle for basic survival has relegated the preservation and propagation of the African cultural and artistic identity on the continent to the background. Many of our best creative minds, disillusioned with the prospects of being an artist in Africa, have migrated to the art capitals of the West, seeking economic refuge and a more salubrious working environment. Yet another story of Africa’s brain-drain!

222  Rikki Wemega-Kwawu

Many African immigrant artists who ended up in those Western cultural capitals soon realized that it was virtually impossible to express themselves within the art world sys‑ tem. To express yourself in a work representative of your African cultural experience was simply untenable. A disproportionately small number of these immigrant artists had their voices heard and got the opportunity to really become international. The Western art critic approaches the work of the Western artist—often “white”— objectively on his or her own terms; however, confronted with the work of an African artist, the Western critic reels back in bewilderment, unsympathetically imposing special requirements. This tendency to put the best creative work by an African artist under a ra‑ cially biased microscope invariably stifles the free development of African creativity. The Western art world has its own preconceived notions of what constitutes African art. For the contemporary African artist, one’s work is described as either too culturally specific, i.e., African, because it does not reflect any of the contemporary influences of Western art, or not African enough, because it does not fall within their narrow definition of what African art should be. You are certain almost always to be tagged as “The African artist,” and there is no way your work would be assessed on its own terms. To extricate themselves from this stranglehold of obnoxious name-tagging and pigeonholing, and from the constricting paradigms of what constitutes African art as imposed on the African artist by “aficionados” of the Western art world, some contemporary African artists, to try their chances at the star-making machinery of the Euro-American mainstream, have consciously and systematically denied their African origins. This is where the danger lies. No artist works in a vacuum, of course; influences can be multiple. It is important for the creative artist to let his or her creative impulses flow to whatever he or she wants to create. But deliberately forgetting and abandoning one’s cultural roots in order to be ac‑ ceptable and fashionable to the Euro-American mainstream constitutes a great betrayal of the African consciousness. These artists cannot be true to themselves as long as they try to be somebody else. They are rather doing themselves a great disservice because, sooner or later, they end up with no place at all, as they are not fully accepted by the new culture which they are trying to adopt, and cannot trace their steps back to the culture they renounced. They are caught up in suspended animation, as frustration and bitter‑ ness set in. Globalization and the Modern African Artist

In this era of information technology and air travel, the world has shrunk into a global village that is supposed to be a hybridization of all cultures in one homogenous mix. Before that takes place, however, every culture with its unique identity would have to plunge into the common cauldron and coalesce into a global amalgam: a mix exhibiting its multifarious diversity. A unity in diversity is vividly depicted by the Akan Adinkra symbol, “Funtumfunafu—Denkyemfunafu,” showing the two proverbial lizards with a common stomach but two different mouths. Unfortunately, what we are witnessing in reality is not a universalizing of cultures but an imposition of the hegemonic dominance of Western culture on the minor cultures of the world. What we have is not so much a global mainstream as a Euro-American mainstream. Because of its strangulating power and pervading influence over the rest

Akwaaba/Continuum: Manifesto of an African Artist  223

of the world, the Western view of art is fast becoming the global viewpoint. The world is obviously not heading to that utopia where all cultures are equally blended into one super-culture but rather dangerously to an arena where the Euro-American mainstream swallows everyone to clone itself as the universal culture. Globalization surely has cos‑ mopolitan aspirations to resolve differences among the cultures of this world and to transcend the locality. However, if not properly approached, as is being done now, it will only provide the West further opportunity to immobilize other cultures so that they can be made to fit safely into the Western worldview mold. Not to become a nonentity in this globalization process, to avoid being totally swamped by the West, it behooves contemporary African artists to assert their Africanness. It is a spiritual and moral right. I do not believe globalization means a uniform culture for the whole world imposed by a dominant culture because of its economic strength. No, far from it. Rather, true globali‑ zation is about promoting an inter-cultural dialogue regarding the differences between and within different cultures. This is the only way to foster unity and do away with racial prejudice. The super-culture of globalization is one capable of absorbing and assimilat‑ ing all the other cultures within its boundaries. It is a unique culture that will derive its sustenance from all the other cultures, which in turn form the roots. Global super-culture is therefore not a cornucopia of varied cultures, but using the analogy of the tree, it is the main trunk standing on many roots, which provide its nour‑ ishment. The trunk sprouts many branches with a uniform set of leaves. The growth of the main trunk into branches represents the universalizing process. The canopy forms the super-culture. It is from a uniform source like the trunk that we can have a truly globalized culture. It is only from such a uniform platform that there could be true intercultural dialogue, totally devoid of the old strictures of colonization with its attendant subjugation and denigration, exclusion and the inability of the “other” to express itself. The colonizer will have to do away with its colonial mentality, decolonizing itself com‑ pletely by recognizing the colonized as a co-equal and giving them the voice to speak for themselves. Only through such transcultural communication can humanity surmount the racial conflicts and prejudices of our times. We would soon discover that we are one people, despite differences of color and economic strength, with a common origin and common destiny. Clearly, we both have a lot to learn from each other. Globalization is therefore not to supplant all the other cultures of the world with a dominant culture, driven by its economic might, cunningly engineered to perpetuate the West’s hegemonic stranglehold on the rest of the world. It is far less an imposition of Western culture on others outside itself than it is a generative growth and exchange of concerns that are implicit in the different cultures of the world. Through the inter-cultural dialogue engendered by true globalization, the new gen‑ eration of globalized artists will discover through international travel and the Internet, through inter-personal contacts and communication, and through exchange programs that a commonality runs through all cultures. Such inter-cultural dialogue holds the fu‑ ture of art. Just as the Internet has shrunk the world into one small village not bounded by time or space, the universal culture I envision for humanity will transcend all geographic bounda‑ ries. It will not matter any longer where you come from or where you choose to live. Migration will certainly uproot and dislocate the individual from his own history and

224  Rikki Wemega-Kwawu

cultural background, thus losing that cultural identity he once fastidiously clung to. The culture of the new place of residence also becomes your culture. The different cultural elements that would go into the whole globalization process would be removed from the place and time that produced them. Once demobilized and removed from its cultural context, it would no longer be relevant as cultural specifies. The no-place and the notime would become a place and a time; the new place and the new time. The Universal Culture. The world’s Super Culture. Postmodernism

At this moment in art history, there are no rules, no dominant style or school and no -isms. New York City is still the art capital of the world, boasting the largest number of commercial exhibition spaces, museums devoted to showing modern and contempo‑ rary art and numerous alternative spaces in its five boroughs, with over 130,000 artists. Increasingly, however, the art world is being decentralized. Great works of art are being created regardless of geographical boundaries. Major art events are taking place around the world. There is a biennial on every continent now. Contemporary art, irrespective of where it originates or how it looks, elicits great interest, passion and dialogue. Contem‑ porary art has become the universal form of communication to help with the globaliza‑ tion process. Postmodernism is really not an art movement in the strictest sense of the word. As a cultural phenomenon, it has contributed immensely toward reconciling the dichotomies of traditional African and Western art, academism and the avant-garde, figuration and abstraction and modernism and postmodernism itself, thus creating an atmosphere of peaceful co-existence. Africa needs more exchanges of international exhibitions like South Meets West, which opened in Accra before traveling to Europe, and African artists need the oppor‑ tunity to show their work in the West, in mainstream galleries and major art institutions where there will be high visibility. Only through such exchanges and dialogue can post‑ modernism really become equal to globalization. Only then can contemporary African art’s international stature and competitiveness be enhanced. Contemporary African artists must be receptive to foreign movements while holding on to their own. This is the only way for the African artist to set forth an international African art, which maintains the particularity of its cultural context yet aspires to uni‑ versal significance. The universal must be seen in the local. African artists, whose work or style of expression—while dealing essentially with African issues, sensibility, history and politics—still reaches out to an international appeal, must be greatly encouraged to develop their work. We need not simply wait to be invited to participate in foreign exhibitions. That should be a thing of the past. We have to be more aggressive in showing our art to the world. We have to be able to venture into the West to do so. We have to be able to dictate the terms on which our art is shown in the global context. With the support of economically viable galleries, governmental cultural establish‑ ments, corporations and society, contemporary African art can achieve accelerated progress and recognition. Through the assistance of diplomatic missions in Ghana, for instance, and direct links with cultural institutions in the West, we should be able to

Akwaaba/Continuum: Manifesto of an African Artist  225

organize frequent exhibitions and exchanges with foreign artists as well as workshops with curators and critics. Certainly, a great deal of governmental support will be needed in the promotion of our art internationally; however, so far in Ghana, for instance, governmental support for the visual arts is almost negligible. The industry’s bias is toward funding events like beauty pageants and sports. Nobody sees the visual arts as worthy of investment. We are failing to see and explore the economic advantages of the visual arts in nation building. We sit on gold yet prefer to seek gold elsewhere, thereby degrading the soil and the environment. The support of the visual arts has to be made a top priority in governmental cultural policy. We need new laws that facilitate the establishment and operation of galleries and museums. Can you believe that a country like Ghana has no contemporary art museum or gallery? Corporate tax laws need to be modernized to encourage industry to support the arts. They must see the arts as a viable investment. The United States has a lot to share with Africa in the field of governmental and institutional sponsorship of the arts. How, for instance, does a country raise money to found a museum or gallery? There is not a single governmental foundation or trust any‑ where in Africa that administers grants to artists in need or rewards meritorious work. By contrast, in the United States, there are regional institutional funds that artists from a particular area can access to facilitate their work. There is also the National Endow‑ ment for the Arts, which is the main governmental agency responsible for supporting the arts. Additionally, there are numerous private foundations like The John Simon Guggen‑ heim Foundation, The Joan Mitchell Foundation, The Pollock-Krasner Foundation, The Adolph Gottlieb Foundation and The Alpert Foundation, all of which give out huge sums annually to individual artists in recognition of merit and support their work. I am interested in how all these institutions operate and manage to thrive amidst economic fluctuations. Certainly, with a modicum of governmental support from African governments, aug‑ mented by corporate support, sponsorship and patronage of the fine arts in Africa, like that which is already being enjoyed by the beauty pageants and musical extravaganzas, the careers of many of our talented artists will be catapulted onto the mainstream global stage. Okwui Enwezor—The Non-Pareil African Art Historian, Critic and Curator

This paper on the state of fine art in Africa would be incomplete without discussing one African art historian, critic and curator who, by the young age of thirty-eight, achieved world-class stature. He is the Nigerian-born and -bred Okwui Enwezor. It is important here to discuss Okwui, as he is called, because I know for a fact that many serious con‑ temporary practitioners of art in Africa do not know who he is nor are they familiar with his curatorial activities or extensive writings. Okwui Enwezor, who is a resident of New York, is currently the artistic director for the upcoming documenta XI in Kassel, Germany, in June. The documenta, for those who do not know, is the Olympiad of art fairs in the world. It comes every five years. And for an African curator to have risen to be the director of such an important fair is no small achievement; it is a landmark in African art history and a plus for Mother Africa. Okwui deserves every accolade.

226  Rikki Wemega-Kwawu

Enwezor has written extensively on contemporary African art and artists, as well as on American and international art and artists, with essays in numerous exhibitions, cata‑ logues and books. He is a correspondent for Flash Art, consulting editor to Atlantica, based in Spain’s Canary Islands, editor-at-large of aRude and frequent contributor to Frieze, Africa World Review and Index on Censorship. All of these publications are es‑ teemed journals on contemporary art and culture; unfortunately, they are not in circula‑ tion in Africa. Enwezor is the publisher and co-founding editor (with Cornell professor Salah Hassan) of the Cornell-based Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art. As a critic, Enwezor has a powerful pen. His writing style, command of language and insight‑ ful commentary on contemporary art could easily rival the best in the world. Enwezor arrived in the United States in 1983 to study political science at Jersey City State College. Soon after graduation, he plunged into writing about art and curating exhibitions, primarily of contemporary artists from Africa. Enwezor embarked on a mis‑ sion to establish a new way of appreciating art which had a multiplicity of cultural influ‑ ences, instead of simply branding artists by their nationality or banding them together under the tag “multicultural,” as was the practice in the past. In May of 1996, Enwezor with Octavio Zaya, the editor of Atlantica, curated Content: In/sight: Africa Photographers, 1940 to the Present, which was part of the Guggen‑ heim Museum’s landmark show Africa. This breakthrough exhibition introduced a new view of African art, contrary to the stereotypes, to American audiences. With 130 works by 28 artists—including Malick Sidibe and Ike Udé—the show featured projects that incorporated appropriation, installation and identity politics. This appealed easily to the sensibilities and expectations of contemporary art sophisticates. This show not only launched the international careers of many of the artists featured but also threw the limelight on Okwui Enwezor himself as a world-class curator. From that point, his curatorial career continued in leaps and bounds. He directed the Second Johannesburg Biennale in 1997 under the theme “Trade Routes: History and Geography.” As controversial as this biennale was (i.e., many asked whether it was truly Af‑ rican, as many South African Artists felt marginalized), it changed the world’s opinion about contemporary African art. What Enwezor did was reverse the traditional direc‑ tional flow of contemporary art, whereby art from Third World countries ended up in European art centers. Top international curators and critics from Europe and the United States were flown into Johannesburg for the event. They included Spain’s Octavio Zaya, the United States’s Kellie Jones, a Yale art history professor and China’s Hou Hanru, among others. He then brought together established artists from the West who showed side by side with relatively unknown local talents. The works of these international art‑ ists addressed issues of displacement, modernization and alienation in a global context. The challenge was to renegotiate the traditional paradigm for presenting art; instead of stressing the national origin of participating artists, those featured had multiple identities in this age of travel and global communication. International Western conceptualists like Felix Gonzàlez-Torres, Sam Taylor Wood, Gabriel Orozco, the New York-based Puerto Rican Pepón Ossorio (who, incidentally, taught me at Skowhegan in 1998), Lorna Simp‑ son, Joycelyn Taylor and Pat Ward Williams paired with African conceptualists like Olu Oguibe, photographer Zwelethu Mthethwa, Nigerian Fatimah Tuggar and Tracey Jones. Indeed, the 1997 Johannesburg Biennale introduced a new word, “globalism,” into the contemporary art world’s vocabulary, which has stirred up a substantial amount of

Akwaaba/Continuum: Manifesto of an African Artist  227

discourse. Jo’burg 1997 totally transformed Western curators’ views about contempo‑ rary African art. In its wake, there have been many group shows, mostly in the West, focusing on work by contemporary African artists. The year 1999 saw the Museum for African Art in New York hosting Liberate Voices: Contemporary Art from South Africa. South Meets West, which involved some South African and West African artists, opened in Accra in 1999 and travelled to the Kunsthalle Bern in Switzerland. It was the biggest fine art event Ghana had ever witnessed in terms of organization, publicity and public participation. Enwezor continued propagating his global vision by co-curating several other exhi‑ bitions. “Unfinished History” at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, “Five Continents and One City” at the Museo de la Ciudad de Mexico in fall 1998 and “Global Conceptualism—Points of Origin, 1950s–1989” at the Queens Museum in New York all went a long way to bring the participating artists and other African artists into an international dialogue. Meanwhile, many of the artists introduced to the world through these group shows have taken up frontier positions, boldly stepping into the mainstream art world. Many are already being represented by blue-chip New York galleries. Yinka Shonibare shows with Brent Sikkema, and Mthethwa is represented by Jack Shainman. Julie Mehretu, who did a residency at the Studio Museum in New York, was featured in the Studio Museum’s Philip Morris-sponsored survey of contemporary Black art, “Free style,” in 2001. Tracey Rose, who did a residency at the prestigious San Antonio’s Art Pace, completed an installation while there. Apart from the Skoto Gallery, which has been in existence for eleven years in New York (It has always been located in the midst of blue-chip galleries; it is presently in Chelsea, next door to ACA Galleries, one of America’s oldest galleries), new spaces specializing in contemporary African art, like Axis Gallery, are springing up in Chelsea, New York, to support the voices of African artists. Florence Lynch Gallery represents the Nigerian artist Odili Donald Odita and Fatimah Allotey, a young Ghanaian artist. The internationally renowned Cameroonian installa‑ tion artist Pascal Marthene-Tayou is represented in New York by Lombard-Freid. Other major shows curated by Enwezor, who is also an Adjunct Curator of Con‑ temporary Art at the Art Institute of Chicago, are Global Conceptualism at the Queens Museum in New York and recently The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945–1994, which opened at the Museum Villa Stuck in Munich, and traveled to Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art in December 2001 and the PS1 Contemporary Art Center in Queens, New York in February 2002. It is the first ma‑ jor survey to cover the overlapping modernist art and political liberation movements in twentieth-century Africa. Enwezor says he does not mean to be overly critical and that he only wants to work constructively to build new grounds for dialogue, wanting more and more to be said. He sees his The Short Century as a vital step in educating an art-going public. Enwezor co-edited the anthology Reading the Contemporary: African Art from Theory to the Marketplace. Together with Dr. Olu Oguibe, who has been Enwezor’s col‑ league and collaborator for many years and a stalwart art critic in his own right, Enwezor recently published a major study on the theme of migration and displacement in the work of early modern African artists in the West, “At Home in the World: Exile, Memory and the Making of African Modernism.” He is currently preparing a book, Structural Adjustment, on the practice of contemporary African artists in the 1990s. He served on the

228  Rikki Wemega-Kwawu

International Advisory Committee of the 1999 Carnegie International and won the Peter Norton Family Foundation Curator’s Grant in 1998. Artist Statement I

I do not hold any particular attitude to my general work procedure, nor do I work from any particular aesthetic concept or philosophy. When I paint, I work solely for myself, developing my technique primarily to give free reign of expression to my inspiration. I am not accountable to anyone, nor is it necessary to acknowledge any basis for rationality. I continually strive to renew myself and my painting, for I believe if an artist lapses into a habit, settles comfortably upon a style and exploits it, painting always the same motifs in the same style, then he loses contact with his mutability. He becomes a crafts‑ man, and his art decays into the commonplace, good only for buying and selling. Hence to stop searching at any point, to get manneristic with style, which is encouraged for commercial reasons, but indeed of no real value, is an ignominious failure. As Max Ernst put it: “A painter is lost if he finds himself.” For that reason, I move freely without any inhibitions whatsoever, between disparate artistic alternatives, such as figuration and automatism, mythic figuration and improvisation, symbolism and flatness, biomorphism and hard-edged abstraction, abstract surrealism and expressionist figura‑ tion and cubist fragmentation and objective realism. Only in this way can I express my inexorable search for a direct mystical experience to find a relationship between Divine Order and humanity. What I have discovered in the process is that all the different forms of art are valid and timeless. They all have their strengths and limitations, of course. I find them all equally fulfilling, and an artist does not have to commit himself to any. The individual artist only has to adapt and interpret those forms for his own time and needs. My realistic works are characterized by humanistic tendencies. I am stimulated by life around me, people, landscapes, figures in the landscape and natural forms. I capture the rhythm, heartbeat and passion of my people: their joys, their sufferings, their moods, their aspirations and their destinies. I have been very interested in the activity of light in three-dimensional space and how best to render such imagery in a two-dimensional painting. The essence of my abstractions or near-abstractions—the most advanced of the oeuvre, both thematically and aesthetically—is to try to find a visual imagery to deal with the magico-mystical realities of the African spiritual and religious world; the thoughts of my people: their philosophies, sensibilities and values, their mode of worship, that which they believe in and which guides their day-to-day living. This has led to bold experimen‑ tation with traditional Ghanaian geometric and color symbologies, the adaptation and transposition of ancestral mask shapes, sculptural images, Akan classical icons, ancient hieroglyphs, petroglyphs, pictographs, ideographs and mythical creatures and totems, the latter of which are a constant feature in our aphorisms and legends. These mythical symbols provide me with a conceptual source of inspiration. They are, to quote Barnett Newman, the American Abstract Expressionist, “authentic, aesthetic accomplishments that flourished without benefit of European History.” They are the “primitive” language of the unconscious. There is no gainsaying the fact that traditional African art, often described as “primi‑ tive,” has influenced most of the seminal art movements in the twentieth century, including

Akwaaba/Continuum: Manifesto of an African Artist  229

performance and installation art. The true significance of our traditional forms, however, lies not merely in formal aesthetics as depicted by the Western artists whose works were affected by “primitive art” but in the spiritual meaning underlying them. I am privileged that my relationship with “primitive art” is more fundamental and authentic. Being an African, I have an inner and direct kinship with it. Therefore, un‑ like most of the major twentieth-century painters who merely appropriated “primitive” art without any regard for its tribal context or religious meaning, I speak directly in the artistic language of my forbears. They are our ancestral aesthetic traditions, and they form our cultural heritage. It is this heritage which influences our thoughts and spiritual existence. The spirituality, of course, is evident in many things we do. As a painter, it is incumbent upon me to make known the thoughts of my people, to portray the lasting manifold spirit of Africa. I am seeking, therefore, an art of spiritual regeneration, to try to get at Africa and show how it is experienced and felt in its totality. My work, invari‑ ably, has something to say in search of a modern visual expression of religious meaning. But then, one cannot dwell perpetually on the surface. Effective communication sometimes gets impaired. And a plunge into the deep mysterious spiritual depths is only restrained by over-reliance on the familiar. The known image cannot always express sat‑ isfactorily a search into a realm, which may be inexpressible in visual form. So instead of always being led by the findings of my great ancestors, I often attempt to place myself in their creative position, to be almost “primitive” to capture the Spirit of Myth: the tragicreligious drama which is generic to all Myths at all times, irrespective of where they oc‑ cur. In exploring this mythic terrain, to capture the idea of a universal, supernatural Spirit of Myth, I tune my psyche and use all of the technical means at my disposal, venturing boldly into a transcendental realm of being, a totally unknown world and rejecting the cozy re-assurance of literal and familiar symbols and accepted traditional beliefs, which all to soon become limiting and finite, to evoke the infinite, the sublime. I endeavor to make the creative act as intrinsic and absolute as possible to make the non-visual visual, to express visually the accumulated contents of the unconscious, that is, one’s total life experience—past, present and future—as revealed through temperament, guided and corrected by a conscious intelligence. Whatever success such works may achieve is due to an irrepressible sense of a vast chasm between oneself and everything outside and the drive to bridge it, to elicit the pulse of life in nature and the world around us. Generally, without inspiration, experimentation and absolute freedom, an artist and his artistic heritage will stagnate. My experimentations using tribal themes—Spiritual Abstractions, Afro-metaphysical Abstractions or call them whatever—afford me all the opportunity to explore issues of flatness, textured surfaces, optical mysteries, transparen‑ cies, ambiguity, luminosity and dynamic forces: tensions between form and color, struc‑ ture and imagery, subtle spatial and perspectival activity and implied movement. My usage of tribal symbols and designs deals not just with their symbolic meanings but also with relationships of shape to shape, shape to edge, figure to ground, surface to depth and part to whole. In fact, I use them also as a vehicle for the exploration of formal problems. In all my works, however, emotional content is expressed, but always within the conventions of form. They will always challenge the viewer to extract psychological meaning from the formal and coloristic decorum. From canvas to canvas, as I undergo new experiences through my work, my style keeps growing because I continually question its evolution. I am, therefore, in constant

230  Rikki Wemega-Kwawu

dialogue with a work as I do it; however, I believe it is only through constant work and the discerning quality of years that my paintings can attain the highest desired import. Artist Statement II

On a deeper level, my work goes far beyond the materiality and corporality of twodimensional form to a transcendent reality behind the physical surface. Drawing upon a vein of ancient African religious iconography, I aim in my work at the symbolic ex‑ pression of a spiritual process and knowledge to recapture the lost power of traditional African art. Significantly, the role of color in my work is to suffuse the room where the painting is hanging with its illumination, and to elicit visual intimacy and emotional im‑ mediacy, thereby providing a kind of shamanistic experience for the viewer. These ancient mystical symbols and signs are actually archetypal forms deeply imbed‑ ded in the collective unconscious, which, according to Carl Jung, is an inherited inner realm belonging to the whole human race, past, present and future. They carry with them all the individual and collective wisdom of man in history, prehistory and history to come. That is why they still have such potency for us today and persist in our modern psyche. By continually invoking these symbols and signs in my work, I am creating a universal language that captures the essence of their ancient ritual communication, and their emotive force and brute power, while essentially using them to interpret the realities and concerns of today. In that way, I am serving the ancestral spirits by playing the divine role of the tradi‑ tional High Priest, while functioning fully as a contemporary, intellectual cosmopolitan artist. Painting for me has become a magical art, a ritualistic process and the works I create are indeed sacred religious objects. Like the talisman, I want my paintings to be infused with incantatory, divine energy that has the transformative power to heal, em‑ power and protect against evil. They serve, for the modern cosmopolitan man, the same spiritual, emotional, psychological and social purposes that traditional African art served for my ancestors. My paintings, therefore, attempt to recapture my past and claim the future. The sa‑ cred symbols I frequently use—the crux decussata, the concentric circles, the squares, the diamonds and other geometric forms and shapes—actually represent the order of the universe, charting its cosmology, the cyclical path of life, growth, death and rebirth. In short, they are African cosmograms. Just as the cross helps the Christian to meditate on the life and death of Jesus Christ, the goal of the symbols I use, because of their atavism, is to help raise the individual’s consciousness to attain oneness with the universe. As we connect with the cosmos, we are led to an awareness that we are cosmic beings beyond life and death, able to perceive our wholeness and interconnectedness with one another, with the earth and with our inner self. In this inspired state of creativity, where the gap between the past, present and future is bridged, we can give authentic form and expression to the inner sound and light of the soul. The symbols are therefore not meant as decoration, but are indeed potent written mantras. They serve as vehicles for meditation, for a return to my spiritual roots, a jour‑ ney to ancient mystical places that reside in the deep recesses of the mind, the collective unconscious and a journey into the remotest period in man’s history to a by-gone culture

Akwaaba/Continuum: Manifesto of an African Artist  231

so assured in its religious mores, beliefs and practices that its vibrancy easily transcends across the centuries to the present. In the traditional religious arts of ancient cultures like Africa’s lie the keys to read‑ dressing the dramatic environmental, medical, spiritual and social problems that plague modern society. I am, therefore, advocating an art of spiritual regeneration, a resurrec‑ tion of traditional religious African art within a cosmopolitan context. I am cautiously treading the same path that my great ancestors trod, a path overgrown with weeds and almost intractable. I am pursuing the same artistic goals they pursued, goals which are all but forgotten. While, in fact, I cannot practice the ancient tribal tradition of our reli‑ gion and art exactly as it was practiced centuries ago, I have been able to crystallize the essential elements of this sacred tradition that enabled it to work harmoniously for our forefathers. I am not just literally going back but am arriving at the same point on the spiritual at a much deeper level. In short, my work would have to be interpreted not only aesthetically but metaphysically as well. Artist Statement III

In my work as an artist, I strive for a style of expression that deals essentially with my concerns and sensibility as an African, my history, politics and cultural heritage, and which at the same time is universally relevant. I am continuing from where my great ancestors left off during the epoch of slav‑ ery and colonialism, updating and re-examining my cultural legacy, creating a new aesthetic context that allows me to convey distinctly African elements and sensibility in my work, while dealing with some of the intellectual debates which preoccupied twentieth-century Modernism, critical issues which sparked off from the Western art‑ ist’s encounter with tribal African art, when Picasso discovered Bakota grave markers which culminated in his 1907 landmark painting “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.” It is worth noting here that the colossal debt that twentieth-century Western art owes to tribal African art has been grossly downplayed, for what reason—colonial expropria‑ tion or racist condescension—I do not know. Indeed, the Western artist’s encounter with tribal African art did not merely result in the expropriation of a few superficial images and grotesque forms, but in fact the whole gamut of twentieth-century Mod‑ ern and Post-Modern art. The last century and our new one have been immeasurably informed by the invaluable lessons that Western artists have learned from the tribal African artist. Any new movement or trend has been hailed as an advancement of Western art, instead of an acknowledgement of its African influence or antecedence. My work, invariably, therefore, maintains the particularity of the African cultural ethos and at the same time aspires to universal significance. I will call it the new inter‑ national alphabet in African art. With the “globalization” of art today, I would urge contemporary African artists to look more to the art of our ancestral past. We have to insist on what is actually ours with an eye toward artistic developments which have taken place elsewhere. This is the only way we can prevent our African creativity from being totally overwhelmed by the West’s influence.

232  Rikki Wemega-Kwawu

What we need is an art that is authentically African in spirit and simultaneously of international appeal, an art which the African could easily relate to and, at the same time, which could hold its own when displayed alongside masterpieces in Paris, New York, or elsewhere in any of the major art centers of the West. My humble goal as an artist is to produce such work. This is my modest way of bridging the chasm between Western developed countries and Africa.

17 ´. GBA AGENCY IN THE CRITICAL ÈS. Ù E. LE IMAGERY OF AFRICAN AMERICAN ARTIST JOHN YANCEY Christopher Adejumo

For centuries, artists, cultural groups, and religious organizations in the Americas have adapted Yoruba symbols and aesthetic objects in their expressive artistic practices. This chapter explores the agency of Yoruba Èṣù Ẹlẹ´gba, (shortened as Èṣù, Figure 17.1) sym‑ bols in the critical imagery of African American artist John Yancey. Beginning with the historical origins of the integration of Yoruba symbols and images in various artistic practices in the Americas, Yancey’s adaptation of Èṣù in his artwork is discussed with attention to pertinent historical references, Èṣù symbolism, and the complexly layered sociopolitical and cultural contents of his imagery. Adaptation of Yoruba Symbols and Images in the Americas

Earlier generations of Yorubas and other African cultural groups who arrived in the Americas settled in urban areas where they influenced the language, arts, and religions of those settlements, as evident in the sociocultural practices of parts of today’s Trinidad and Tobago, Brazil, Cuba, and Haiti.1 Correspondingly, the indigenous Yoruba belief in the efficacy of words, images, and symbols in mitigating overwhelming misery and mod‑ erating the ineffable was adapted into Yoruba-inspired artistic and sociocultural practices in the Americas. Thus, some Yoruba orisa practices including Ifa, Sango, and Osun or Yemoja as Osun have survived and even thrived in the Americas. Furthermore, the syn‑ cretizing of Yoruba orisa veneration with Christianity has provided sanctuary for some orisa practices in the Americas. For example, the Ifa deity, Orunmila, is identified as St. Francis in the Catholic faith, while Sango is linked with St. Barbara because of the simi‑ larities in the myths surrounding their lives, deaths, and afterlives. On the continuation of Yoruba socioreligious practices in the Americas, Basil Davidson noted that: The orishas of the Yoruba—the national gods—have been reborn in Brazilian Bahia as Christian saints. At Rio de Janeiro—the god of war, Ogun, has become St. George, the sainted Knight of the Catholics … Yemanja and Oshun, goddess of the Yoruba, DOI: 10.4324/9781003389088-18

234  Christopher Adejumo

artist, Èṣù Ẹlẹ´ gbára, c. early twentieth Century. 27 × 5 × 8 in. Courtesy of Moyo Okediji. Photo by Chuqi Min.

FIGURE 17.1 Yoruba

have in their turn become fused with Our Lady of the Conception. … Even African languages have survived in some truncated form.2 As noted in the above quotation by Davidson, Yoruba orisa symbols and images have been mostly reconceived in the Americas, and approaches to Yoruba orisa observations on the continents are eclectic. For example, the chalice and sword that the image of St. Barbara carries in her hands represent Orisa Sango’s mortar and thunder axe. And, although St. Barbara is a female while Sango is a male, they both represent the same transcendental force.3 Over several decades, altered orisa symbols in the Americas have become standard‑ ized. In recent decades, however, several of the North American Santeria and their initi‑ ates have started to seek forms of worship that are closer in structure and procedure to those of enduring Yoruba orisa practices. This new trend is seen in the transforma‑ tion of the Yoruba Temple in Harlem, New York, from an eclectic Santeria to a more clearly defined Yoruba community that practices informed Yoruba orisa observations. Osiejeman Adefunmi I, an African American, founded the Yoruba Temple in 1960, in‑ fluenced by Yoruba cultural practices and traditional religions in Cuba and Nigeria.4 The establishment of the Yoruba Temple was inspired by events following the migration of African Americans from the South to Northern cities for socioeconomic progress in the early 1900s; and later, by the Civil Rights Movement in the early 1960s. The urban

Ès.ù E.le ´gba Agency in the Critical Imagery of John Yancey  235 .

environments of the North stimulated a new level of self-determination and the impetus to establish a cultural identity among African Americans. The phenomenal advancements seen in African American art and culture in the early to mid-1900s were perhaps more apparent in Harlem, New York, than in any other part of the United States. During this period, known as the Harlem Renaissance, re‑ form organizations were established to support social progress in the African American community including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the National Urban League, founded in 1909 and 1910, respectively. Furthermore, prominent intellectuals including W.E.B. Dubois and James Weldon Johnson made edito‑ rial contributions on socioeconomic and cultural developments in the African American community to popular publications such as Crisis, Opportunity, and The New York. Those intellectuals also played an important role in the advancement of African Ameri‑ can art in Harlem and beyond.5 Mostly inspired by the Pan-African philosophy, Dubois and Alain Locke among oth‑ ers, encouraged African American artists to develop an authentic African American visual aesthetic – different from those of other artistic traditions. They encouraged Afri‑ can American artists to embrace and reflect aspects of African aesthetics in their work, especially as depicted in African sculpture. As a rÈs ̣ùlt, many African American artists began to seek African art for reference in museums and private collections in the United States. Among those artists were William Henry Johnson (painter, 1901–1970), Sargent Claude Johnson (painter, printmaker, sculptor, 1887–1967), Lois Mailou Jones (painter, 1905 –1998), and Aaron Douglas (1899–1979). Recognized as avant-garde, these artists explored their African and African American heritage and everyday life experiences in their art. They became actively engaged in establishing and promoting distinctly African American art. In a description of one of his painted panels, Aaron Douglas cites the influ‑ ence of Africa on the work as follows: The first of four murals … indicates the African cultural background of American Negroes. Dominant in it is the strongly rhythmic arts of music, dance, and sculpture— and so the drummers, the dancers, and the carved fetish represent the exhilaration and rhythmic pulsation of life in Africa.6 The embrace of African aesthetics by Douglas as described above extended beyond the Harlem Renaissance into later years in the practices of African American artists, largely spurred by the insurgent social concepts espoused by the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s and 1970s. The civil rights atmosphere of resisting the dominant Eurocentric mainstream culture and the need to establish a distinct cultural identity further inspired the exploration and adaptation of African artistic, sociocultural, and religious practices within the African American community. Many African American artists, including the renowned John Biggers (1924–2001) and Jacob Lawrence (1917–2000), have visited African countries for direct experience of African cultures and art forms. African American artists who visited the Yoruba area of Nigeria or gained knowledge of Yoruba artistic and cultural practices in other ways have integrated their experiences and knowledge of Yoruba art in their artwork in narrative forms, while others have incorporated Yoruba images, symbols, and cultural practices in

236  Christopher Adejumo

their artwork in less conventional and more objective ways. Among this mixture of for‑ mally trained and self-taught artists are Marcus Akinlana, Baba Olugbala, Andre Leon Gray, Vicki Meek, Jeff Donaldson, Ademola Olugebefola, Winnie Owens Hart, Muneer Bahauddeen, and John Yancey. This chapter considers the adaptation of Yoruba ÈṣùẸlẹ´gba symbols in the socially critical imagery of John Yancey. John Yancey

John Yancey was born in Chicago in 1956, where he became active in art production at an early age. Youths living in South Side Chicago are exposed to complex socioeconomic and political issues such as poverty, racism, social injustice, rampant violence, police brutality, mass incarceration, drug abuse, protests, gangs, prostitution, neglect, con‑ gestion, air pollution, dysfunctional schools, persistent fear and anxiety, harassment, social deprivation, general lack of control, depression, suicide, and hopelessness. Yancey saw the need for social change within his own Chicago community. He also saw possibilities in art as a medium for social action toward change in society at large. Growing up in Chicago in the 1960s, he witnessed the nationwide social unrest and political activism that resulted from the racial oppression of African Americans in the United States, and these experiences, along with his advanced artistic training, are re‑ flected in his artwork. Yancey received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1980 and a Master of Fine Arts degree from Georgia Southern University in 1993. His exposure to Western art theory and diverse art histori‑ cal literature informs the structural composition and contents of his artwork, as seen in his manipulation of design elements and reflective adaptation of historical images in his murals, ceramic mosaics, and paintings on canvas. Ultimately, his art contents draw from his African American sociocultural experiences and his knowledge of the histories of the arts of Africa and Europe.7 In his discussion of Yancey’s painting titled Hip, Hopped to Death, Moyo Okediji described Yancey’s art process as a form of triangulation akin to the concept of “cultural crossroads” derived from Yoruba cosmology and grounded in “semioptic analysis,” which Okediji conceived as a combination of meaning and vision. This chapter employs semioptic pedagogy in the examination of Yancey’s adaptation of Èṣù Ẹlẹ´gba in his artwork. As theorized by Okediji, semioptics emphasizes comprehen‑ sive analysis of art concepts and methodically derived artistic import.8 Adaptation of Yoruba Ès.ù E.le ´gba in the Art of John Yancey .

Èṣù Ẹlẹ´gba, commonly referred to as Èṣù, (also see Figure 17.2) is the revered Yoruba deity of crossroads known as the master of manipulations. Èṣù propitiation is common among the Yoruba who universally acknowledge the deity as reflected in the Yoruba say‑ ing ki a koko mu ti Èṣù kuro, which literarily indicates prudence in pacifying Èṣù for the avoidance of misfortune in one’s undertakings. According to Yoruba mythology, those who acknowledge Èṣù’s awesome power are rewarded with riches, while antagonizing the deity may result in misfortune or even death. Èṣù is synonymous with deceit and anarchy and is the cunning deity who leads the unguarded into temptation and destruc‑ tion. Paradoxically, Èṣù is also perceived as a reformer, albeit a heavy-handed one. This is

Ès.ù E.le ´gba Agency in the Critical Imagery of John Yancey  237 .

FIGURE 17.2 Yoruba artist, Staff of Ès. ù (Ó . go. E. lé. gba), Wood, hide, cowrie shells, twine, indigo,

metal, 20 × 4 × 11 in. Gift of Katherine White and the Boeing Company, Cour‑ tesy of Seattle Art Museum.

because Èṣù’s victims often serve as examples for others of the folly of taking the destruc‑ tive potentials and spiritual influence of the deity for granted.9 Symbolically, Èṣù is associated with the number three and represented by the colors red and black. And, Yoruba equestrians are integrated into some representations of Èṣù in Àgéré Ifá (Ifa divination cup). Èṣù has featured in odu Ifa or Ifa divination literary corpus. Ifa divination facilitates communication between consultants and the spiritual realm of their ancestors and Èṣù serves as a portal in the transmission of the verdict of Ifa during divination. Thus, Èṣù’s face is commonly carved on opon Ifa (Ifa divination tray) and is represented as an animal rider in some versions of gree Ifa.10 Èṣù is associ‑ ated with androgyny and is therefore represented in both male and female ogo Ẹlẹ´gba or Ẹlẹ´gba staff (see Figure 17.1, showing an Èṣù androgenous Figure). This ability to as‑ sume both sexes enables Èṣù to either manipulate both sexes or mediate their differences. Ogo Ẹlẹ´gba is festooned with bells, shells, and gourds, which announces the presence of Èṣù when rattled by diviners. The shells on the staff depict Èṣù’s benevolence, while the gourds represent storage for medicinal portions used for healing by Èṣù. Yancey eclectically combines knowledge of diverse art traditions and cultural practices in his artwork. Among Yancey’s strongest artistic and sociocultural influences are Yoruba Èṣù Ẹlẹ´gba images and their cultural import, African American artistic and cultural prac‑ tices, and endemic sociopolitical challenges in the United States and their impacts on the

238  Christopher Adejumo

Yancey, Hip-hopped To Death, acrylic on canvas, 36 × 28 in. 2000.  Cour‑ tesy of the artist.

FIGURE 17.3 John

African American community. As a result of these diverse influences, Yancey’s artwork consists of forms that depict complex layers of his African American heritage and criti‑ cal reflections on his sociopolitical experiences in the United States. Among the prime examples of Yancey’s adaptation of Èṣù in his artwork are his allegorical series includ‑ ing Dueling Dualisms, Psychoses of Power, Èṣù Comes to Mammy (Figure 17.3), and Hip, Hopped to Death (Figure 17.4). Yancey’s socially critical artwork is explored in this chapter with emphasis on analytical discussion of his engagement of Èṣù in the art contents. Psychoses of Power

In his painting titled Psychoses of Power, Yancey positions a split image of a dark-colored male in the middle of the picture plane. On the left side of the picture plane, his visible leg is bent at the knee and his penis extends above his thigh to the angle of the bent knee. Extending from the lower part of the knee is a leg in white trousers tucked inside a high boot. In front of the boot at a distance is an equestrian dressed in the manner of a Western cowboy with a gun in his raised hand. Above the rider, one of the six long knives extending from the edge of the picture plane stabs the ribcage of the figure at his heart, and blood flows from this wound to the base of the painting. On the right half of the painting, the left leg of the central figure is also bent at the knee and his penis extends

Ès.ù E.le ´gba Agency in the Critical Imagery of John Yancey  239 .

Yancey, Èṣù Comes to Mammy, Screen print, 16 × 22 in., Serie V of the Serie Project Print Collection, 1998.  Courtesy of the University of Texas at San Antonio.

FIGURE 17.4 John

forward between his thighs. In front of his ankle-high shoes is a figure wearing striped trousers and a hat. Behind this figure at the edge of the picture frame is a dancer with a skirt-like costume around the waist. Vine-like branches extend upward at the right side of the painting. Also extending upward in the background of the painting are green-colored ridges with a red background or sky. Analytically, the exaggerated phalluses, bulging foreheads, and jutting chins of the split central figure in the surrealistic painting are identifying features of Èṣù in the Yor‑ uba visual representation of the deity. The strutting figure in a hat, the costumed dancer, and the cultivated landscape of the painting represent the joy and abundance of wealth and prosperity that is possible for African Americans in the United States. Antithetically, the mood of the left side of the painting is pensive, less warm, and more violent. This tension-filled side with threatening knives, stabbing of the brown-skinned central figure, and gun-wielding cowboy seems to represent the hostile sociocultural and political envi‑ ronment that African Americans have endured within their society. The stab wound to the heart indicates the depth and severity of the pain, suffering, and violent death that African Americans have historically been subjected to in American society. Similarly, the bent knees of the central figure indicate the limitations experienced by African Ameri‑ cans as a result of social inequalities and injustices. Furthermore, the long blades of the knives in the painting appear to be aimed at the extended penis of the central figure, indicating the threat felt by African Americans in relation to their collective survival as a group in society. The Èṣù inspired split image of the central figure in Psychoses of Power represents the duality of the social status of African Americans in the American society in which they are citizens but are often treated like outsiders looking in. Èṣù, therefore, plays

240  Christopher Adejumo

an allegorical role in this painting as a participant and observer. The presence of Èṣù in the painting also implies that, consequentially, the sociocultural conditions depicted might be attributed to Èṣù’s influence, while Èṣù also maintains the ability to mitigate the conditions portrayed. Therefore, Èṣù might take many forms or play multiple roles in the process of mediating human activities, including being embodied by an insufferable character or manifesting as consequential utterances and actions of seemingly implacable persons. Èṣù might also infiltrate a person’s thoughts as fear, doubt, prejudice, and anger. Thus, the earthly machinations of Èṣù are unlimited, uncontainable, and ephemeral. As such, Èṣù is associated with intractable sociocultural problems in Yancey’s artwork as reflected in the poignancy of Psychoses of Power. Correspondingly, human failings are often attributed to the dealings of Èṣù when excuses are made for perpetrators of socially abhorrent deeds, as inferred in Psychoses of Power.11 The sociocultural and political issues highlighted in Psychoses of Power may be linked to those of Yancey’s series of artwork with the theme of Dueling Dualisms, which are in‑ spired by his perception of dualities or conflicting paradigms in the formation of African American and individual identity status in society. Yancey’s critical reflection on identity politics is also exemplified in his screen print titled Èṣù Comes to Mammy. Ès.ù Comes to Mammy

Yancey’s Èṣù Comes to Mammy (Figure 17.3) consists of a limited edition of thirty-six screen prints which were produced as Serie V of the Serie Project Print Collection pub‑ lished by the University of Texas at San Antonio in 1998.12 Èṣù Comes to Mammy entails a stage-like balcony featuring a female standing on the far left of the picture plane with a rifle in her right hand, and her left hand is raised with the fore-finger pointing upward. Another female is seated next to the standing one, and a standing elderly male with a smoking pipe in his mouth is located on the far right side of the fractured balcony with a broken railing. At the upper part of the balcony is a panel with a row of kneeling female statues with protruding foreheads. Beyond the structure of the balcony at a distance are rows of undulating farmlands with lines of workers cultivating the fields. Located at the center of the picture plane is a boat with two prominent crosses installed on its deck, go‑ ing through a water channel that runs through the cultivated fields. The standing female figure in Èṣù Comes to Mammy represents “mammy” in the print, and the rifle in her hand represents self-empowerment among African Americans in their active resistance against the social and political oppression of their cultural group within the American society. Èṣù Comes to Mammy focuses on the historical gender stereotyp‑ ing of African American women as masculine and overly aggressive, yet submissive in bondage. The mammy caricature was personified by Nancy Green, an African American woman, in her role as Aunt Jemima, a character that was developed in the early 1890s by the Quaker Oats Company for the purpose of advertising pancake mix and syrup at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago.13 As in the stereotypical conception of mammy, Aunt Jemima is caricatured as an African American woman with exaggerated features includ‑ ing a muscular face with bulging eyes, thick lips, exposed large teeth, and a broad nose. She is presented as a matron wearing a headscarf and an apron around her waist, with a broom in her hand. Aunt Jemima’s broad smile is perpetual, which suggests submission, obedience, and even willingness to servitude. However, in response to increased demand

Ès.ù E.le ´gba Agency in the Critical Imagery of John Yancey  241 .

for racial and gender equality in American society in recent years, especially by social movements including Black Lives Matter and Me Too, the Aunt Jemima name brand was discontinued by Pepsi Company in 2020.14 Èṣù Comes to Mammy functions pragmatically as a medium for the somatic explora‑ tion of self-identity and the social status of African Americans through the interrogation of cultural stereotypes and oppressive sociopolitical practices in society. Yancey’s critical reflection on the racial stereotyping of African American women in the print is consistent with the indomitable spirit of African Americans as evidenced in the African American ethos of the antebellum through the present time. And, the use of his art as an agency for social criticism and community building is consistent with the critical pedagogy and community development aims of the socially engaged artistic paradigm, which is why Èṣù Comes to Mammy is located in a library collection at the University of Texas at San Antonio for public access.15 The pathos of Yancey’s artwork is conveyed through the characteristic roles of Èṣù among humans, including the deity’s ability to assume multiple roles in various social contexts as depicted in his idiosyncratic dualisms, by which he drew attention to the complex subject of sex and gender and the corresponding anatomical and psychological differentiations in Èṣù Comes to Mammy. The ultimate goal of the critical pedagogy of Yancey’s images is to heighten the viewer’s awareness of existing sociocultural and po‑ litical tensions in society for the purpose of generating social dialogue and corrective ac‑ tion.16 To this end, Yancey’s dualisms emphasize the relational nature of dialectical social constructs, such as privileged and deprived, master and slave, capitalism and socialism, and freedom and bondage as explored in Psychoses of Power and Èṣù Comes to Mammy. In view of contemporary discourse on sex and gender differentiations, Yancey probes the long-held conservative assumption that sex categorization should essentially consist of males and females and that heterosexuality is the only natural and permissible sexual behavior. Thus, through the theme of Dueling Dualisms, Yancey examines political, so‑ ciocultural, and moral contradictions in his society, including discursively constructed perspectives on race, gender, sexuality, and labor, as explored in Èṣù Comes to Mammy.17 Besides the sex and gender controversies explored in Èṣù Comes to Mammy, Èṣù is featured as a participant, observer, and intermediary in the print, inferring the deity’s ac‑ cess to both Yancey and his audience, and possible influence on both. For example, the broom that the caricatured mammy typically holds as a symbol of servitude is replaced with a rifle in the print, suggesting retribution, which might be an outcome of Èṣù’s in‑ tercedence in the settlement of a dispute. And, the protruding and shiny forehead of the kneeling female statues positioned at the upper part of the print, is a characteristic feature of Èṣù in ogo Ẹlẹ´gba or Èṣù staff. Èṣù is also represented as a pipe smoker as featured in the male pipe smoker in the print.18 Furthermore, the juxtaposition of the Christian missionary boat over the field with enslaved workers infers religious hypocrisy, which is consistent with Èṣù’s ability to decipher the calculations of the human mind. Hip, Hopped to Death

Yancey’s Hip, Hopped to Death is a morbid and complexly layered painting that reflects his everyday experiences and summations about the challenges of life in the African American community. The painting shows a dead African American male in repose with

242  Christopher Adejumo

a white cloth draped over his lower body and a tag attached to the hallux of his left foot. Looming over the right side of the body are two heads, one colored white and the other black. An electronic speaker is located at the upper left side of the body, and two ogo Ẹlẹ´gba are placed at the foot of the bed behind totem-like bed poles. On the concept of the painting, Okediji noted that: [Èṣù Ẹlẹ´gbara] … informs John Yancey’s oil painting … Hip, Hopped to Death, in which he merges the Yoruba divinity of the crossroads with Andrea Mantegna’s paint‑ ing Lamentation over the Dead Christ, … two [Èṣù] figures replace the two Marys in the Renaissance composition.19 As noted in the above quotation by Okediji, Yancey channels the versatility of Èṣù as a resource for the reconceptualization of images, ideas, and reality in his artwork as seen in his replacement of the two Marys with two ogo Ẹlẹ´gba in Hip, Hopped to Death. The two Marys in Mantegna’s painting lament the death of Christ, while the two ogo Ẹlẹ´gba that they are replaced within Yancey’s painting play the role of intermediaries between the soul of the dead African American male and the transcendental forces of the Yoruba orisa pantheon. Yancey guides the viewers’ attention from the observations and experiences depicted in his images to their consideration of the sociocultural practices and worldviews that rÈs ̣ùlted in the outcomes depicted in his artwork as inferred by Okediji in a comment on Hip, Hopped to Death: Yancey’s Hip, Hopped to Death vividly portrays a scenario of tragedy associated with [Èṣù Ẹlẹ´gba] with the use of symbolic images linked to the urban youth crisis of iden‑ tity, including boombox speakers, tennis shoes, and the at-risk black man, lying on the hospital morgue tagged “Dead on Arrival” on the big toe of his left foot.20 As deduced by Okediji in the above quotation, the tragedy portrayed in Hip, Hopped to Death is related to Yancey’s observation of tragedies associated with conspicuous con‑ sumption in the African American community. The two ogo Ẹlẹ´gba in the painting are meant to intercede with transcendental forces of Yoruba orisas on behalf of the departed spirit of the dead male on the bed.21 The two ogo Ẹlẹ´gba are also the equivalence of guardian angels or “personal Èṣù” as conceived by Drewal et al who noted that: Since Èṣù is crucial to [a] persons’ positive relations with their divine origins and inter‑ actions, every individual has a personal Èṣù who assists in interpretations and actions in specific situations.22 In addition to the implied role of the two ogo Ẹlẹ´gba in Hip, Hopped to Death as per‑ sonal Èṣù to the dead man in the painting, the notion of a personal Èṣù as conceived in the above quotation by Drewal et al resonates with Yancey’s frequent engagement of the deity in his artwork as discussed in this chapter. Furthermore, beyond the various applications of Èṣù symbols and images, Drewal et al posit that images produced for the veneration of Yoruba deities inherently embody the mind of their makers, observing that:

Ès.ù E.le ´gba Agency in the Critical Imagery of John Yancey  243 .

The objects on a shrine, in particular carved figures, are not images of the deity but of the worshippers of the gods. Hence, ritual art both shapes and is shaped by the imagination of the artist who seeks to reveal the interrelatedness of the divine and the human through sculpted image, song, and dance.23 In relation to the above denotation of the parallel between an image made for a deity and the maker of the image, Yancey’s ubiquitous reference to Èṣù in his artwork amounts to a form of invocation of Èṣù by the artist. Thus, Èṣù is synergetically availed of Yancey’s artistic practice as a medium for the deity’s versatile agency in mediating human activi‑ ties. By implication, Yancey explores the causes and impacts of oppressive sociopolitical conditions in the African American community in his artwork and essentially brings Èṣù into the picture as an intermediary and enforcer of desired social justice.24 Based on the perception of African art as existing outside the Western art world (Price, ----), the centralized role of Èṣù symbols in Yancey’s artwork as discussed in this chapter is an expression of otherness in relation to the predominantly Western artistic disposition of the mainstream American culture.25 By implication, Yancey’s identification with Yoruba aesthetics and philosophical views is partly an outcome of the sociopolitical challenges that he has experienced in society. Therefore, Yancey’s adaptation of Èṣù in his artwork is an avenue for the exploration of alternative sociocultural experiences, which amounts to social action and a means of emotional fulfillment. Moreover, as seen in Psychoses of Power, Èṣù Comes to Mammy, and Hip, Hopped to Death, Yancey positions African Americans as vulnerable subjects in the dystopia of his picture planes, and he shapes the tensions and anticipations of his art contents by discretion. In this sense, Yancey assumes the far-reaching orchestrating power of Èṣù in his artistic practice. Therefore, Yancey, his artwork, and his audience constitute a field of possibilities for the intermediary activities of Èṣù. Notes 1 For further reading on Yoruba-inspired artistic and religious practices in the Americas, see Emem Michael Udo, “The Vitality of Yoruba Culture in the Americas,” Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies, 41 (2) (2020): 27–40. 2 See Basil Davidson, “The African Slave Trade,” Quoted in Art and Ethnics: Background for Teaching Youth in a Pluralistic Society by J. E. Grigsby, Jr. (Dubudue: Wm. C. Brown, 1997), 47. 3 Udo, “The Vitality of Yoruba Culture in the Americas,” 27–40. 4 Walter Eugene King traveled to Cuba in 1959 where he was initiated into the Obatala priest‑ hood and named Osiejeman Adefunmi I. He later visited Ile-Ife in Nigeria, where he was initi‑ ated as Babalawo. These experiences influenced his founding and leadership of the Yoruba Temple in New York. 5 See James O. Young, Black Writers of the 1930s (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973). 6 Aaron Douglas, Quoted in S. Lewis, Art: African American (Los Angeles: Hancraft Studios, 1990), 61. 7 See Cristian ArguetaSoto, “Austin Art Professor, Local Art Organization Partner to Bring “Legacy’ to Stop Six,” Fort Worth Report, 2021, July 20, Accessed November 18, 2021, https://fortworthreport.org/2021/07/20/austin-art-professor-local-art-organization-partner-tobring-legacy-to-stop-six/. 8 On semioptic theory, see Moyo Okediji, “Whither Art History? African Art and Language as Semioptic Text,” The Art Bulletin, 97 (2) (2015): 123–39. Also see Moyo Okediji, The

244  Christopher Adejumo

Shattered Guard: Yoruba Forms in Twentieth-Century American Art (A Samuel and Althea Stroum Book. Seattle: The University of Washington Press, 2003). 9 For further reading on the characteristics of Èṣù, see Allison Sellers and Joel E. Tishken, “The Place of Èṣù in Yoruba pantheon,” in Toyin Falola (Ed.), Èṣù: Yoruba God, Power, and the Imaginative Frontiers (Duham: Carolina Academic Press, 2013), 41–54. 10 See Michael O. Afolayan, “Èṣù Ma Se Mi, Omo Elomi Ni O Se: A Religious Principle for Ethical Living,” in Toyin Falola (Ed.), Èṣù: Yoruba God, Power and the Imaginative Frontiers (Duham: Carolina Academic Press, 2013), 301–14. 11 Ibid. 12 University of Texas San Antonio Libraries Special Collections, Digital Collections, Èṣù Comes to Mammy, Accessed September 5, 2022, https://digital.utsa.edu/digital/collection/p15125coll11/ id/68/. 13 To read more about Nancy Green as Aunt Jemima, see Korin Miller, “Aunt Jemima is based on a caricature, but a real Black woman, Nancy Green, was hired to portray her: Now, the pancake mix has rebranded as the “Pearl Milling Company,” Women’sHealth, 2021, Accessed Novem‑ ber 28, 2022, https://www.womenshealthmag.com/life/a32892551/aunt-jemima-real-personnancy-green/. 14 Ibid. 15 For further reading on socially critical art as activism, see Grant Kester, Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013). 16 As a practicing artist and long-term art professor, Yancey perceives American society as his classroom and the general public as his audience. Therefore, the critical pedagogy of his imagery is intended to increase public attention to pressing sociopolitical issues and encourage social ac‑ tion toward desired change. For related reading on a teacher (and artist) as a change agent, see James Bank, Cultural Diversity and Education: Foundations, Curriculum, and Teaching (New York and London: Routledge, 2016), 214–15. 17 For further reading on sex and gender politics, see Anne Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality (Basic Books, ProQuest Ebook Central, 2000), 1–29, Accessed November 2, 2022, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/brown/detail. action?doclD=904413. 18 On the symbols and “distinguishing features” of ogo Ẹlẹ´gba, see Adenike Cosgrove, “Ogo Ẹlẹ´gba (Èṣù Staff),” Imo Dara, 2022, Accessed August 16, 2021, https://www.imodara.com/ discover/nigeria-yoruba-ogo-Ẹlẹ´gba-Èṣù-staff/. 19 See Moyo Okediji, “Whither Art History? African Art and Language as Semioptic Text,” The Art Bulletin 97 (2) (2015): 136. 20 Ibid., 137. 21 See William Fagg, John Pemberton 3rd, with Bryce Holcombe, Yoruba Sculpture of West Africa (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1982), 168. 22 See Henry John Drewal, John Pemberton, III, with Rowland Abiodun, Yoruba: Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought (New York: The Center for African Art, 1989), 25. 23 Ibid., 26. 24 On Èṣù as enforcer, see John Ayotunde Isola Bewaji, “Èṣù and Liminality in the Yoruba Thought System: A Leadership Perspective,” in Toyin Falola (Ed.), Èṣù: Yoruba God, Power and the Imaginative Frontiers (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 2013), 131–53. 25 See Sally Price, Primitive Art in Civilized Places (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1989).

18 TOWARD A SONIC AFRICAN DIASPORIC RE-MEMBERING Jacqueline Cofield

The thought of being only a creature of the present and of the past troubled me, and I longed to have a future– a future with hope in it. Frederick Douglass

“Much to be proud of. I am proud.” These are some of the last words my father spoke to me. These words were his response to my toddler’s school portfolio report, replete with images and words from her teachers about her progress during her first year of preschool. Dad’s words were always encouraging and generative. He was a man who valued and spoke of the importance of education frequently and who supported my lifelong experiments in the pursuit of a global, spirit-guided, ancestrally oriented, and interdisciplinary education. Though he unexpectedly departed this world almost a year ago, I often hear my fa‑ ther’s voice. These sounds do not arrive in my sonic memory without the particularity of the tonality, laugh, intonations, and specificity of his words and phrases. I do not have to listen to a recording of my father’s voice to hear his voice. Street (2019) suggests that “each sound as it impinges on our consciousness identifies itself as an event within the mind, a specific sound” (p. 21). I can interpolate my father’s voice and hear him at my own will. His voice is now like jazz, eliciting a range of emotions and collectively constructed between my recollection and his unique expressions. Imagine not having the music on. Can you still hear it? Sound is registered and imprinted in our memory. We can conjure it up, consciously or unconsciously, when desired or needed for comfort, healing, understanding, or creativity. Sonic memories are an essential part of our cultural experiences. For example, we of‑ ten encounter music that feels familiar to us, even if we do not know its name or origin. These sonic connections can be powerful and long-lasting, evoking emotions and memo‑ ries that linger in our minds. Sound is also an essential part of artistic creation for diasporic Black artists, as dem‑ onstrated in my art historical research and interviews with artists. For example, Nor‑ man Lewis, a renowned painter and jazz musician, emphasized the role of music during DOI: 10.4324/9781003389088-19

246  Jacqueline Cofield

his artistic process. Other Black artists, such as Theaster Gates, have acknowledged the importance of sound and the sonic imaginary, whether it be involving music, voice, or historical–environmental noise as a source of inspiration for their creative practices. These artists’ experiences reveal that sound is not just an element in their imaginative and creative process, but it is also a powerful force that evokes memories and emotions, both personal and collective. The ability to use sonic memories as fuel for imagination and creative practice is what is called sonic imagination. I agree with Seán Street (2019) when he argues that sonic imagination is the ability to transform what is heard into a new realm of imaginative possibility. It involves the capacity to perceive sounds in new and creative ways, to explore their emotional and psychological resonances, and to use them as a basis for artistic expression. In other words, sonic imagination is the ability to use the medium of sound to stimulate the imagination and evoke new forms of perception and expression. Sonic imagination is not limited to the action of producing sounds but also involves active listening, allowing individuals to connect with sounds on a personal and collective level, just as I do with my father’s voice. Correspondingly, in a reading of Jacques Ranciére, Mullane (2010) posits that these sonic connections are politically charged and mediated by aesthetically functioning ears developed in varying exterior conditions. The personal and collective dimensions of sonic memory are intertwined and shaped by various factors, including individual experiences, cultural norms, and historical events. By engaging with sonic memories, artists create new and innovative works that resonate with audiences on a personal and collective level. The phenomenon of sonic memory provides an affluent area of exploration for scholars and practitioners in the arts. It can help us better understand how sound shapes our experiences and perceptions of the world around us. The memory of my father’s voice and words inspired my essay, which is situated within Sealey-Ruiz’s (2021) theoretical framework of the Archaeology of Knowledge, the Archaeology of Self. This conceptual framework encourages individuals to approach the study of their own lives and experiences as if they were excavating an archaeological site. To achieve this metaphorical excavation, the framework systematically examines personal memories, cultural and societal influences, and past experiences to understand oneself better. By analyzing the historical and cultural contexts that shape individual experiences, individuals can understand how social forces construct and influence their sense of self. Maldonado-Torres (2007) offers that the coloniality of being, power, and knowledge, or the enduring patterns of power, particularly in relation to social relations, language, sexuality, and economy, is hypervisible in the lived experiences of the most oppressed. Discussing the importance of considering Black interiority in the context of US history, Morrison (2020) posits “we (Black people) were seldom invited to participate in the discourse even when we were its topic” (p. 238). Morrison continues to explain the role of “memory within,” coupled with imagination as foundational to her Black inte‑ riority speculative literary practice, which involves autobiographical and archeological strategies. In this essay, I focus on Black artists of the African diaspora, but I acknowledge the universal applicability of the strategies and concepts discussed in various settings, situ‑ ations, and contexts. As a Black mother scholar, I am conscious of the multiplicity and

Toward a Sonic African Diasporic Re-Membering  247

intersectionality of Black experiences worldwide, especially in geographies and political systems heavily influenced by white supremacy. It is crucial to recognize and address the impact of systemic racism on the lives and experiences of Black people and to provide tools and strategies that can help navigate and resist it. Therefore, understanding sonic memory and sonic imagination is essential to move beyond the perspective of white‑ ness in our analysis and praxis. By highlighting the importance of multidisciplinary ap‑ proaches and the aesthetic practice of joy (Crawley, 2017) through sonic memory, I hope to contribute to a more liberative intellectual practice that can benefit all individuals and communities facing systemic oppression. This work is grounded in the relevant research, theory, and practice literature within the field of art studies, with a focus on Black art. This study builds on and complements the essential works produced in the fields of anthropology of the senses and anthropo‑ logical and philosophical reflections on imagination and memory. In addition, this re‑ search draws on a range of theoretical frameworks, including postcolonial theory, critical race theory, and feminist theory, to analyze the multifaceted dimensions of Black art. By exploring the intersections of these fields, this study offers a more nuanced understand‑ ing of how Black artists utilize sonic memory and sonic imagination to create works that resonate with diverse audiences. Furthermore, I will seek to understand and argue how we can understand sonic memory as a form of capital and cultural power. Ultimately, this study’s findings will contribute to the broader discourse on art, culture, and memory, providing insights into how Black artists navigate and challenge existing power structures while creating works that celebrate their cultural heritage and unique artistic expressions. The Senses Are Culturally Conditioned

James Gibson’s (1966) perspective is that the senses function as integrated perceptual systems, not in isolation. He argues that perception is not a matter of taking raw sensory information and decoding it into cognitive information. Instead, it is an active perceptual activity that relies on continuous interaction between the person and the environment. Challenging the common idea that each sense is responsible for picking up specific in‑ formation, such as light for sight, sound for hearing, and touch for touch, Gibson (1966) argues that the senses are perceptual systems that operate together, taking sensory infor‑ mation from multiple sources and integrating it to form a unified perceptual experience. For example, when walking in a forest, one is not only seeing the trees but also hearing the sound of the leaves, feeling the wind and the smell of nature. The perceptual system integrates all this sensory information and forms a single experience. Gibson (1966) argues that this perceptual system perspective is fundamental to under‑ standing perception and how it works in the person–environment relationship. Rather than viewing perception as a series of separate and isolated events in different senses, Gibson emphasizes the importance of perception as an integrated and interactive activity. However, even if the senses work in an integrated way, they are commonly acknowledged and analyzed separately. The white Western society prioritizes vision as a form of percep‑ tion and understanding (Jenks, 2017), rendering other cultural ways of relating to the senses invisible. In his works, a renowned anthropologist, Tim Ingold (2000), proposes a critical ap‑ proach to the relationship between hearing and vision. According to Ingold, hearing is

248  Jacqueline Cofield

often neglected to the detriment of vision, which is seen as the main way of understand‑ ing and interacting with the world. Ingold argues that this emphasis on vision is largely due to the Western philosophical tradition, which places visual knowledge above other types of knowledge. However, hearing and practices such as sonic memory and sonic imagination may play an important role in non-Western populations or those of nonWestern descent. In his book Sensuous Scholarship, Paul Stoller (1997), an anthropologist, explores the significance of various senses in human experience. Stoller argues that cultural norms and values shape the senses and that different cultures prioritize different senses. For instance, the Dogon of Mali, he explains, used smell as a crucial sense for identifying things and people. Similarly, the Songhay people consider sound to have a transforma‑ tive power that penetrates individuals, allowing them to communicate and participate with the world. During their religious ceremonies, musical instruments such as godji and gasi are believed to be the spirits’ voices that possess and shake the participants’ bodies. Through music, the Songhay connect and communicate with the spiritual world and understand their will. Stoller’s findings urge us to question the Western and whitecentered assumptions about the relationship between culture and senses. If historical and contextual factors influence the priority of sight, we need to reconsider the role of other senses in our daily lives. The works of James Gibson, Tim Ingold, and Paul Stoller highlight the significance of perceiving the world as an integrated and interactive experience that involves multiple senses. This perspective is particularly important for Black artists who often draw on a range of sensory experiences to inform their creative process when producing visual works. For these artists, sensory experiences are often embedded in cultural practices and memory, which shape their artistic expressions. Understanding the role of different senses in shaping artistic expressions may help to challenge Western and white-centered assumptions about perception and broaden our understanding of the diverse ways of relating to the world through the senses. A Counter to Western Epistemes and Aesthetic Regimes

Artistic practices have the capacity to challenge dominant epistemes and aesthetic re‑ gimes by subverting the traditional landscape of the distribution of spaces, times, and activities. This process of subversion can be seen as a form of dissensus, a term coined by Jacques Rancière (2010) to describe the disruption of the normal distribution of sensory and cognitive capacities that characterizes societies. As Rancière argues, this distribu‑ tion is not neutral but reinforces existing power relations, with certain forms of art and spaces and activities reserved for particular social groups. However, artistic practice can disrupt these power relations by constructing alternative spaces and times challenging the dominant order. Thinking specifically about the relationship between listening and aesthetics, in the dialogue he establishes with the works of Rancière, Mullane (2010) argues that sound art, through its emphasis on listening, can provide a unique aesthetic experience that challenges traditional art conventions. For Mullane, as for Rancière, aesthetics and poli‑ tics are intrinsically linked. In this sense, active listening can have significant political implications, especially in relation to emancipation and equality.

Toward a Sonic African Diasporic Re-Membering  249

In Listening to Images, Tina Campt (2017) proposes a revolutionary approach to engaging with images that challenge dominant aesthetic regimes. Campt contends that we should not simply accept what we see as the truth of the image but instead listen at‑ tentively to the mundane details to uncover implicit meanings and connections that are not immediately visible. As Campt (2017) states, “Attending to lower frequencies means being attuned to the connections between what we see and how it resonates” (p. 33). This approach offers a departure from normalized modes of sensory engagement, which often rely solely on visual cues. Campt’s proposal has the potential to undermine the catego‑ ries of the dominant by challenging traditional modes of engagement and allowing for a multiplicity of meanings to emerge. As Campt (2017) notes, creative practices of refusal “undermine the categories of the dominant” (p. 32). In essence, Campt’s approach of‑ fers a transformative potential by destabilizing existing power relations and perpetuat‑ ing narrow views of representation. It allows for a more inclusive approach to art that acknowledges the complexities of representation and encourages alternative modes of sensory engagement that challenge dominant aesthetic regimes. In the same vein, Powell’s (2022) discussion of Beyoncé’s Don’t Hurt Yourself music video offers a compelling example of how artistic practice can disrupt existing power relations. The video serves as a platform for Black feminist consciousness-raising, pro‑ viding space for Black women to voice their struggles and facilitate community through shared experiences. Through music and visuals, Beyoncé offers a powerful critique of sys‑ temic oppression and encourages collective resistance. The video’s worldmaking power offers a counterpoint to dominant aesthetic regimes, demonstrating the potential for art to be a force for social and political change. Overall, the combination of Rancière’s theory, Campt’s proposal, and Powell’s discus‑ sion of Beyoncé offers a powerful argument for the transformative potential of artistic practice. Correspondingly, Da Silva (2007) explains that analytics of raciality meant to hierarchize races and oppress Black people impose apparati of Euro-and-white-centered knowledge systems involving stages of interiority, wherein colonizing modes of significa‑ tion institute perceptions of moral difference “as an effect of exterior determinants” to justify such violence (p. 117). By challenging dominant aesthetic regimes and engaging with alternative modes of sensory and aesthetic engagement, art can become a tool for subversion and resistance against existing power relations. This revolutionary potential demonstrates the critical importance of promoting and supporting diverse artistic prac‑ tices that challenge traditional modes of representation and offer space for marginalized voices and perspectives to be heard. Sonorities as a Form of Embodied Knowledge

Sound is an essential element of cultural contexts, and it plays a crucial role in Blackness. Despite being immaterial, sound is a potent force that has the power to create and trans‑ form the meaning and value of cultural artifacts. However, sound experiences have often been analyzed from a specific perspective of whiteness, leading to the consumption of Black music as a product, with little consideration for its cultural significance. This essay argues that Black researchers and artists have a vital role in reasserting the importance of sound in cultural contexts by turning their attention to issues like this, resuming ancestral memories, and seeking a more dignified and whole future.

250  Jacqueline Cofield

Paul Gilroy’s (1993) book The Black Atlantic discusses the importance of music and sound in forming African diasporic identities. According to Gilroy, music played a crucial role in forming Black Atlantic cultures, serving as a means of resistance against oppres‑ sion and a tool for constructing new identities. He argues that musical practices such as jazz, reggae, and hip-hop were born out of the African diaspora’s experiences of displace‑ ment and struggle and that these musical genres have helped to connect African diasporic communities across national boundaries. Gilroy emphasizes the importance of under‑ standing the sonic dimensions of Black Atlantic cultures, arguing that music and sound are central to forming identity and community among African diasporic populations. Sound has also been used as a tool of oppression against Black people in the United States. Enslavers used music to control and subjugate enslaved Africans, forbidding them from using percussive instruments to communicate with each other. Even during the era of segregation, white audiences would consume Black music without acknowledging its cultural and social contexts, further erasing Black voices and experiences from the public discourse. However, despite these oppressive forces, Black music and sound have per‑ sisted as essential tools for resistance, resilience, and cultural expression. From the spirituals of enslaved Africans to the blues, jazz, and hip-hop of the modern era, Black music has always been a form of communication and protest, a way for the community to articulate their experiences and assert their humanity in the face of sys‑ temic oppression (hooks, 1990). The role of sound and embodied practices in cultural contexts is important in understanding the transmission of knowledge, memory, and identity formation. As Diana Taylor (2003) argues in The Archive and the Repertoire, embodied practices like singing, praying, and speaking, as well as nonverbal practices, are part of intangible heritage and surface ways of knowing (Taylor, 2003, p. 24). These practices are important for preserving cultural heritage and play a crucial role in shaping cultural imagination and creating a sense of identity and belonging. Sonic expressions such as musical performances are deeply embedded in cultural and collective memories produced in dynamic contexts involving archival and embodied sys‑ tems. As Taylor notes, “racialized identities sprang from discursive and performance sys‑ tems of presentation and representation” (Taylor, 2003, p. 93). In many societies, music, and sound are not only a form of entertainment but a way of communicating complex ideas, beliefs, and emotions. Sound and musical performances offer ways to challenge and subvert dominant systems and create new forms of expression and cultural signifi‑ cance. According to Taylor, “embodied expression has participated and will probably continue to participate in the transmission of social knowledge, memory, and identity pre- and post-writing” (Taylor, 2003, p. 3). The importance of sound and embodied prac‑ tices in cultures extends beyond transmitting knowledge and memory, offering means of resisting oppressive systems and approaching a more just society. Beauty and wisdom embodied in the spirit are expressed through sound and embod‑ ied practices. As Dillard (2021) argues in The Spirit of Our Work, “beauty and wisdom embodied in the Spirit” (p. xiii) can be expressed through various art forms, including music. Sound and musical performances offer a unique way of understanding the world and expressing complex emotions and ideas. Similarly, Taylor (2003) argues, “embod‑ ied practice, along with and bound up with other cultural practices, offers a way of knowing” (p. 3). We can express ourselves, communicate complex ideas, and create new forms of expression and cultural significance through sound and musical performances.

Toward a Sonic African Diasporic Re-Membering  251

Therefore, it is important to continue to explore and understand the role of sound and embodied practices in cultural contexts. Sonic Memory

Memory is a complex phenomenon extensively explored across multiple fields, including art history and education. Scholars, historians, and practitioners have been grappling with the importance of memory in terms of its political and social dynamics within ar‑ chives and in the context of creating socially just futures. Memory is particularly salient in the context of sonorities in Black communities. Memory is not a passive phenomenon but rather an active force that can inspire gen‑ erativity in our lives and practices. According to Diana Taylor (2003), memory acts by pumping vital fluids through the veins of a place. This active force of memory can be seen in how Black communities use sonorities, such as music and oral traditions, to preserve and pass down cultural memory. Black communities can maintain connections to their past, ancestors, and culture through these sonorities. However, memory’s actions are not always externalized or may manifest externally in manners beyond our habitual ways of being, thinking, knowing, and relating. In some cases, memory’s actions must be subversive due to the violent conditions in the external‑ ized social world. Historian of narrative archives of enslaved Black people in America from 1831 to 1865, Webber (1978) considers memory as a cultural practice activating the imaginative interior spaces working to counter the violence of places. Memory is also closely tied to the act of forgetting. For Black people operating in violent systems that employ processes of racialization (Murji & Solomos, 2005) meant to oppress them, forgetting is akin to the murder of the spirit, as legal scholar Patricia Williams has described it (Dillard, 2021). Forgetting was violently coerced during the transatlantic slave trade, as enslaved persons were forbidden and discouraged from en‑ gaging in personal or collective acts of cultural memory. This erasure of cultural memory was a means of control and domination, an attempt to sever Black communities from their past, ancestors, and culture. Furthermore, forgetting can be seen as the dark side of memory, causing restlessness and suspicion of “something more.” Knudsen and Stage (2015) suggest that embodied hauntologies work with traces, fragments, fleeting moments, gaps, absences, submerged narratives, and displaced actors and agencies that register affectively. This profound sense of something more to say that one should look for something more than now can be unsettling yet vital for understanding the complexity of memory and its relationship with forgetting. Nevertheless, we need to emphasize that, despite these attempts at erasure, Black com‑ munities have continued to use sonorities to preserve and pass down cultural memory. Sonorities such as music and oral traditions are often imbued with layers of meaning and symbolism that carry forward the memory of past experiences and struggles. In this way, sonorities serve as a means of regathering that which has been dismembered and scat‑ tered, as Dillard (2021) has suggested. Building upon this idea, the concept of race memories (Weems, 2012) emphasizes the importance of memory in countering dominant narratives that exclude or misrepresent the experiences of Black people. These collective memories, as Weems explains, refer to

252  Jacqueline Cofield

the memories of Black people that have more accurate depictions of our own historical events, even though that narrative is not included in the white patriarchal history-making processes. These memories serve as a means of resistance and resilience, allowing Black communities to maintain their connection to their past and culture in the face of erasure and violence. Memory is a vital force in the context of sonorities in Black communities. Through sonorities such as music and oral traditions, Black communities can preserve and pass down cultural memory, maintaining their connection to their past, their ancestors, and their culture. Despite attempts at erasure, Black communities continue to use sonorities as a means of resistance and resilience, regathering that which has been dismembered and scattered. The importance of memory and its relationship to sonorities in Black com‑ munities highlights the ongoing struggle for social justice and the importance of cultural preservation in the face of erasure and violence. Sonic Imagination

Sonic imagination plays a crucial role in preserving cultural memory, healing, and pursu‑ ing freedom in Black communities. O’Brien (2016) emphasizes the power of sonic medi‑ tations and retreats in turning inward and finding solace for the mind and body. Through intentional engagement with sound and music, individuals can connect with their inner selves and achieve a sense of calm amidst the chaos of the outside world. This focus on sonic intentionality is particularly significant for Black women educa‑ tors. Dillard (2021) highlights the need for Black women educators to prioritize self-care and healing to better serve their students and communities. Engaging in practices such as sonic meditations and retreats allows Black women educators to find the space and support they need to address their systemic challenges and build resilience in the face of oppression. Upton and Joseph (2021) stress the importance of imagination in the Black feminist context, describing it as a means to envision possibilities beyond the boundaries of the speculative or fantasy. The authors emphasize the multidimensionality of Black womanhood and how knowledge emerges from the spirit. Although Dillard’s (2021) discussion centers on the experiences of Black women edu‑ cators, the importance of prioritizing self-care and healing can extend to other contexts, such as Black artistic production. Black artists, particularly those who create in response to the ongoing struggles of the Black community, often encounter unique challenges and face emotional labor in their creative work. Thus, intentional engagement with sound and other sonic practices can provide solace and inspiration in the creative process. Moreo‑ ver, creating and sharing art rooted in Black cultural memory and experience can func‑ tion as a mode of resistance and healing for both the artist and the broader community. Assuredly, the use of the imagination for enslaved Africans was fraught with danger, as Webber (1978) explains. The enslaved were taught to suppress the truth about their desire for freedom, as telling it could lead to severe consequences. As a result, enslaved Africans had to hide their imaginative capabilities and counter-historical narratives, which were essential to their cultural memory and way of knowing. Even after slavery, Black people in America had to conceal their developing social consciousness, educa‑ tional interests, and cultural attitudes, as Givens (2021) argues in Fugitive Pedagogy. Fugitivity, according to Givens (2021), refers to the physical and intellectual acts of Black

Toward a Sonic African Diasporic Re-Membering  253

teachers and students who explicitly critique and negate white supremacy and anti-Black protocols of domination but often do so in a discreet or partially concealed fashion. Even under the greatest intellectual and physical oppressions, and legally forbidden to read and write, Black people were still not ignorant of their sociocultural environment, which Yancy (2015) states are inseparable from the identity of the individual: a condition he names “self-other dialectic,” or a Black self-understanding of withdrawal from negative social perceptions of inferiority. This use of dissembling and concealment is further highlighted by White (1999), who argues that enslaved women understood the value of silence and secrecy. As a result, they deliberately masked their thoughts and personalities to protect valued aspects of their lives from white and male invasion. Despite these challenges, enslaved Africans used their imagination and creativity to resist enslavers. As Webber (1978) notes, thoughts of free‑ dom occupied a central place in their thoughts and feelings, with many enslaved Africans planning for their escape or revolt in their minds. This creative resistance is also reflected in the concept of survivance, as Vizenor (2008) advocates, which involves survival and the active assertion of indigenous presence and identity. Using sonic imagination and creativity has been vital for Black populations to resist oppression and imagine new possibilities. Despite the challenges of suppressing their true desires and identities, enslaved Africans could use their imaginations to plan for freedom and resist their oppressors. By exploring the themes of creativity, resistance, identity, and power, we can better understand the importance of memory, self-reflection, and counterstory in shaping individual and collective identities and challenging domi‑ nant narratives. Creative Process, Memory, and Sonority

As I was sewing my daughter’s coat the other day, I found myself struggling to thread the needle. Despite the distraction, I knew that this crucial step was essential for me to complete the task at hand. It required focus and precision to maneuver the tiny thread into the barely visible hole of the needle. Reflecting on this act of threading the needle, I couldn’t help but draw a parallel to the creative process. Just as we need to thread the needle before sewing, artists, particularly Black women artists, have a deep connection to sound in their creative process. Sonic experiences for these creatives serve as a vital foundation, like threading the needle, as they create and connect to create cohesive and enduring works. For Black artists, there is a special relationship with sound that exceeds expected util‑ ity. It is also a means of recall, of archiving within the body, and a way to connect with history, identity, and community. This is vital when navigating racially charged socio‑ cultural ecosystems working to erase, minimize, or conceal the identities and histories of Black people. Sonic memory plays a crucial role in their artistic practice, allowing them to express their experiences and emotions through the power of sound. When discussing African diasporic sounds, it is common for conversations to focus solely on music. However, I propose that we adopt a broader and more inclusive per‑ spective on sonic identifications. As Augusto Boal explains in his book Aesthetics of the Oppressed (2006), our goal should not be limited to connecting with commercialized or standardized rhythms found in popular music but rather to seek connections with

254  Jacqueline Cofield

internal rhythms, nature, work, and social life to cultivate deeper relationships between our bodies and the world around us. With this in mind, we can expand our understanding of what constitutes African di‑ asporic sounds, going beyond music and considering the various sonic expressions that permeate the culture and experiences of Black communities. It is important to remember that in contexts of oppression and marginalization, silence can also be a form of sound, representing both resistance and imposition. While sound is often thought of as a loud, audible phenomenon that can be heard by the human ear, Street (2019) suggests that apparent silence is also a generative sound event, offering creative space for digesting what we already have heard. As Tina Campt argues in Listening to Images (2017), engaging visual works by imagining or attuning to their “silences” or lower frequencies is an embodied and affective experience that is not necessarily tied to a specific moment or event. Tina Campt’s discussion challenges the conventional understanding of sound as a purely audible phenomenon. For marginalized communities, particularly Black communities navigating oppressive systems, sound can be a way of both asserting presence and resisting erasure. Campt’s (2017) argument highlights the importance of considering the broader cul‑ tural and historical contexts in which sound is produced and experienced. Moreover, Campt’s discussion of sound as an embodied and affective experience offers an expanded definition of what can be considered a “sonic” expression. This definition encompasses not only audible sounds but also the silences, pauses, and gaps that exist within and be‑ tween sonic expressions. This is exemplified in Mari Evans’ (1984) poem I Am a Black Woman. In this work, Evans (1984) laments her inability to sing the “fluid beauty” that once flowed from her soul. The absence of singing represents a loss of personal expression and a broader erasure of Black women’s voices and societal experiences. This loss is reflected in the silence that now surrounds her, which is not just the absence of sound but a form of sound in its own right. Working with sounds related to music, as well as sounds that are part of the personal memories of Black women, and exploring silence as something audible and resonant, Sonia Boyce is an artist who draws inspiration from sounds present in individual and collective sonic memories to explore the sonic imaginary as a form of art and resistance. Boyce’s work (Adams, 2022; Yentob, 2022; As I See It: Sonia Boyce, n.d.) is charac‑ terized by her use of diverse media, including photography, video, sound, and perfor‑ mance, to create immersive installations that challenge the viewer’s perception of space and sound. She often incorporates found objects and everyday sounds to create layered compositions that reflect the complexity of her experiences as a Black woman living in Britain. Sonia Boyce’s exhibition Feeling Her Way is a multidisciplinary installation that in‑ corporates video, collage, music, and sculpture. The installation features videos of five black female musicians who improvise and play with their voices, expressing feelings of freedom, power, and vulnerability. The exhibition was commissioned for the British Pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale and won the prestigious Golden Lion award for best national participation (Sonia Boyce: Feeling Her Way, n.d.; Khomami, 2022; Sooke, 2022) (Figure 18.1).

Toward a Sonic African Diasporic Re-Membering  255

Boyce, Feeling Her Way, British pavilion at the Venice Biennale, 2022. Photo by Janine Sytsma.

FIGURE 18.1 Sonia

The installation is based on Boyce’s ongoing project, the “Devotional Collection,” which is a collection of material associated with black British female musicians stretching back to the nineteenth century. The collection currently honors more than 350 women. For Feeling Her Way, Boyce invited five black female musicians to improvise together, and their session was filmed and produced into a series of short videos, each concentrat‑ ing on an individual singer, arranged within the pavilion’s six-day-lit rooms. The exhibition is a celebration of black female musicians and their contributions to the British music scene, which have often been overlooked or forgotten. By highlighting their voices and the cultural significance of their work, Boyce is creating a space for reflection and discussion around issues of representation, identity, and history. The exhibition also includes wallpaper designed by Boyce, featuring bright colors and fragments of imagery from the recording sessions arranged in tessellating patterns. View‑ ers can sit on gold-colored polyhedrons, which are arranged as stools in the center or corners of most galleries and are inspired by lumps of pyrite. In the rearmost space, Boyce presents a selection of objects recently added to the Devotional Collection, such as a Brown Sugar LP and a CD of an album by Beverley Knight. Feeling Her Way is an exhibition that speaks to the intersection of art and identity, highlighting the contributions of black women to the cultural landscape of Britain. It is a

256  Jacqueline Cofield

celebration of collaboration, improvisation, and creative expression that invites viewers to reflect on the power and significance of black women’s voices in music and beyond. Through her work, Boyce highlights the importance of sound and memory in shaping individual and collective identities and challenging dominant narratives. By exploring the sounds of her community and her own sonic memory, she creates a space for alternative histories and counter-narratives to be heard. Boyce has spoken about the importance of listening to and amplifying the voices of black women, whose perspectives are often overlooked or marginalized in society. Her work is a powerful example of how artists can use sound as a form of resistance and create new forms of artistic expression that challenge the status quo. Cultural Power

Bourdieu’s (1986) concept of cultural capital refers to the knowledge, skills, and cultural practices valued in a particular society. He argues that cultural capital is not evenly dis‑ tributed among individuals and groups and that those who possess cultural capital have an advantage in accessing social and economic opportunities. Wilson’s (2018) discussion of cultural power complements Bourdieu’s argument by emphasizing the pervasive influ‑ ence of culture in our everyday lives. Wilson (2018) highlights how cultural power shapes our practices of the self, relation‑ ships with others, and the horizons of our lives. Cultural power is not just about the abil‑ ity to produce cultural products but also about the ability to shape the dominant cultural values and beliefs that guide social institutions. That aligns with Bourdieu’s notion that cultural capital is not just about possessing knowledge and skills but also about the abil‑ ity to use cultural capital to access social and economic opportunities. In addition, Wilson’s (2018) discussion of cultural power also suggests that cultural capital is not just about the accumulation of knowledge and skills but also about the ability to shape cultural values and beliefs. Those who possess cultural power can shape how cultural capital is valued in society, which in turn affects the distribution of social and economic opportunities. Sonic imagination is a form of cultural capital and power, though because it is internal, it subversively evades detection. Overall, Bourdieu’s (1986) discussion of cultural capital and Wilson’s (2018) discus‑ sion of cultural power highlight the importance of culture in shaping social and economic opportunities. Cultural capital is critical in determining an individual’s access to these opportunities. Those who possess cultural power can shape the distribution of cultural capital and its value in society. By understanding the role of cultural power and capital, we can gain insight into the mechanisms reinforcing social hierarchies and inequality. Final Considerations

This essay highlights the importance of sound and sonic memory in the artistic practices of Black artists. I have emphasized the personal and collective dimensions of sonic mem‑ ory, the role of sound in shaping experiences and perceptions, and the power of artistic practice to challenge dominant systems and create new forms of expression. The essay has drawn on various theoretical frameworks, including postcolonial theory, critical race theory, and feminist theory, to analyze the multifaceted dimensions of Black art. I have

Toward a Sonic African Diasporic Re-Membering  257

also highlighted the significance of perceiving the world as an integrated and interactive experience involving multiple senses, cultural practices, and memory, which shapes artis‑ tic expressions. Overall, the essay has argued for the transformative potential of artistic practice and the critical importance of promoting and supporting diverse artistic prac‑ tices that challenge traditional modes of representation and offer space for marginalized voices and perspectives to be heard. The discussion of cultural capital and cultural power provides an essential foundation for understanding the role of sonic memory and sonic imagination in Black art produc‑ tion, where historical oppression and inequality have created significant barriers to artis‑ tic expression and representation. Black artists have responded to these challenges using sonorities that draw on sonic memory and imagination. By incorporating sounds and music that evoke memories of the past and imaginations of the future, for instance, Black artists create powerful and transformative works of art that challenge dominant cultural values and beliefs. This approach to artistic production is rooted in a deep understanding of the power of sonic memory and imagination. As discussed earlier, my father’s voice and the memories it evokes have profoundly impacted my life trajectory. Similarly, for Black artists, the sounds and music of their cultural heritage are not just abstract con‑ cepts but tangible expressions of history, identity, and struggle. Sonic memories can be understood as forms of cultural capital and power. Those who possess knowledge and memories of sonic events have valuable resources at their disposal that can be used to access social and economic opportunities and challenge dominant cultural values and beliefs. By drawing on these sonic memories and traditions, Black artists can create works of art that not only represent their experiences but also challenge dominant cultural narratives and values. In this way, sonic memory can be seen as a form of symbolic power that enables Black artists to shape cultural values and beliefs and to create new possibilities for artistic expression and representation. Furthermore, researching sonic memory and the sonic imaginary and incorporating sonorities in creative and artistic production in the works of Black artists proves para‑ mount to achieving what Frederick Douglass aimed for in relation to time (Douglass 2003). It involves valuing the voices and history that precede us, resonating with our an‑ cestors, living fully in the present, and looking toward the future with the hope that we, as researchers and artists of the diaspora, can live freely and fully. Through this analysis, I aim to inspire others to explore the possibilities of artistic creation and the power of sonic re-membering to unite communities and amplify voices across the African diaspora that have historically been silenced. Bibliography Adams, T. (2022). Artist Sonia Boyce: ‘Paintings Are Not Born On Walls’. The Guardian. Retrieved April 8, 2023, from https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/apr/17/artist-sonia-boycepaintings-are-not-born-on-walls As I See It: Sonia Boyce. [n.d.]. Retrieved April 8, 2023, from Royal Academy of Arts, https://www. royalacademy.org.uk/article/as-i-see-it-sonia-boyce Boal, A. (2006). The Aesthetics of the Oppressed. New York: Routledge. Bourdieu, P. (1986). The Forms of Capital. In J. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education (pp. 241–58). New York: Greenwood. Campt, T. L. (2017). Listening to Images. Durham: Duke University Press.

258  Jacqueline Cofield

Crawley, A. T. (2017). Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility. New York: Fordham University Press. Da Silva, D. F. (2007). Toward a Global Idea of Race (Vol. 27). Minneapolis, University of Min‑ nesota Press. Dillard, C. (2021). The Spirit of Our Work: Black Women Teachers (Re)Member. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Douglass, F. (2003). Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. D. W. Blight, (Ed.). New Haven: Yale University Press. Evans, M. (1984). I Am a Black Woman. In M. Evans (Ed.), Black Women Writers (1950–1980): A Critical Evaluation (pp. 168–9). New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday. Feeling Her Way. [n.d.]. Retrieved April 8, 2023, from British Council, https://venicebiennale. britishcouncil.org/feeling-her-way Gibson, J. J. (1966). The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Gilroy, P. (1993). The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Givens, E. (2021). Fugitive Pedagogy: Carter G. Woodson and the Art of Black Teaching. Min‑ neapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Higgie, J. (2018). Sonia Boyce: 30 Years of Art and Activism. Retrieved April 8, 2023, from https:// www.frieze.com/article/sonia-boyce-30-years-art-and-activism hooks, B. (1990). Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics. Boston: South End Press. Ingold, T. (2000). The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. New York: Routledge. Jenks, C. (2017). The Centrality of the Eye in Western Culture: An Introduction. In Visual Culture, Chris Jenks (ed.) (pp. 1–25). London and New York: Routledge. Khomami, N. (2022). Sonia Boyce’s Venice Biennale Winner to be Exhibited in UK Next Year. Retrieved April 8, 2023, from The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/ oct/26/sonia-boyces-venice-biennale-winner-to-be-exhibited-in-uk-next-year Knudsen, B.T., Stage, C. (2015). Introduction: Affective Methodologies. In: Knudsen, B.T., Stage, C. (eds). Affective Methodologies. London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi. org/10.1057/9781137483195_1 Love, B. (2019). We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom. Beacon Press. Boston. Maldonado-Torres, N. (2007). On the Coloniality of Being: Contributions to the Development of a Concept. Cultural Studies, 21(2–3), 240–70. Morrison, T. (2020). The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations. Chi‑ cago: Vintage. Mullane, M. (2010). The Aesthetic Ear: Sound Art, Jacques Rancière, and the Politics of Listening. Journal of Aesthetics & Culture, 2(1), 1–10. Doi: 10.3402/jac.v2i0.5395 Murji, K., & Solomos, J. (Eds.) (2005). Racialization: Studies in Theory and Practice. Chicago: Oxford University Press. O’Brien, S. (2016). “Sonic meditations: Attuning to Black Life Through the Sounding of Black‑ ness”. In S. S. Muhammad & S. L. Jackson (Eds.), The Sonic Color Line: Race and the Cultural Politics of Listening (pp. 107–24). New York: New York University Press. Powell, E. H. (2022). Black Arts, Black Women, Black Politics. American Literary History, 34(2), 596–605. Rancière, J. (2010). Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics. London: Continuum. Sealey-Ruiz, Yolanda. (2021). The Critical Literacy of Race: Toward Racial Literacy in Urban Teacher Education. In H. Richard Milner IV & Kofi Lomotey (Eds.), Handbook of Urban Education (2nd ed., pp. 281–95). New York: Routledge. Sonia Boyce OBE. [n.d]. Retrieved April 8, 2023, from Tate, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/ sonia-boyce-obe-794

Toward a Sonic African Diasporic Re-Membering  259

Sonia Boyce: Feeling Her Way. [n.d]. Retrieved April 8, 2023, from Wallpaper, https://www.wall‑ paper.com/art/sonia-boyce-feeling-her-way Sooke, A. (2022). ‘The Art Establishment Doesn’t Quite Know What to Do with Her’: The Unclassifiable Sonia Boyce. Retrieved April 8, 2023, from The Telegraph, https://www.telegraph. co.uk/art/artists/art-establishment-doesnt-quite-know-unclassifiable-sonia-boyce/ Stoller, Paul. (1997). Sensuous Scholarship. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Street, S. (2019). The Sound Inside the Silence: Travels in the Sonic Imagination. Chicago: Springer. Taylor, Diana. (2003). The Archive and the Repertoire. Durham: Duke University Press. Upton, A., & Joseph, J. (2021). Exploring the Black Feminist Imagination. In Black Feminist Sociology (pp. 300–9). New York: Routledge. Vizenor, Gerald. (2008). Aesthetics of Survivance. In Survivance: Narratives of Native Presence (p. 1). Lincoln: University of Nebraska. Webber, Thomas L. (1978). Deep like the Rivers: Education in the Slave Quarter Community, 1831–1865. New York: Norton. Weems, Renée E. J., ed. (2012). Race Memory and the Future of Blackness. In The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton, 1965–2010 (p. 302). Rochester, NY: BOA Editions. White, Deborah Gray. (1999). Ar’n’t I a Woman? New York: WW Norton & Company. Wilson, J. A. (2018). Neoliberalism. New York: Routledge. Yancy, G. (2015). Through the Crucible of Pain and Suffering: African-American Philosophy as a Gift and the Countering of the Western Philosophical Metanarrative. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 47(11), 1143–59. Yentob, A. (Host). (2022). Sonia Boyce: Finding Her Voice [TV broadcast episode]. In Imag‑ ine. BBC. Retrieved April 8, 2023, from https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001f0q7/ imagine-2022-sonia-boyce-finding-her-voice

Addendum Voices Curated By Moyo Okediji

PERFORMING JUSTICE FOR EVERYDAY PEOPLE Wura-Natasha Ogunji

In general, theater is narrative and happens with an audience in a particular kind of way. It’s also repeatable in ways that performance art is not. Performance art can happen anywhere—in public or in private, with or without an audience. The body is the main material or tool. And oftentimes what happens in performance art happens only once. I taught two classes on performance art at the University of Texas (UT), Austin. The first was “Performing Justice,” which looked at justice in the context of performance art and asked what it looks like to perform justice. I also taught “Performing the Afrofuturis‑ tic,” which used the aesthetics and philosophies of Afrofuturism to create performances. Afrofuturism is a genre/descriptor that was developed roughly in the 1970s to talk about Black artists creating work that integrated images of the future, African cosmologies, history, and technology. Afrofuturism is a term coined by Mark Dery in 1993 to describe the work of Black art‑ ists in the United States who were using, even fusing, science fiction, fantasy, and history to engage with the past but also to develop visionary futures. Typically, in science fiction there’s a kind of erasure of targeted bodies, and Black and brown bodies rarely exist, if at all. Afrofuturism imagines Black people in the future, and rather than seeing that future as devoid of African and African diasporic peoples, it questions notions of race altogether while engaging and affirming the histories of Black people. Artists include Sun Ra, Lee Scratch Perry, Samuel Delaney, George Clinton … the list goes on. The UT Austin course asks, “What is justice?” That question is relevant to a lot of people. And, for me, performance art offers an opportunity to connect to so-called eve‑ ryday people. Interestingly, people pay for things that are relevant to their lives. When people see themselves in theater, they figure out a way to attend. It’s interesting. Is my audience in Africa? By “audience in Africa,” who exactly am I referring to? Egyptians? Women in Addis? An actor in Tanzania? A farmer in Benin? You have to stop using the word “Africa.” Who/where exactly are you speaking about? When I do a performance on the street in Lagos, it is relevant to the people who see it. They are relevant. I don’t know who they are before the performance happens. And I don’t know what their experi‑ ence of the performance will be. Whatever that experience is, I appreciate it and I like to talk about it. And I expect that they will talk about it after they leave. These definitions

264  Wura-Natasha Ogunji

are useful only in the way they help us think about the world, art, or each other. Then we can change them or discard them or create new definitions. I think it’s really important to be aware of how we use this term “Africans.” Curator Bisi Silva talks about how, when we say “Africa,” it becomes a non-place. The term is inaccurate. It can never speak to, for, or about the diversity of people who live on the continent. I think it’s interesting that my question still hasn’t been answered … where in “Africa” are you talking about? When we talk about Europe, we talk about specifics. And no one would ever assume that we could lump Paris and Lisbon together and, and, and … Why can’t we—or don’t we—talk about specifics? I’m seeking to speak about my truth as an artist, to make my artistic voice clear and true. And also to engage with audiences in various ways. I’m not sure about escaping the commodity of art, but selling is secondary to what I make. It’s important, but thinking about money, survival, and selling doesn’t have a place in the studio for me. See that photo with the crowns? It’s from a performance piece I did in Lagos this year called Queens. It’s on a bar beach. I built these ten-foot-high crowns that were attached to each other, and I invited women to wear them. This performance was part of a series I did in Lagos that was/is about the presence of women in public spaces. There’s more about these performances here: http://goldeniron.blogspot.com. See the photo of the water keg? It’s the first iteration of a piece I performed entitled Will I still carry water when I am a dead woman? I was interested in the work of women, in labor, and also in asking the question: will there be redemption for my labor, my strug‑ gle? That was in 2011. Then in 2013, I performed the piece again but in collaboration with six other women: Taiwo Aiyedogbon, Ruby Amanze, Deola Gold, Odun Orimo‑ lade, Mary Oruoghor, and Wana Udobang. We wore masks and walked with the water kegs tied to our wrists and ankles through the streets of Lagos packed with people. The audience was going about their day. My question was about redemption. One of my questions. I think it’s something that can be pulled from the work. Questions I’ve heard from both the audience and the per‑ formers include: Why am I doing this? Why are they doing this? The labor required to carry water kegs suggests an outcome that is of use to the person doing the carrying. One of the lessons or observations that I had was that the struggle didn’t amount to ­anything … because when I finally reached the destination, the keg had emptied com‑ pletely. Dragging a keg through the streets for more than an hour will eventually make a hole, and the water seeps out. It’s a lesson/observation about struggle. As Fela aptly put it: “Suffer for what? Na your fault be that.” On the note of “Africa” and audience, my current work is about performance in La‑ gos. I can talk about audiences there. I can talk about class there. I can talk about the educational system, literacy, and access to resources. I can talk about these things a bit. I am not an expert, and my experience is limited to … my experience. I believe there is great power in talking about my particular locality. I see performance art as incredibly powerful in the context of Lagos, because it is a form that allows for the rules to be bro‑ ken and for people to expand their thinking. I believe performance art is hugely power‑ ful in this context. This is the context I know. I can’t say that I know Jos or Kaduna or even Abuja. I can talk somewhat about Lagos. I describe my “homeland audience” as

Performing Justice for Everyday People  265

the people in Lagos who see my performances. I know this audience is diverse. It spans various classes and ethnic and religious and gender groups. Agreed. I think this is a fundamental assumption or ethic that many “African” socie‑ ties have … that your presence and your experience (whatever that may be) is relevant. There’s the piece called Beauty. It was conceived by an artist friend, Nicole Vlado (http://www.nicolevlado.com), and myself. The starting idea is about the connections women have to each other and their hair. Five of us had our hair braided together and stood that way in Obalende Motor Park for three and a half hours, connected. We per‑ formed it also on the campus of the University of Texas, Austin. There’s that series of videos called The epic crossings of an Ife head. I love the image of the Ife heads and how unique they are, and how they seem to represent specific individu‑ als. That series of videos started with a question I had: “Does homeland long for us?” I created this image/character of an Ife head who could either walk on water or fly to move from Africa to the Americas in search of her descendants. The stop-motion animation techniques offered a way for that flight to happen (in addition to me jumping for hours) (Figures A.1 and A.2). Beauty … I know there is a lot of talk about Black and African women and their hair. We can read a lot into it. Or not. I like natural hair, but I also like artificiality. I think it’s important not to attach too much to what women do to their hair … I don’t like the ways that women’s bodies, particularly Black women’s bodies, are often investigated, policed,

FIGURE A.1 Wura-Natasha

Ogunji, The Epic Crossings of an Ife Head. Video still, 2009.

266  Wura-Natasha Ogunji

FIGURE A.2 Wura-Natasha

Ogunji, The Epic Crossings of an Ife Head. Video still 2, 2009.

monitored, commented on … as if we do not have self-agency. Given that, the beauty performance is partly about the amount of time we spend on the performance of our ap‑ pearances, including hair, make-up, etc. It is also about the power of our connections and all that those connections offer. Being born of Black and white parents and raised by a white woman sure reminds me of Obama. I will gracefully let the Obama comparison end there. In the United States, I am unquestionably Black. In Nigeria, I am white in most contexts, though Nigerian. My experience is heavily defined by both belonging and not belonging. This happens with many people, immigrants, queer people, etc. We have the ability to see the world from multiple perspectives, and that doesn’t present a conflict for us but rather an opening. I’m very aware of how my body is interpreted in the different contexts that I find myself in. While making performance art in Lagos, I was/am particularly conscious of how my light-skinned, oyibo body can change the meaning of a work (in a way that I may not have intended). It’s an ongoing responsibility for me to think about these things.

Performing Justice for Everyday People  267

FIGURE A.3 Wura-Natasha

Ogunji, Two. Video still, 2010.  Photo by Sonseree Gibson.

LASER-FOCUSED Olu Oguibe

At the University of Illinois, Chicago, I was adjudged the worst teacher that the Art His‑ tory Department had hired in thirty years. Of course, I was also the only faculty of color they had hired in thirty years (Figure A.4). Why is African art classified as “ethnic”? Good question. The term “ethnic,” as you know, is reserved in Western society for people of color. It is of course a misnomer, but that’s really the short answer. However, this term is also reserved for classical and nonacademic art. I believe that more contemporary practices escape that label. Frankly, I’m not aware that the charge of a lack of real contemporary art in Nigeria has persisted beyond the 1980s. Prior to that, I believe it was a charge that served career and political purposes for certain art historians. Of course, it’s preposterous to make that charge today with so much contemporary work going on in Nigeria. Over the past thirty years especially, Nigerian artists have been producing quite im‑ pressively in the realm of contemporary practice. And in the past four years or so, there’s been an explosion among much younger artists going into performance and new practices. There is much to be proud of today about contemporary practice, especially in Lagos. In a sense, all work is ethnic because we’re all ethnic—white, black, yellow, pink. But no, it’s not exactly a useful or accurate term to describe work, so I wouldn’t use it for any work at all. What most people recall is that I graduated as the best student of all time from the University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN), and obviously I love that, but UNN was also about appearing before the University Senate disciplinary committee every other week. At any rate, I believe that I was raised with an extraordinary ability for focus, something that I’ve actually lost a bit lately. I was raised to laser-focus, and that made it possible to cut through the challenges, push them behind me, and push onward. Of course, they do come back in one way or another. As a younger artist, I was quite clear about the role of the artist or, more precisely, my perceived role of the artist. In time, though, I arrived at the conclusion that the artist has no other role but to make work as long as that work does not demean or derogate or set society in the wrong direction. The artist’s primary duty is to his or her craft. Every form

Laser-Focused  269

FIGURE A.4 Olu

Oguibe, A Di Ama-Ama, 2017.  Ebony, oal, brass, and stell. 13 × 16 × 8 in.

of art that is not demeaning has a role. Flower paintings and beach paintings have a role: they bring joy to people. What we like to call “engaged” or “socially conscious” art has a role because it engages the larger questions of society and history. Both are necessary in a developing society. At the fiftieth anniversary of Chinua Achebe’s No Longer at Ease a few years ago, I publicly declared that I no longer accepted his famous quip about art for art’s sake being just another piece of deodorized dog shit. So-called art for art’s sake has its place, too. Caribbean contemporary art is already being taken very seriously around the world. A few years ago, Jamaican curator Kristina Newman-Scott opened a great show of Caribbean art at Real Art Ways in Hartford, Connecticut, and it was a blast. There’s also been a much larger show recently in New York of Caribbean contemporary art, and it was very successful. In addition, the global contemporary art scene is flush with very successful high-profile Caribbean artists, so I don’t think that success on

270  Olu Oguibe

the global contemporary art scene has anything to do with movements. Chinese art‑ ists have been quite successful of late, and they’re not exactly into movements. There are only three things that count: good work, active patronage, and good criticism and documentation. Is there any value in Christian mythology to our struggle as West African artists? I would say yes. It depends on how we use it. There’s value in all mythologies. I have drawn on Christian, Aboriginal Australian, Indian, Persian, Igbo, Yoruba, and all manner of other mythologies. The value of mythologies is in the lessons they embody, not their literal details, and insofar as those lessons are universal, they belong to all humanity. But Zionism is a different matter and one that we may not be able to do much justice in a forum like this, because as a political and ideological movement, it has a history that is quite complex. Without context, we cannot do it justice. Zion‑ ism is, of course, quite different from the evangelical plague afflicting postcolonial societies. That, too, has a context in the gradual collapse of these societies and the entrenchment of alienation. To understand it, one must return to medieval Europe and the ascendance of superstition and religious fervor. Societies in crisis resort to such to try and gain a handle on things. In fact, we may find a corollary in the time of Jesus when tons of evangelical movements sprang up. Jesus was only one pastor amongst so many preaching salvation as Judea reeled under Roman oppression. There’s always a desperate search for answers and salvation when a society is on the brink of descent into Hades. The role of a professor of West African art is the same as that of any other professor, which is to enlighten. That said, of course, it’s all also a fact that most people in America come to West African or Black African art with all manner of exoticist fantasies, and a professor of art has the additional duty to scrape off that sludge from people’s minds. It can be daunting, though. One example of the unique challenges is the difference between how we understand masks and masking in West Africa and how people in the West approach them. The em‑ phasis in the West is on the form of the mask face; however, our traditional interests are in the ritual performances in which the mask plays only a small part. So, to get people to understand the forms in context, one must take them into the rituals and sometimes compare those rituals to similar Christian rituals or Western rites of passage. Is there a distinctive role for art in curbing corruption in a society like Nigeria? I wouldn’t call it a distinctive role, but sure, there is a role in not only speaking truth to power but also in helping public awareness and civic empowerment. This has to be placed in context as well. We have to recognize that artists must market their work to survive and sustain their practice. So they must balance that necessity and the dues to society. I no longer hold that artists have a special duty simply because they’re artists; everyone has a duty, be they engineers, journalists, writers, medical doctors, but most of all, regular citizens, the most powerful players in the crusade against corruption. If the regular citizen rejects corruption, then it has no chance. Artists may play a role in em‑ powering that regular citizen through awareness, but it’s not a divine duty. How does one combine the practices? I call it juggling, and no juggling act is easy or without risk. It may seem seamless, but it often isn’t. There’s always a price to pay because we’re only human, and while we’re engaged in one thing we cannot be engaged

Laser-Focused  271

in another with equal concentration. However, some of us are born with several apti‑ tudes, and some are raised that way, and it’s tough choosing between them. For some reason, Nsukka always encouraged that multiplicity of interests which was begun by Uche Okeke, a fine poet and great painter, sculptor, and art historian and theorist. Obiora Udechukwu and Chike Aniakor followed suit as fine poets and painters. The rest of us just saw it as what you do; you do all that you can and hope they come together some‑ how. I did mention that there is a price to pay, and I do warn our younger colleagues, especially those who are drawn to art history, curating, and studio practice at once. Stu‑ dio practice unfortunately does not share too well with other practices, and once you’re drawn to those other practices, your studio career will suffer. But I find that warnings are no good because we do these things because we can’t help it. We are who we are. Or as Bob Marley famously put it, we are what we are, and that’s the way it’s going to be. That said, I have found that at certain moments along the way, I’ve had to lay some of the practices to rest for a while so I could focus on others. I did quit poetry for a while, though I should have a new book out in the next couple of weeks. Round about the same time, I quit painting for nearly ten years, only returning to it in the mid-2000s. So, you really can’t do everything at once. I recall on one occasion about a decade ago, several of us artists threatened to walk out on a show at a museum in Belgium. It’s really a matter of lack of professionalism. A curator should do their job, and so should an institution. There’s another aspect to it, though, which is that institutions see every exhibition opportunity as a positive gesture toward your career. You receive exposure, your work is featured, and that could count for something. So, sometimes you have to take that into consideration and weigh the costs. By the way, the curriculum at my college teaches zilch about the artist’s worth, and I find that I’m the odd one out bringing up such issues. Art programs do a terrible job of preparing artists for professional careers beyond simply teaching technical skills. A shoe merchant’s civic duty does not involve the shoes that he sells. You do not use shoes to make a civic statement, so it is possible for a shoe salesman to sell his shoes and make a living and then attend to civic duties. The artist, however, sells his or her art. It is possible for the artist to play civic roles without using his or her art; how about that? You make your work, you devote yourself to your art, just like a bus driver or carpenter does, and then you attend to civic duties without necessarily confusing the two. My generation is the generation that never fulfilled its promise. We were uprooted right when we were about to find our voices, and most of us had to start all over in faraway places, without the community that we had just begun to build or the thematic focus. Many of us were blown off course into other careers that did not help our creative endeavors. Actors with great potential became student nurses; writers became scholars, because either no one would publish what they were writing or they needed more secure jobs. The story of the generation has yet to be written, but I believe that out of the lot of us, a few will still find their voice and place again, given longevity. It may no longer come with the passion of youth that it once could have had, but it will come dense with experience and hopefully wisdom, too. What is the responsibility of the curator especially in a developing society? A couple of years ago, I wrote some essays about what I saw as the duties of the curator. One was called “The Curatorial Burden,” and it’s possible to find it online. In that essay,

272  Olu Oguibe

I began by pointing out that the word “curator” is taken from “curate,” the nurse or caretaker. So, a curator is in fact a caretaker, a minder of creative endeavor and cultural heritage. In effect, the curator has any number of responsibilities, and among them is advocacy: discerning what is worthy of our cultural production, and bringing it to the attention of the wider society. Another is preserving what is worthy in a culture so that future generations can access it. That’s where documentation becomes an essential part of curating. Identifying creative talent and nurturing it by providing an opportunity for it to fulfill itself is another critical responsibility of curating, and great curators like my friends Adelina von Furstenberg, the Brothers Zaya (the late Antonio and his twin, Octavio), and the artist and curator Carl Hazlewood, among others, play this role. However, curating can also be a career, and that in fact is how it began in the modern era, as a position in an institution where a trained specialist tends to a collection. In a sense, after wandering off from the 1950s to the 1990s, the golden era of independ‑ ent curating, it has returned to that institutional and career beginning with curators trained in curatorial programs who curate out-of-art magazine pages and only deal with established and famous artists without daring to discover and nurture talent. In the developing world, the curator must still play that role of caretaker and nurturer and advocate, in my thinking. Has apprenticeship and nurturing died in art practice in Nigeria? Not being there, obviously, I am not in a good position to say, but I would agree that even while I was there, it wasn’t always evident. It’s even worse in the West. However, I believe that there are still instances of nurturing going on. El Anatsui works with a host of young artists who learn at his feet. He has always done so. In a sense, part of the crisis, if there is one, is that a whole host of artists left in the late 1980s and 1990s, people like Prof. Okediji, Obiora Udechukwu, and so on. So, the cultural field was devoid of masters with the in‑ clination to nurture. Also, Nigeria at present is not exactly a very nurturing culture in all spheres. But there are emerging institutions, especially in Lagos, that are again beginning to provide younger artists opportunities to interact with more established artists not just from within Nigeria but from abroad also. Hopefully that is making a difference. In my opinion, the only proven way to learn is from the masters. Michael Jackson made that point often. Bob Dylan and all the great musicians of the British blues generation demon‑ strated it. And a colossus as towering as the great scientist Isaac Newton famously said that if he saw far, it was because he stood on the shoulders of giants. One can learn from the masters on one’s own, too, thankfully, at a distance, and that we must settle for in the absence of a nurturing environment. Is there such a thing as a post-Black art aesthetic? Very interesting question. I’ve often responded to the idea of a post-Black art aesthetic with the quip: Where’s the “post-” in “post-Black art,” essentially because I find little postness in the work that is often referred to as “post-Black.” So, if the work does not support the theory, then what’s the validity of the theory? All the wonderful younger artists who are practicing at the moment appear to be making art that is just as devoted to “blackness” as previ‑ ous generations. So, what’s “post-” about it? Regarding my work, that has to be placed in context because I’m coming from outside the discourse of Black art and blackness. My issues always were somewhat different, having begun in Nigeria where blackness is not an issue. So, my work would not qualify as post-Black, if any work at all would qualify as such.

Laser-Focused  273

One thing is that we do in fact have stellar scientists; most of them just happen not to be practicing in Africa. They work in the West. That’s where they have the facilities, the encouragement, the protection, the appreciative environment, and the jobs. From nuclear science to interstellar exploration, we have African scientists involved. The problem is that Africa is not very encouraging to any professional practice, and science has always relied on some form of patronage to thrive. That patronage is not there. I believe that in a different political environment it can be built, and I am still hopeful that it will be. Is Sam Gilliam’s work “Black”? And what is “Black” art? A couple of years ago, I proposed a book on the subject to a publisher in England. Unfortunately, the project fell through. Professor Richard Powell has a book on Black art that attempts to define the category or practice, but all “Black” art must trace its theoretical roots to Amiri Baraka and the founding of the Black Arts movement in the mid-60s following the as‑ sassination of Malcolm and the Imamu’s departure from the Beat movement and his return to Harlem. Black art is not just art produced by Black people: Black art is the art that deals with issues related to blackness, especially in America or in the West (in Britain, Black art was initiated by artists like Rasheed Araeen, who are Black in Britain, though not African). So, insofar as people are making works that focus on social issues related to blackness and race, that would qualify as Black art. Gilliam’s work is African American art, of course, just as it is American art, but it would not qualify as Black art because his issues are of no particular resonance with the subject of blackness. Even so, blackness is very fraught, and I take my cue always from late Prof. Marlon Rigg’s admonition that “Black Is, Black Ain’t” about art being black or white. Art can be black or white; these are contextual paradigms that belong in a history of race and race distinctions. They cannot be universalized or dismissed. In a society like Nigeria where race is not an issue after colonial rule, the idea of black or white art may not make sense. But that is not the case in the West, where race is still an issue, and everything is underlined by it. A Nigerian may find the idea of a Black president preposterous be‑ cause, well, what else can a Nigerian president be? But it is not a preposterous idea in America. Context is everything. What is blackness, what is Black art, what is the Black art aesthetic? Are these merely racial qualifiers or signifiers as theorists would say, or are they pointed to historical and ideological registers? I should reiterate: not all art produced by Black people is Black art in the way that it is historically understood in the United States. Hence, my work would not qualify as either Black art in that sense or post-Black. Prof. Powell’s book necessarily failed on that count when he lost focus on what Black art is and confused it for all art produced by artists of the African Diaspora. In terms of discriminations, there are sev‑ eral factors at work. You would find, for instance, that in spite of what you quite rightly perceive, artists like Wangechi Mutu who are neither African American in the historical sense nor Afro-Caribbean are nonetheless part of the “post-Black” art circle by choice designation. What is at work is patronage. Certain culture brokers determine who to include and who not to, and often the criteria are entirely arbitrary. Attending Yale Graduate School could make the difference between whether you are admitted into the “Black” or “post-Black” circle or not, irrespective of where you were born. Being on agreeable terms with people at the Studio Museum in Harlem could make all the difference. What else I find, in my own personal experience without any scientific backing, is that it also does make a difference whether you attended art school (not grad

274  Olu Oguibe

school) in the United States or Britain or not. No African artist living and practicing in Britain or the United States who did not attend art school in Britain or the United States (by which I mean undergrad) has ever found stellar success in these countries, and that’s without exception. What’s the explanation? There could be many, but I doubt we have the time to explore them in this conversation. There is no conceivable paradigm under which Thomas Hart Benton’s work could be considered Black art. Black art still has to be produced by Black people; just not all art produced by Black people is Black art. Incidentally, Chinua Achebe addressed a related issue with regard to African literature. Joseph Conrad’s work or Graham Greene’s is not African literature, though it may deal with Africans or African settings. African literature still has to be produced by Africans, of whatever race or color. Same with Black art. Artists who work with fabric must locate it within mainstream practice. It is not a recognition that is anyone’s to grant; it is up to the artists to reinvent the form. Consider what Anatsui has just done with bottle caps. I don’t regard his work as having anything to do with fabric. I’m just pointing out that every medium has the potential to engage the market depending on what artists do with it. A few years back, there was a friend who was working in ceramics and got less than stellar responses from the mainstream art plat‑ form. I decided that she had to move away from craft venues and side shows and move her practice into the mainstream. I encouraged her to apply for a particular residency in New York, and when it appeared that she was not going to make it into the program, I wrote personally to the organizers to make the case that she needed to be in the program, not in spite of her medium but because of her medium, because artists who work in her medium have so often been relegated, that was precisely why they must allow her into the program. She was accepted. She shifted her venues of practice, and today she is a very successful player on the contemporary art scene with several major exhibitions under her belt. So, proper strategizing is essential. The nature of the work is important. Avoiding self-marginalization is critical. I have reread the “Art Criticism and Africa” essay recently, in fact as recently as last evening, because I’d like to include it in a new edition of my book God’s Transistor Radio, because I think it is still pertinent. Especially regarding that issue of location: if you recall, that’s the first point that was made in the keynote, that it is somewhat of a shame that conferences on art practice in Africa were taking place in Europe and America and seldom in Africa. I must say that certain things have changed, you would agree. There are institutions in Ghana and Nigeria now that host forums and discussions. Enwezor was inspired to locate one of the “platforms” for his documenta in Lagos. And let’s not digress. I bring that up to demonstrate what has changed since the London keynote on African art criticism. Has criticism itself improved as a practice and an institution? I would say probably not. Perhaps in Southern Africa, but not so in West or East Africa. A great deal still has to be done, and that will require another conversation to explore. Something to look into: an online forum on the subject of art criticism in Africa, with the participation of people on the continent.

CURATING CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN ART Olabisi Silva

I am a Nigerian Brazilian. My great-grandfather came to Nigeria after the abolition of slavery. I went to Mainland Preparatory Primary School and then to the UK for second‑ ary school, and stayed there till I went to school in France. It all started in France, where I was studying French actually. I wanted to be an in‑ terpreter or translator and get a job at the UN or in the diplomatic corps and travel the world. While studying at the University of Dijon, I took electives in art history, discov‑ ered Picasso, discovered African classical art, continued searching, and decided I didn’t want to work with dead artists and work my way towards contemporary art. Then I did an MA in curating of contemporary art at the Royal College of Art in London and went on from there apart from the normal way—through books. I have made traveling across Africa, meeting artists and engaging directly with them, an important part of my curato‑ rial process. I had lived in Europe almost all of my life, and I didn’t want to retire or die there. Also, I wanted to really learn more about Africa and African art firsthand. The books I was reading abroad were not giving me the information I needed. I knew Africa was not a country but many countries, many cultures, many histories, many, many, many things. So, professional curiosity and personal reasons brought me back. Curating goes beyond “this work looks nice and let’s show it” to developing a thesis or thematic that undergoes a certain amount of research and questioning. You have to develop your conceptual or theoretical framework, read widely, look at the work of several artists, and then choose the ones you want to work with. I am not into big exhibi‑ tions. I prefer smaller, intimate exhibitions that allow both parties to learn and benefit from each other. I do have a huge folder of images, of information, and I continue to follow their career and interact with them as often as possible. The starting point for what I do is usually the artists’ work. I feel they have so much to teach us and we have so much to learn, it just seems the natural way to build that knowledge. One of the challenges is the artist actu‑ ally understanding the curatorial process. This is, most often, not the case as curating is

276  Olabisi Silva

a very new practice here in Nigeria even though every other person is a “curator.” The government involves artists in nothing. Nigerian art students face a dire situation on one hand, but with the few teachers that are trying to do things differently there is a glimmer of hope. They are not doing much, unfortunately. The situation in the art schools is pretty dire, as we all know, so I don’t know if we have to repeat the obvious. The situation with art history etc. is also dire, what can I say. But it’s about the educa‑ tion or lack of it. It is chronic, and I suffer from it all the time. They are not responding to the dynamism of contemporary African art. But I lie, as a few are trying. I just came back from Accra, and I’ve got to say big congratulations to the lecturers at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi. Seven of their MFA students presented to us, and I am so excited about what they are doing. They are demonstrating how to beat the system at its own game and delivering outstanding results. So maybe it is not about the system—it is about the people in the system. I worry about this trendy phrase—“art for social change,” “art for national devel‑ opment” and all that. If the artist feels that this is what they want to do, so be it. But sometimes it can be overwhelming in Nigeria and across Africa when art is only related to social change, political activism, etc. It means many, many other possibilities are ignored. For example, at the Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA), we have done exhibitions that engage society—Like a Virgin, for example, or even The Progress of Love. The curatorial premise was not social change, but it was implicit in the output. But first and foremost, I wanted to engage with the art. People are not reading. Most people cannot write. That is an area that CCA, Lagos wants to focus on, and I know I will have to spend time coaxing people to write. I don’t know what to say or do. I have curated my most important exhibitions. But the two that stand out are Moments of Beauty with Ojeikere and The Progress of Love. The first because it allowed me to ask and learn a lot about Nigeria and Africa. I love that place where Ojeikere is situ‑ ated temporally, as it allowed me to look back at what went before and to look forward at what is going on now. That temporal mobility is fascinating as well as confusing. The Progress of Love allowed me to go beyond the normal format of the exhibition contextu‑ ally, temporally, and spatially. The new focus of artistic development is in Lagos and the Diaspora. I am interested in how artists use food in contemporary art. So, I would be drawn to an artist engaging in that thematic. It could be an artist with a solid professional history but little visibility. It could be a new way of engaging with a new media in a particular space. And so on. Open your eyes and your minds as artists. Be extremely curious about everything. But going to school helps, too. Yes, there are independent initiatives and workshops. Since the beginning of curatorial courses, there have been those who say it is not necessary and those who say it is. I would say it would be better to have both, and the individual should choose. I did a course, and I don’t regret it for one tiny little second. It was bril‑ liant. I learned what would have taken me at least five years or more in just two years. It has allowed me to do everything that I do today. Would it have been the same if I did a two-week or one-month program? I don’t know. Maybe yes, maybe no.

Curating Contemporary African Art  277

I find it difficult to prescribe anything to artists. They are free spirits. I don’t believe in certain rules and regulations for artists. They must have the freedom to choose. As a curator, I defend my right to do the exhibitions and projects that I want to do. I know somebody asked about writing and publishing. We have produced a mono‑ graph of Ojeikere, and we want to bring out pocket monographs of younger artists, the first of which has been produced. With regard to failed artists as curators, I was never an artist. And this is a joke that applies all over the world. Even I used to say it, but I have grown up now, and no, it is not the case, especially in the African context. All the artists that I know who are art histo‑ rians and curators and writers are making a big sacrifice, giving up their artistic practice because somebody just has to do the work. While those in the Diaspora have more opportunities, many African artists are in need of visibility. I was talking to Eddie Chambers the other day and asking him where all the Black British artists have gone—Claudette Johnson, Maria Amidu, Virginia Nimarkoh, etc. Visual artists in their totality must begin to realize the battle ahead of them and join forces to make sure they get what is due to them. As taxpayers, you are entitled to ask the government to consider your needs. As someone who lived for a long time in the UK, and whose MA thesis was titled “Black inVisibility in the Visual Arts,” I understand the challenges that artist in the Dias‑ pora have gone through. As a curator of African heritage, I faced it too. And as someone living on the continent, I understand the challenges that artists are facing here. So, work needs to be done on all fronts. When I talk with my younger colleagues, one aspect we seem to all agree on is that it is no longer acceptable to sit in a nice library in the West writing about African Art. You have to do the fieldwork. You need to spend time on the continent. You need to engage the artists where they make the work. Other than that, you are whistling in the wind. I don’t really like isolating Africa. I think it is redundant though I appreciate that it may be useful sometimes. I think that discussion came up with The Progress of Love, where they wanted the word “Africa” to come into it somehow. The draft title was Love and Africa, but my co-curator Kristina Van Dyke and I rallied against this, and we also included non-African artists. I think it depends on how and why you use it. If I want to call myself or an exhibition “African,” then one should engage with the term. I remember a born-again friend and colleague almost pleading that I should not do the Like a Virgin exhibition. And apparently CCA was under state security surveillance during that exhibition in case it caused a religious uproar. Looking to Africa for art is becoming more acceptable. The Tate is making a big noise about their African program. Smooth is going to the hood.1 I get requests for information from almost all the major museums in the world. Every single one of them, apart from MoMA. BBC is doing a program. These all add up to more visibility. Young doctoral candidates are now specializing in contemporary African art. This means more scholar‑ ship. There’s so much going on, so, so much. We were left to determine our own parameters for the Venice Biennale. They gave us a lot of past information so as to have a context. I think that I prefer national pavilions if a country has the wherewithal to do it. The interesting thing with the 2013 edition is that although there weren’t many African artists, I can’t fault the ones they had. That was the

278  Olabisi Silva

first time I saw the work of Papa Ibra Tall and so many works. They were exquisite. The same with Brouabre’s work, and Ojeikere looked incredible in the space. It was the first work as you entered the Arsenale, and over fifty or more images. Stunning. And in the end, Angola won. What more can I say! An important landmark exhibition was When Attitude Becomes Form, which I call the representation in Venice. A must-see for everyone. But I imagined seeing it in the 1960s and having a feeling that it signaled a change in art making and its presentation. A landmark exhibition is, of course, Magicien de la Terre and, in the UK, The Other Story by Rasheed Araeen or even The New Energies exhibition that El organized in the early 1990s in Lagos. Maybe it is not for me to judge and for others to decide. In Lagos I am asked to write something on an artist I have never met, never seen the work in real life, never visited the studio. That is not serious. I would think the same with an artist. There needs to be mutual interest. As an artist, you should also get to know my work and decide if you want to work with me. And if you do, then you need to know why. Not just because one has done this or that. If you and a curator have been engag‑ ing, and an opportunity arises to work on a project of mutual interest, then why not. I have had artists say “I am working on such and such,” and I tell them I will not be able to work with them because it is outside of my scope of research or interest and I would not be the best person to work with. How does one give their best when they are not interested? My most important exhibition could be a project, a conference, or a publication. It does not have to be an exhibition in the traditional sense. That would be restrictive. Some artists are pandering to tastes and forces that they believe will get them ahead. But others are responding to their realities. In the final analysis, the wheat will separate from the chaff. It becomes obvious, but of course a few will pull it off. As the contem‑ porary African art scene grows and matures, artists will understand that they have to be true to themselves. There are many artists who are experimenting and open to new ideas. When I first arrived in Lagos, I used to be accused of everything, of trying to get artists to do this and that. The battle to just get photography accepted as part of the visual arts was tough. But I thought it was unacceptable that photography was not, when some of the most interesting artists were using photography. The same is being done for performance art, video art, and sound art. I maintained that my role was to provide a platform which would allow artists to push the boundaries of their work. I have never told an artist what to do; otherwise, I might as well just do it myself. Who makes the value judgment about what great work is? What are the parameters for great work? I believe that the creative agenda should be driven by artists. Maybe I come from the generation when that was the case. I was working on a two-person exhibi‑ tion and the artist asked me the theme. I said no, there is no theme, that I am waiting for the artist to create the work and we have a discussion about the work and the ideas, and I will write my text around that. So, it is not for me to say, “I want to do an exhibition about this or that, therefore make work about it.” With a new commission, you can ask an artist if they are interested in responding to a theme if it fits well with them. Curating Africa, is that still possible today? How do you curate fifty-five countries without subsuming individual specificities into one homogeneous entity? But I like curat‑ ing Africa in a way that allows for an open-ended discussion. I always find it difficult to list challenges. I think the word that comes more readily to mind is “hurdles,” obstacles

Curating Contemporary African Art  279

that have to be overcome and that come with working in an area that is still growing. Getting one’s proposals accepted by institutions, getting that job you know you can do with your eyes closed. Getting the funding you require, and when you do, it is not enough. So, nothing major that most people haven’t experienced. At the time they seemed insurmountable, but now I consider them part of the rich experience one goes through. My first exhibition was with three to four Nigerian artists in London—Ray Soko, Ad‑ emola Akintola (I think), and Iyabo Roberts. I can’t remember if there were more. In a gallery in Highgate in London around 1989–1990. I can barely remember. But I laugh now as I remember youthful enthusiasm. Thinking back now, it was not curating—didn’t know much about it back then. I think the response was good as there was a good turn‑ out. God, I can barely remember. And, lastly, if you visit The artists alone can’t be the sole determinant of the parameter of great art. Creating a canon is much more complex. But also I don’t want to set the parameters with regard to what the role of an artist in society should be. If an artist wants to create for society, so be it; if they want to create for themselves, so be it. Each artist has to determine their role in society, what kind of work they want to do, and the objectives they want to reach. I can’t prescribe their role. There are some artists that are super academic: does that mean they don’t have a place? Just like some art is more suitable to the art context, you have some writing that is principally for the academic sector and other writing that is journalistic. I believe in a plurality of possibilities and for the individual to know where and how they position themselves and to be able to articulate the how and the why. Just a few words on Storr’s Venice. Unless I am mistaken, it was the first time that an African section/pavilion was being brought into the framework of the inner sanctuary— for want of another word—of the Biennale. As a biennale project. Also, Storr didn’t choose the project. There was a jury, and I was one of those on the jury, and he didn’t have any say in the final decision. With regard to the other and earlier presentations at the biennale, they were Collateral Events of the Biennale and not part of the official exhi‑ bition or of individual country pavilions. They were part of the OFF. As you know, there are hundreds of exhibitions that take place during this period. So that is the difference. Sartorial Moment is a very special exhibition as it was the first attempt to show a wider selection of work that exists in the incredible archive of Pa Ojeikere. Everyone (almost!) knows the “Hairstyle” series, which is internationally critically acclaimed. And this series has been shown around the world for over twenty years to the exclusion of the rest of his work. His “Headgear” (head-tie) series was also being shown, but nothing else. When I started to do research in his archive, it was just incredible, especially the portrait photographs at the University of Ibadan. It really captured the essence of a place, a period, and a people, and it was so, so beautiful. So, in 2010, it was an opportunity to organize an exhibition to celebrate fifty years of independence of Nigeria and 17 other African countries, sixty years of Ojeikere’s photographic practice, and his eightieth birth‑ day. It was a moving moment when he entered the gallery and saw the exhibition. The exhibition contains about fifty images from his Portraits, Hairstyles, and Headgear series. It is a portrait of how the people presented themselves through dress. We are honored at CCA, Lagos, that the exhibition is touring and reaching a wider audience. We welcome suggestions for its continuing tour. The obstacle to good curating in our museums is first of all the lack of good museums in Africa. Most of them are dated and not fit for twenty-first-century artistic practice.

280  Olabisi Silva

All the human resources needed are unavailable—the art historians, writers, curators, and administrative staff. The expertise is not there and needs to be trained. In Nigeria, they believe artists should run the museums. The place is full of artists, but are they art historians, writers, or curators? If they are there, then they should just get on with the job. I believe we should start off with committed and dedicated people, artists or cura‑ tors, or administrators. Also, somebody asked about training and developing these skills. The institutions which should be learning grounds for aspiring or trainee art historians, writers, and curators are just not there. At CCA, we do that not only in the organization but also in the annual international art program which just finished in Accra. We had two young curators—from Zimbabwe and Uganda—on the five-week program working alongside nine visual artists from six to seven African countries. We had one curator in the same program in 2012 from South Africa. These curators have the opportunity to interact with up to twenty international curators and artists during the five-week period and organize the final presentation. We desperately need more curators based on and around the continent. I do form part of what I would call a “first generation” of curators. Most of the wellknown African curators are my contemporaries, and we all started to work at the same time. But being based in England and following very closely the Black Arts Movement, if I was to have a mentor it would be Eddie Chambers. He was extremely supportive of my early activities and is still to this date, and I also supported him any way I could. But he was my sounding board. Another curator whose work I admired and still do is the Turkish curator Vasif Kortun, whose work I followed from day one. Funnily, I have only met him for two minutes, and I don’t think he knows who I am even today. I follow his work online. I just love his huge contribution to turning around the art scene in Istanbul and making it the global art destination it is now. I wish that kind of revolution for Nigeria. I also followed very closely the work of American art historian and curator Kellie Jones. I really love her work as well as that of photograph historian and curator Deb Willis. Another curator is the Swedish curator Maria Lind. Also, ear‑ lier on, Iwona Blaswick, who was my curatorial teacher at Royal College and is now director of Whitechapel Gallery in London. I loved her passion for art and curating. It was so infectious. Today, I quite like the work of South African Gabi Ngcobo and Ethiopian Meskerem Assegued. On nudism, that is a problem in these parts and in many conservative countries. But it is being accepted more and more and is becoming more visible in contemporary art—at least in the West, where there are fewer taboos and the artists fight against censorship. We haven’t reached that stage yet. But you have to do what you have to do. For me the problem comes when it is done with little or no critical underpinning, no solid frames of reference, and no engagement with visual theory. That leaves me perplexed because you cannot raise your work and your ideas above the salacious interpretations. I’ve had so many funny experiences with artists and nudity in Nigeria, and I have yet to hear any artist convince me of the value of the work they have done. An example when I first came back to Lagos, a photographer excitedly showed me his work of nude males. I was intrigued because he was saying one thing and I was seeing and reading another. It was a funny and interesting moment, because I thought he was dealing with the discourse of the Black male body and homosexuality. He was horrified that his work could be read so. In fact, there was confusion and distress on his face. And on mine too, because I

Curating Contemporary African Art  281

didn’t realize this was not a topic of discussion in Nigeria. Then I whipped out the book on Rotimi Fani Kayode (pity I didn’t have the Mapplethorpe book) to illustrate what I was trying to say and to tell him that there is a whole discourse on the body, so what is his position? I think this was all too much for the poor young man. I think he is now a fashion photographer. But I continue to see this and have had that kind of work shown at CCA, Lagos—by Mudi Yahaya. I showed it in the gallery not because I particularly liked that body of work but because I wanted to continue to encourage debate around the body, including the nude. It is a subject that still needs a lot of discussion. So, basi‑ cally, you need to just do the work you want to do, and one day people will engage in it. An interesting discussion I had with Pa Ojeikere (he does have some semi-nude works from the seventies in his archive) was about nudes because it is a subject matter he wants to return to. His family is not too keen, but I have been telling him that if he does it, he should push (his own) boundaries. We were talking about nudes of older women, his contemporaries, and he can bring the same strategy and form that he brought to bear on his Hairstyle and Headgear series to bear on the works through the use of lighting and taking their backs. I think it would be incredible. He is still looking for women to agree to the project. As we all know, professional curatorial practice is very young here in Africa, and eve‑ ryone who organizes an exhibition signs the curator after their name. So, who am I to say who is and who is not? But the young ones to watch are Temitayo Ogunbiyi of Uzorka Projects and also The publications we hope to do at the CAA will not be free, but we will make them as affordable as possible. For the quality, we will rise to the color challenge and sit on the printers or print abroad. “No Shaking” on quality! For now, our market is local. We have done lots of talks and lectures on artist/curator relationships, but as we are not a commercial gallery we have not done lectures on artist/gallery relationships as that is not our forté. On curating Africa, we may organize a special seminar and invite a few other curators. It will be fascinating. But for me nowadays it means locality and specificity. We need to bring the local more into what we do and write about Africa. It can no longer be this abstract notion, this non-place. When somebody says, “I was in Africa,” I ask where exactly because I want to know where they are talking about. So, whatever I do, I now locate myself in a specific place or region, which is Sabo, Lagos, Nigeria, West Africa. That is my starting point, my point of engagement, and my way of presenting myself to the world. The combination of contemporary and African as a label. We all use it as if there is some unspoken consensus. But is there? That it is a category of art that we all know when we see it. But do we? That it has been defined to the point that it exists. But has it, and does it exist? I don’t prefer anything. I am just trying to learn/understand the root of the term. The coinage and its history. And when did African art become contemporary? What is the historical trajectory of the term? And outside of the temporal signification of the term “contemporary,” what is contemporary about African art? Where and how is that reflected? I like the idea of conscious redirection of our language: one that goes from the general continental African art to the specific, comparative analysis of the work of contemporary artists Ato Delaquis and Ablade Glover, for example.

282  Olabisi Silva

I am sure there are scholars out there who are engaging deeply with these questions. But it also gives those grappling with it an opportunity to learn or put their points of view across. So, for example, I am interested in how we can go from what I call the “general/theoretical/abstract/conceptual,” to specific narratives about art in say Ghana or about artists like Ablade Glover and Ato Delaquis. And that came about because in another discussion elsewhere I suggested that Delaquis was influenced by Glover, and Rikki Wemega-Kwawu said no, they were (almost) contemporaries and worked on the same themes in a similar yet very different way. I found this fascinating, and lamented that I did not know of any comparative analysis of the two artists either in textual or curatorial format. This led to me worry that this almost singular way of talking about art in fifty-five different countries as if it were one means that locality and its specificities are lost in the writing of art practice and history on the continent. Yesterday, I did a studio visit with a young artist whose work I have been following for about three or four years, and it was exciting to talk with him about the development of his work. The different events, places and people that impact his work. We can’t just start to define “contemporary” or African art without these direct and specific engagements. And there are many artists in this transitional stage in Nigeria and across the continent. But it is complex, and not enough work and writing and debating and publishing are be‑ ing done. At the CAA, we are starting to publish modest pocket-sized monographs that will capture at least some of these changes and the works of some of these younger artists without which the discussion on contemporary African art may remain in the theoretical and even in the Diaspora. As we attempt to define contemporary art in Africa, I do find it problematic and at times even confusing. There are few if any places where you give definite illustrations to support your thesis. I believe this should be done right at the beginning. But my main question is why do some people put Post-Colonial African Art in brackets after Contem‑ porary Art? What does that mean? That they are the same, interchangeable, that they are different, or that one is a continuation of the other? Sorry if I am asking the obvious, but I would still like clarification. On the one hand, I was also very excited about the assertion that contemporary African art can only define itself through vigorous experimentation, which I agree with, though I am less inclined to prescribe how. While I definitely think artists don’t look enough to the past, I don’t think it’s possible to make “real” contempo‑ rary art without delving into the past or that you are copying some western parameters by trying to do things differently. Further, there is the idea that Africa didn’t experi‑ ence “Modernism.” I do hope that I misunderstood, because that is totally preposterous. Where does that put artists like Aina Onabolu, Akinola Lasekan, Ben Enwonwu, Eraboh Emokpae, Bruce Onobrakpeya, Uche Okeke, Yusuf Grillo, and Kolade Osinowo, and in photography J.A. Green, Dotun Okubanjo, J.D. Okhai Ojeikere, Don Barber, Sunmi Smart Cole, and Jide Adeniyi Jones, and in the contemporary Uche James Iroha, Amaize Ojeikere, T.Y. Bello, Emeka Okereke, and Abraham Ogbohase? These people didn’t just jump from traditional to postmodern to contemporary and bypass the Modern. Dare I say I am confused about imposing definitions on the boundaries of contempo‑ rary African art? I guess that confusion comes in what I feel are sweeping generalizations not grounded in specifics, specifics that indicate maybe some timelines that can be used as points of departure/engagement. I find it a bit problematic that some people are speaking in an atemporal manner, not engaging the when or the where. So, for example, if we take

Curating Contemporary African Art  283

western modern art roughly as the period from 1850 to 1950 or 1960 (with a pivotal mo‑ ment with Picasso’s Les Demoiselle d’Avignon) and contemporary art in the late 1960s and dates being highlighted are 1968 (first wave), and 1989, another landmark moment with the fall of the Berlin wall. So, my understanding is not only temporal in the sense of the now, the present, but also in the aesthetic choices one makes in artistic production, how one approaches the expanded field of artistic practice and contextual engagement (which for some time came under the rubric of postmodernism). So how and when does that manifest across the African continent? I don’t believe a singular “African” narrative is possible leading to a history of “African” contemporary art. Hence, my problem with the appellation. As a compromise, I would prefer to use “Contemporary Art from Af‑ rica.” That allows one to engage with contemporary art first and foremost and to break loose from the shackles of the terms “contemporary” or “modern” or “traditional” Af‑ rican art. If not, it means that we feel we are less who we are unless it is proclaimed, highlighted, etc. So what is contemporary art then in Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, etc.? When we are talking about contemporary (and not time, please, but art), we are signaling or recognizing an important shift. What is that shift, and when was it? Who was it, and where was it? In Nigeria, we claim Aina Onabolu and his portrait of Lagos socialite Mrs. Spencer Savage 1906 as a landmark moment in the modern art history of Nigeria (though it wasn’t called Nigeria then). This shift with painting oil on canvas from the traditional to the modern (a big rupture from what was traditional art) continued apace contextually and aesthetically with Enwonwu, Zaria Rebels, the Uli School, etc., which I considered essentially part of the moderns. However, with Uli another shift seemed to have hap‑ pened with the younger generation of artists, I would say from Olu Oguibe’s generation, but it could have been earlier where they became more experimental. Or maybe it began with El Anatsui’s work. And that shift, I would say, started and stopped because of mili‑ tary dictatorship and the detrimental incursion of the khaki boys into academia, which probably is the beginning of the contemporary. So one would have to look closely at the late 1980s and early 1990. Another person to look at here would be the Junkman of Africa, and the contemporary is gaining ground in Nigeria with the plethora of artistic practices and thematic engagements in all media, whether painting (which has been the slowest or maybe the least documented recently though the most presented because it sells), photography, video, sound, performance, etc. But very little is being written that is critical about contemporary art in Nigeria. In South Africa, there is much more vigorous engagement, and I would say the pivotal moments are of course the end of Apartheid and the First Johannesburg Biennale culminating with the Second Johannesburg Bien‑ nale. This brought international art to South Africa and brought South Africa into an expanded field of artistic practice, bringing to the fore the work of so many artists, in‑ cluding Kendall Geers, Bernie Searle, Tracey Rose, Penny Siopsis, and Santu Mofokeng, an openness that continues with a younger generation of artists, including Nandipha Mntambo, Zanele Muholi, Mary Sibande, and Nicholas Hlobo. And now even the next generation is coming out. But their work is coming out of a particular African experience which can be presented as part of a Nigerian or Ethiopian or Egyptian experience. It has to be engaged on its own terms, and South African artists and writers have done that. Do you notice that when talking about art from South Africa, it is called “South Afri‑ can art,” not “African art”—unless, of course, it is an institution that finds it convenient to substitute it for the whole of Africa—whereas when you talk about Ghanaian art or

284  Olabisi Silva

Nigerian art or Senegalese art, people don’t see anything wrong in calling it “African art.” I look forward to more comments and enlightenment around contemporary artis‑ tic practice in different parts of the continent. This is of importance to me as a curator of contemporary art focusing on a geographical region that happens to be Africa. But I always emphasize that I am first and foremost a curator of contemporary art (without geographical specification) but with a focus on the African region. However, I wouldn’t know what contemporary African art was if it hit me in the face. The nuance may seem small, but it makes a huge difference to how I approach artists and to my curatorial practice. Tinuomi Afilaka’s work looks absolutely wonderful. I would say that she is one of those artists who can fit into many different categories depending on the viewer’s or writer’s point of reference or “cultural capital.” The same indeterminacy arose with Lou‑ ise Bourgeois, whom I would call a thoroughly modern contemporary artist. Or is it the other way around, a thoroughly contemporary modern artist? I think this fits better. I have the same conflict when I engage with Ojeikere’s work, and feel uneasy in catego‑ rizing him as purely modern or purely contemporary because he and his works exist in both temporalities. And many artists fall into that category, into that liminal space, and that in itself is incredible and speaks to the quality and relevance of their practice. There is a timelessness to it. But how many artists can achieve that? It is not everyone. But my interest is less in this artist being traditional, modern, or contemporary and more in understanding and engaging our contemporaneity and its artistic markers. Engaging the future but not to the exclusion of the past. However, because of her age and her presumed trajectory, I would hesitate to call Afilka a contemporary artist, but I do acknowledge her working and contributing to this moment, to this present, and to this now. These are the unresolved parameters of our time, at least to me. Take a look at this link: www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22622063. It is an interesting commentary about how, when African artists transition from being African to interna‑ tional artists, their market value increases. Wow! Is that now a criterion for artists from Africa? Is it the price that determines the greatness or importance of a work of art? El Anatsui is cited as an example. The answer is an open question. Note 1 This statement was recorded before Smooth moved to the Museum of Modern Art as a curator of Painting and Sculpture.

WRITING AFRICAN ART Suzanne Blier

How did I get interested in African Art? I was 19, quit university, and went to Benin in the Peace Corps (where I resided in the Yoruba city of Save/Chabe). My project was not art (I dug wells, helped build schools, and raised animals) but I had studied art history before I left and when I returned and started reading about African art, I came to the re‑ alization that nearly everything that had been written about African art was full of holes (and frankly prejudice) and decided then to dedicate my life to see if I could play a role in helping to change that. Frankly, the other side of this was that I had fallen in love with Africa too—the people, the cultures, the warmth, the idea of family, the food, the sun light, the complexity, the history. Then when I returned it was simply a question of fin‑ ishing up my undergraduate degree and finding a place that would take md for the Ph.D. Since then, I have tried to keep in my sights the idea of how important this experience was/is to me and how important it is to give back. The “WorldMap/AfricaMap” project is in my own way a bit like building a school; e.g., it has helped provide the infrastructure for lots of different kinds of projects by individuals everywhere. On Vodun and why I chose that subject. It is a bit complicated. First of all, my aim was to do a short article and then go on to something on history and Dahomey, but the pro‑ ject wouldn’t let me do that. It simply grew and grew and insisted on becoming a book. Second, I struggled for months to find a frame (intellectual and geographic) for what this project was about, and in the end, I realized it was in part around this complex subject. It was not where I began, but in some ways, like art, I think as authors we need to listen carefully to where our material wants us to go and simply have the patience to follow it where that might take us. How do you find out about what actually happened in the past, to whom do you talk, in what languages, how to address metaphors, how do oral traditions influence the re‑ search process, and how to assure one’s interpretation of oral tradition is correct, e.g. not “lost in translation”? Let me take up the history part first before the language and oral history part. In Africa various methods have been developed over time to keep tract of history; in some cases, these can be co-joined with more broadly acknowledged forms of scientific dating. So, for example, in Dahomey, most every event and art object is linked

286  Suzanne Blier

to the reign of a particular ruler, all of which have specific reign dates. I did a spatial history of the city (who lives where) asking at the same time, “during the reign of which king did your ancestor arrive here. This allows one to date key urban planning changes. One can also look at things such as songs or even Ifa (Fa) divination verses where certain things are attributed to certain rulers. I also was able to trace the residences of each of the early queen mothers and where they came from, coupling that with the reign in which key royal temples were erected. With that data I was able to argue that the early history of the kingdom was quite different than what had once been imagined. I published the latter in a 1985 essay called “In the Path of the Leopard: Motherhood and Majesty in Early Danhome.” In my work in Ife, I took advantage both of scientific dating (TL and RC dating), as well as early king lists that illuminate the series of kings on the throne in the early history of the throne. Archaeologists have undertaken studies that accord a certain average reign length period that has worked for kingdoms in this area. This allows one to take the name (and objects) of a given known king and get some broad estimate of his likely reign period. Finally, many families here (and elsewhere) maintain detailed oral histories of events of the past. Knowing what site a work came from provides data on specific lineages that have long been identified with these sites; these families often have key information in the form of songs, histories, and artifacts. Evaluating all these data together and against each other can be quite informative. But like any kind of scholarship, it is as much an art as a science which is why in my own work, where possible, I try to provide the names of who told me what so that later-era scholars can go back and re-interview people. Generally, once I have found good sources, I ask them the names of others they would recommend. The more one knows about a place, the more people will be interested in providing one with more information. Where possible I try to go back to a site multiple years. I also spend a lot of time simply walking around and looking. It is amazing how much unfolds in that process. The trick is constructing an argument when one has competing information. I have tended in that situation to place the art or architecture in the center of whatever is happening and use that to assess the best fit. I also try to ask who/what has the biggest stake in one or another view of what is in play. On language: Each context is different. When I was first preparing to go to Africa in the Peace Corps, after passing the French fluency exam, they had me learn Fulfulbe, the Fulani language, because they planned to send me to the northern Benin area around Nikki. The process of language learning then was in part memorization of set dialogues and then moving on from there. Alas, once I had arrived, I was instead sent to a Yoruba town, with a certain Fon presence as well. Over the two years I picked up elements of both languages, more as languages of daily interaction along with French. For my doctoral work my advisor chose the Batammaliba (Tamberma, Somba) area for my work (in those days that is how it was done). I brought over whatever language materials I could get ahold of, but basically, I had to learn Litammali from scratch. Most of that learning took place at night when with the aid of an assistant I transcribed and translated from French all of the interviews I had taped that day. I learned quite a bit that way. In the Dahomey kingdom, there were more language materials available (dictionaries and dialogues). In this case I hired someone to come every morning at 6:30 to teach me, and that plus the daily translations of the interviews and ceremony texts from Fongbe added to the insight. In the end, I wish I knew each of the African languages of the areas where I

Writing African Art  287

have worked better. Yet, for those fluent in a language there are different vantages. In the end I try to go back to the object, allowing it a voice. Is there a fit? Why did the artist or architect do X and not Y. Does a given interpretation offer real insight? On gender and its role. These are really important questions. I’ll mostly address this vis-a-vis theory rather than say personal history, since I like many people here feel that gender in part defines who we are but is not by any stretch the only determinant. On theory – here you get to a key question, which I will also read in part as one about socalled “meta theory” versus what one might call “local theory.” I am not a scholar who believes that all theorizing of African art needs to be based on the locality; in other words where applicable I am happy to explore certain issues in African art and architecture from the vantage of broader theoretical engagements. My book The Anatomy of Architecture came to the works in part through Heidegger and phenomenology around ques‑ tions of “how is architecture actually lived.” In my book on Vodun I sought to address this in part around questions of the subaltern (Spivak and others), in terms of the impact of the slave trade locally on the citizens of this area. Regardless of the larger question I have always tried to keep the art/architecture and local framing strong enough at the core so that anyone who wants to can simply “drop” the import of a larger theoretical engagement. Not every African art scholar has agreed with my take on this (there is still a pretty large school of Herskovits-based cultural relativists, and I appreciate what they do too). My point is in part that African art and architecture are complex enough and intellectually powerful enough so that any theory that pretends to be global (whether one is talking about Levi-Strauss, Marx, or Lacan) should be able to “give back” key results. In other words, African art can and should be a “lab” where the validity of a given theory can have play. Part of my reasoning is also that if we do not allow African art and culture into the “market place of ideas” these traditions, and our scholarship will be further marginalized. This takes me directly to gender. I tend to grapple with theory (both local and meta) when the need arises as I am writing about something and two current projects have been about gender. I’m studying Dahomey amazons. I have been largely unhappy with Western Gender theory in terms of applicability with the important exception of per‑ formance and film theory and to some degree queer theory. I want to find a more apt theoretical frame in Africa itself if not in Dahomey (Benin) than somewhere else. I wrote a paper on Moremi, the famous Ife woman who at various times was married to (or in relationships) with both Obalufon and Oranmiyan, e.g., c.1300. A modern sculpture of her was recently commissioned for the palace. In thinking about this work, I also was unhappy with the kind of gender theories I was familiar with from the West and a student recommended I look more closely at the work that Nigerian women who are working in the field of literature have been publishing. And, in these writings, I did indeed find much food for thought that I have introduced into that essay (among others Nnaemeka 2005 and Connell 2007). Histories such as that of Moremi, I argue, challenge longstanding views of African women as largely powerless (passive, voice‑ less) in pre- and post-colonial political matters. Obioma Nnaemeka in the introduction to her 1997 anthology, The Politics of Mothering: Womanhood, Identity, and Resistance in African Literature, focuses our attention on the primacy of women’s relational roles in Nigeria, through their positions of indexicality as defined in part through idi‑ oms of motherhood, sisterhood, and daughterhood. Oyewumi’s emphasis on kinship,

288  Suzanne Blier

and ideas of identity extending beyond the individual (1997, 2003) offers a somewhat complementary vantage. Also insightful in my view is Nnaemeka’s focus (2003) on “Nego-feminism,” or what she highlights as women’s active negotiatory functions, roles that simultaneously challenge and diffuse polarizing male-female, insider-outsider, public-private dichotomies as framed both on the ground and within larger theoreti‑ cal discourses. Nnaemeka’s emphasizes the cross-currency and non-linear elements of women’s roles in terms not only of temporality and spatiality but also spirituality and body engagement, insisting that one must move beyond narrow questions of sexuality in addressing these issues. Oyewumi similarly invites us (2005) to move beyond bio‑ logical functioning to take up the import of body-linked rituals as sites of activation. I would argue however with Oyewumi’s downgrading (1997) of the visual in favor of the oral (and auditory) and Nnaemeka’s distancing of the aesthetic (2003) in promoting social action, pointing out that, as here, visual forms serve vital often intersecting func‑ tions that carry core socio-political instrumentality. It is this kind of theoretical “work” that I would also love to see my colleagues in African art begin to explore, in part so that I can learn more from it. Archaeologists are now really transforming what we know about African history and we need to get man. Individual initiative seems to be more important than anything else. I would look at good models already in place and think about framing things in comple‑ mentary ways - the ICA Lagos is one place where a lot is happening. Artists have formed groups in other places too from Congo to South Africa. I have a number of friends and former students who are engaged in this endeavor. There are clearly opportunities but it takes organizational skills and a lot of initiative. Barbara - yes absolutely. And we should think more about this. I think organizations like CAA should play a greater role in this. Institutions such as the Clark Institute and the Getty can have a role as well. Again, it takes people and initiative and looking for opportunities to engage. On this kind of a directory (here I am talking about African art scholars) we could cre‑ ate a Google doc and publicize it here so that people could fill it in as they are interested. We would need to figure out what kinds of info we are looking for and create a “form” that fits with this. But the time is right to do this and frankly this is a great venue for it. That was such an amazing moment, at the Akire shrine in Ile-Ife. I was in this wonder‑ ful city to do research on the ancient arts and felt it was really important to learn as much as I could about ongoing art practices. I so admire what Moyo Okediji is doing with the women and their arts. The Akire and the other Obatala shrines in Ife represent some of the most wonderful painting traditions anywhere. What I also loved about the day I visited the Akire shrine was meeting Okediji and seeing him interacting with the women shrine painters. I also loved the temporality: all of a sudden, the various Obatala shrines were being painted and it transformed the city and its landscape. In the imagery that I saw there is also real history to excavate in understanding the early city. There is both a rich current history (with fabulous photography studios and work‑ shops in places like Lagos) and scholars are now unearthing historic photographs by some of the great earlier photographers who were on the ground, like Jonathan Green. Plus, there are lots of ongoing studios to explore for students on the ground there. Timing is critical for this latter so that they don’t get destroyed. Also, I should mention a wonder‑ ful scanning project that may be getting under way to help both preserve these works and keep them in Nigeria.

Writing African Art  289

For me I have always found that Africa is the place that is most interesting and chal‑ lenging (in a positive sense) from the vantage of intellectual engagement. There is some‑ thing about the interview process, the deep knowledge that so many people hold and the rich ways that metaphor mingles with straight talk that awakes in me a sense of real truth. Frankly I have probably as tough a set of issues on breaking boundaries here in the United States (and at my own institution) as I face from that vantage in Nigeria or elsewhere in Africa. And I have been really lucky in finding great people who have been interested in my projects in Africa and without whom I never would have been able to do the work. There is the question of cosmology and it being stripped from some of the discourse. I love to explore the ways in which people construct their worlds through art and architec‑ ture. There is a great short essay by Mary Douglas called “If the Dogon …” in which she posits that we would know very different things about the Nuer if they had been studied by Marcel Griaule and vice versa for the Dogon and Evans-Pritchard. So not everything has to be about cosmology but it is often a great frame to think around. I would love to think about the University of African Art as a place where we can also bring together writings or links, as in a new online library for African art. Stunning indeed. I don’t know where to start except to say, PLEASE write an article on this. Con‑ temporary African architecture is key, and there are some wonderful ways as you say that it intersects with key moments in history, colonial and otherwise. Please know that key journals in the field of architectural history are really interested in getting great articles from African scholars. If anyone is interested, please let me encourage you to do it. The architectural design of Demas Nwoko is stunning indeed. I don’t know where to start except to say we need scholars to write articles on his work. It is gratifying that Nwoko recently won an important award in architecture, and his work is receiving more attention. Contemporary African architecture is key, and there are some wonderful ways that it intersects with key moments in history, colonial and otherwise. Please know that key journals in the field of architectural history are really interested in getting great arti‑ cles from African scholars. We have often been led to believe that things are born and never grow or move. This is hardly true of art. I would love to get people to map this kind of thing (and the “World‑ Map” project site is one place it could be done well). I am also taken back to what was a great catalogue on the subject in the early 1980s, I think by Rene Bravmann called “Open Frontiers,” in which he showed how this was the case in the Cameroon Grasslands and in the Akan area. Basically, it helped early on to move scholars away from the notion of a singular identity for art works. In my doctoral defense at Columbia many years ago, I had to defend my use of the terms “architect” and “architecture” in my dissertation. Two of my examiners (from the school of architecture) there would have none of it). But I persisted and I insisted. If sculptors who craft works can also be artists (dah) then why is it any different for some‑ one who actually has the skill and knowledge to build things not be considered an archi‑ tect? I have similar problems with the term master mason. Yes, one may be that, but also one is involved in the practice of designing forms that must stand up. I think the problem came in at the point when architects were professionalizing and wanted to keep out those without specific kinds of training. But in Africa I am happy to include it all under this umbrella. I would also love someone to consider El Anatsui and others in his school (and

290  Suzanne Blier

elsewhere) as also engaged in the practice of defining architectural spaces: These are after all curtains, walls, and there are a number of outdoor works. Architecture is both art and craft in my view. It is a question of practice and intellectual grounding. Both are in play. Rosalyn Walker’s work is very important, as well as the work of others who have done groundbreaking work on the individual African artist. We need more. But at the same time, some feel that in Western art there has been too much of an emphasis on the individual artist as a genius (and questions of biography). They look to fields such as anthropology and African art because we tend to like to see forms in their broader sociopolitical, economic, and intellectual settings. In short it takes both an individual and a village to create the object. There are interesting questions around questions of generational transition (roughly 60 years) something that George Kubler talked about in The Shape of Time. At the same time my view of the continent tends to be a read in which I see much more cross-currency than some do. The Dogon and the Batammaliba speak languages related to Gur suggest‑ ing at some point that their ancestors were interactive. Egypt is also clearly part of Africa and from the earliest times people were crisscrossing the continent, so some of these ideas have also seen expression in many different places. There are too few of us in the field of African art. What is happening at the University of African Art is fabulous, one of the most exciting things I have seen in my career. I made a choice at some point that while some were working on contemporary issues and others were working on questions of the Atlantic diaspora, I wanted to see how I could push things back in time. I simply refused to believe that Africa was devoid of history, and for me if we were going to get a handle on it, African art would have to be at the center of that discussion. In short, I would love to see as many as possible working on an array of topics. Battles are ongoing to define individuality in the architecture of Africa. Speaking of which we need to find ways to promote more architecture schools on the ground in Af‑ rica. There are some more now than before but we still need to push for this. In some ways there is a division in Western art from the vantage of how things are theorized. I see this in several ways. One is generational. I think that each generation of scholars has to create the field anew, and part of that is putting to the side earlier ap‑ proaches. If one is fortunate to have a long career one witnesses this happening on multi‑ ple occasions—and it is all good in my view—meaning healthy for the field. The division between “contemporary” and “traditional” grows in part from that, but it is also based on the difficulty posed by exhibits such as Africa Explores (which was groundbreaking in key ways) when “popular arts” and “high arts” are simply forced into categories of proximity. There was and should be pushback. The same thing happens when different genres are put together. At the same time, I would love to see some of the newer artists reengaging with the earlier works, a kind Fred Wilson reclaiming of the museum around colonial issues. That would be a provocative intervention on many fronts. Collaboration in my view is a great way to go, for many different reasons (including educating those in the West working in areas such as Africa). In some ways I see what is happening in the museum world as a great model. Here I would note the ICA in Lagos and the recent collaboration with the Menil Foundation and Pulitzer (around the Progress of Love exhibition) also what the Zinsou Foundation is doing in Benin. And, some of you may know that the Dapper Foundation was installing an exhibition on masks in Senegal recently.

Writing African Art  291

If I was designing a program in Africa on the art, first I would hire you (Okediji) as the first Dean. And I would not focus on reading books and articles but I would send people out to look at things and to write about them. I have recently started a newish model here. It was tough for students but I had them create blogs and each week they had to write a 600-word essay on a different work on contemporary African Art. The class itself was about critiquing what they wrote, word by word in some cases. You had to develop a thick skin. But in my view learning how to think in a fresh way about subjects and learning how to write well is what is key. For this Africa has everything that is needed. By the way, the University of African Art could host papers for people to peer review here. One would get a sense of the way that different scholars come to their teaching and writing. Some Western countries are beginning to invest in African art and directing foreign aid in the arena promoting collaborations. Most now realize the imperative of communica‑ tion and broad engagement and frankly if we could make a case that this was critical and that both sides (and humankind) would benefit I think we could make the case. One tends to be nervous about supporting one single individual or institution that may or may not further the discussion. There is the challenge of African art being stereotyped as being ethnic and how we can reposition this. This is a tough one. I ended up spending the first class simply pointing out some of the biases framed around language etc. But I also worry that if we simply focus on the negative we reify the negative. We could focus instead on making African art come across as stunning not only in its visual power but also in the intellectual issues it raises from the vantage point of its cultural or political base. We need to hook them and then subvert the issues that are problematic. One of the most difficult aspects of African art history is language: it is a complicated “knot.” If one goes with English, you leave out not only African languages but also French and German. The same is true with every other kind of approach. The web offers us an opportunity to do more translations: and wouldn’t it be a great way to promote African languages (and teach them) by putting up key texts in both local languages (say Zulu) and English framed around the discussion of various works of art—something that one’s eyes can contemplate at the same time. We can define some milestones in art history. It is tough to do in part because one risks leaving out a lot. There was a CAA session that put together a history of art course in forty-five minutes. I have a sense of some key moments in the West, but that leaves out lots of key moments in Africa and it would be important to bring them together. Just off the top of my head, I would think we might include Picasso’s Demoiselle, Alain Locke on the New Negro, Melville Herskovits work on Dahomey, and Marcel Griaule on Dogon, Roy Sieber’s 1954 dissertation on African Art (the first in Art History), Ekpo Eyo in establishing the National Museum in Lagos. There are lots and lots of things we would need to put together. And, when we have a good list with names, dates, and places, I would be happy to map it (or show one of you how) and make it available online. We are all dabblers. Some of what we (all) do is insightful, some is incorrect, some is in‑ complete, and some is dated. I’m not worried. That is what it means to be human! I would love to see what the younger ones are doing. I am hungry for more and different voices. In some ways one can say that some of the best art—and scholarship—is about pro‑ test. I honestly can’t imagine the anti-apartheid movement succeeding without the artists

292  Suzanne Blier

who were involved. One could say the same thing about authors. So, yes, that frustration, anger, and agitation all can and should be central to this. I am really a social activist at heart. A lot of my work, even in African art, is framed with that in mind. Some channel that kind of engagement in one way, others in a different way. What is also true is that now (for the first time in many ways) we have the tools (meaning in large measure the web) so that more voices can find a place and that is good. Great artists are able to move forward and in ways that touch on the past at the same time. Sometimes Africa is at the “center” of the work; sometimes it is there as simply part of the fabric of what circumstances and cultural contexts one grew out of. There is no one answer. I am going to try to put together a list of contemporary African artists (going back to say 1950) with names, dates, and places of birth, school or youth, and recent location (city) and make this available for download for everyone. I will try to map it but it will also be available as a downloadable Excel sheet. Happy to include any others in the pro‑ ject who are interested. As I read it, the issue is getting more people from Africa into the arena of African art scholarship. The more voices we have in the field, the stronger it is for African art. On recent Diaspora artists from Africa. Absolutely. And, lots of African artists are working throughout the world. Some artists born, say in Brooklyn, are now working in Ghana. United States was the first place pretty much that African art became an acceptable (and indeed prized) subject in the art history discipline (we can thank not only Sieber but also Bob Thompson, and the person I studied with, Douglas Fraser among many others). In much of Europe, African art was (and is) within the framing of anthropology or another field. In Africa, in many places art history (and African art) was seen as less important than other fields and in part through external mandates (IMF, etc.) tended not to be promoted in the same kind of way. I think that will change. Books in the West cost too much money when distributed to Africa as a result of the international exchange rate, and you add to that the cost of fuel for boat fare or airfare, plus and they don’t make it where they should. Fortunately, some of that is now chang‑ ing. The UK just voted that anyone who receives government funding must put up their articles for free on the web so that others will be able to assess them. While this is directed at scientific study, it is also bleeding over to the Humanities, and it is increasingly go‑ ing to happen in the United States. Right now, my university (Harvard) is insisting that anything we write needs to go up on the website available to everyone. This is all a great move. The pressure is going in the right direction. One more point on publishing outside of Africa. Many of the presses with the means to do color photography have been outside the continent. Fortunately, with new media developments such as blogs and ebooks, that is no longer an issue so I look forward to lots more things coming from the continent.

INDEX

Note: Italic page numbers refer to figures and page numbers followed by “n” denote endnotes. Abati, O.I. 113 Abdel‑Khalek, Linda Kreft 204 Abimbola, W. 117 Abiodun, R. 2, 6, 12, 28, 54, 97, 115, 118, 121, 131, 132, 134; “The Future of African Art Studies: An African Perspective” 5; Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art 4 Abiyamọ (True Mother) 126–128 abo see obìnrin (female) The Absence of Paths 162 abstract art 209 Abstraction and Empathy (Worringer) 212 Achebe, Chinua 273; No Longer at Ease 269 Adeagbo, Georges 156 Adejumo, A. 133 Adejumo, Christopher 10 Ademuleya, B.A. 140 Adeoye, Silas Adelanke 143, 144 Adepegba, K. 8, 113 Adler, P.A. 70 The Adolph Gottlieb Foundation 225 adult education 61–63; chwuechgogy for 66; drivers of 65; humanistic learning theory in 65; Luo women, opportunity for 64; transformative dimension of 66–67; transformative effect of 67 aesthetic regimes 248–249 Aesthetics of Primitive Art (Blocker) 3–4 Aesthetics of the Oppressed (Boal) 253–254 affect theory 24 Afilaka, Tinuomi 284 Afolayan, Michael 204 Africa Explores 290

African American art 273; phenomenal advancements in 235 African American artists 136, 216, 235, 237 African Americans 239; racial oppression of 236 African antiquity, symbols and forms of 210 African art gallery, metamodernism as principle of 3 African art history 53, 56; comparable debate in 54; role of fieldwork in 54 African artistry 1 African arts 208; absence of 168n33; classical traditions of 209; contemporary practitioners of 210; as ethnic 268; European and American engagement with 14; exhibition of 152, 155; exoticization of 157; and indigenous worldviews 203; perception of 243; possibilities in cultural and artistic heritage 209; Western scholarship on 4; wooden sculpture of 217; writing of 285–292 “African Art Studies: The State of the Discipline” 4 “African Art Studies Today” (Drewal) 5 African‑based worldviews 202–205 “African Countries Pavilions” 156 African cultures 53, 55, 56; history of dialogue between Western and 58; peculiarities of 54 African curators 161, 163, 225, 280; see also curators African diaspora 152, 158, 159, 191, 273 Africanized Dutch wax prints 94, 95 African Pavilion 158, 159, 161, 165, 168n34

294 Index

African philosophy 53–56; remedial measure in 57 African Reflection: Art from Northeastern Zaire (Schildkrout and Keim) 74, 203, 204 “African Reflections: Connecting the Curriculum” 204 African studies 53 “Africa’s Rich Oral Traditions” 204 Africa World Review 226 Afro‑American pavilion 179 Afrofemcentrism 190–191 Afrofuturism 263 Afropop Worldwide 205 Agbára obìnrin 118 Agboles 104 Ajiboye, O.B. 141 ajijogun asa (inheritor of tradition) 138, 147 Àjíkẹ´ 115 Akan Adinkra symbol 222 Akinlana, Marcus 236 Akintola, Ademola 279 akọ see ọkùnrin (male) Akodi Orisa 140, 149n15 Akomfrah, John 163 àkùrò 103 Aláàágba 118, 129n14 Alaafin Abiodun Adegoriolu 94 Alaafin Sango 105 alapanṣapa 34 Alatise, Peju 164 Aldrich, Nelson W. 79 Alemani, Cecilia 160 Allotey, Fatimah 227 Alloway, Lawrence 153 All the World’s Futures (Enwezor) 159, 160, 165 Almeida, Bira 205 The Alpert Foundation 225 Amer, Ghada 156 American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) 73, 74, 80, 85, 90, 203 The Anatomy of Architecture 287 Anatsui, El 272, 274, 283, 284, 289 Anderson, Lois 204 andragogy 64, 67 Angola Pavilion 161, 162 Aniakor, Chike 206, 270; Reminiscences Revisited 202, 203 Anikẹ´ 115 Aniwura, Efunsetan 106 ankara 94, 95 anthropology 53–55, 59 Anti, Carlo 155 Appiah, Anthony 59n5 Araeen, Rasheed 273; The Other Story 278 Araism 142 Araism Art Movement 143 The Archive and the Repertoire (Taylor) 250

ars 20–21 “Art Criticism and Africa” 274 artforms 73, 74, 83, 88 artifacts: context as property of 20; controversial distinction between art and 53–54; property of 20; and tradition 19 artis 20–21 artistic creativity 131, 132, 134 “An Artist Speaks: The Contemporary Arts Amidst Changing Traditions” (Okédijí) 204 arts: among Yorùbá 119–121, 120; controversial distinction between artifact and 53–54; of creativity 131; as cultural and personal translation of reality 197; in curbing corruption 270; globalization in 219, 231; governmental and institutional sponsorship of 225; historians of 23–24; and material culture 28; necessity for 20; painting in Ghana 215–217; vs. philosophy 53; power of 212; Reminiscences Revisited (1996) 202; from South Africa 283; of sub‑Saharan Africa 188; woman and lover of 120–121; works of 212 Arts Council of the African Studies Association 205 artworks 1, 3, 73–76, 206, 218, 235–238, 240–243 asakasa 97 Aslanian, C.B. 65 Assegued, Meskerem 158, 280 Atiku, Jelili 146, 160 Aunt Jemima 240–241 Austin, Ramona 203 Authentic/Ex‑Centric: Conceptualism in Contemporary African Art (Hassan and Oguibe) 158 authenticity 15–20, 16, 17 Ayantayo, J.K. 101 ayé/physical world 202 Ayim, Nana Oforiatta 163 Ayoola, Gabriel 34 Ayorinde Aje 101, 105 Azande artists 76; artists in Belgian Congo 73; categories of socially critical art 81–83, 82; reactions to social/political events 85 Azande sanza 76, 81, 87 Babu Mbogho (Nango chief) 47 Backstreet Cultural Museum 181, 182 Ba Congo tribe 208 Bade 85–87; gourd cup 85–87, 87 Badru, Taofeek 146, 147 the Bahamas: Clifton Heritage Park, Nassau 195, 195, 200, 200; culture and economic structure 198; flora and fauna 196; hurricane 197; John F. Kennedy Drive and Blake Road, Nassau 198; people of 193, 200

Index  295

Bahauddeen, Muneer 236 Bailey, David A. 154 balance/spatial orientation 26–27 Ba Luba tribe 208 Banda, Kasiya 204 bang’ jomariek women’s group 61, 62, 64, 70; chwuechgogy, art education 64–67, 66; creative production activities of 68 Baraka, Amiri 272–273 Baruch, Bernard 79 Bash, L. 63 Ba Songye tribe 208 Basquiat, Jean Michel 213 Batiste, Becate 172 Batuli, Bibi 44–45 Baudelaire, Charles 97 Baumgartner, L. 63, 66; Learning in Adulthood: A Comprehensive Guide 63 Beads, Body, and Soul: Art and Light in the Yorùbá Universe 205 Bearden, Romare 216 Becker, Cynthia 9 Beidelman, T.O. 51n25 Beier, Ulli 137 Belgian Congo: Azande and Mangbetu artists in 73; expedition to 74; role of African chiefs (1910) 83–88, 84, 86, 87; soldiers in 77, 77–78; urban paintings chronically abuses 88 Belgian Network for Black Lives 89 beliefs 55, 58; corpus of 53 Bennett, Tony 155 Benton, Thomas Hart 273 Berlin Conference (1884) 74 “Best of Ife” series 140, 149n11, 149n16 Beyoncé: Don’t Hurt Yourself 249 Bhabha, Homi 75 Biedelman, T.O. 45 biennales 219–220 biennialization 166n4 Biggers, John 235 Binkley, David 204 birika 43, 44, 46 Black art 227, 247, 256, 257, 272–273 Black artists 247, 248, 252, 257; of African diaspora 245–246; artistic creation for 245; artistic practices of 256; special relationship with sound 253; in United States 263 Black Arts movement 273, 280 The Black Atlantic (Gilroy) 250 Black Civil Rights 175 Black communities: culture and experiences of 254; sonorities in 251, 252 The Black Indians of New Orleans 172 “Black inVisibility in the Visual Arts” 277 “Black Is, Black Ain’t” (Rigg) 273 Black Lives Matter (BLM) 73, 89

Black Masking Indians 170, 172, 185; as community activism 174–178, 177, 178; in historical context 172–174 Black Power movement 172, 188, 190–191 Black Unity 188, 188, 189 The Black Woman 187 The Black Woman Speaks 187 Black women educators 252 Blier, Suzanne 3, 4, 11 Blocker, Gene: Aesthetics of Primitive Art 3–4; “Is Primitive Art Art?” 4; The Journal of Aesthetic Education 4 Blomberg, Nancy 3 Blood, Milk, and Death: Body Symbols and the Power of Regeneration Among the Zaramo of Tanzania (Swantz, Mjema and Wild) 51n30 Bloomberg, Nancy 1 Boal, Augusto: Aesthetics of the Oppressed 253–254 Boccioni, Umberto 149n20 body art 139, 139–140 body–brain–mind continuum 24, 25 body tattoo scarifications (Kóló) 31, 32, 33 “Bound Together: Papers in Honor of Henry Drewal” 206, 207 Bourdieu, P. 256 Bourgeois, Louise 284 Boutte, “Cutie” Kim 183, 184 Boyce, Sonia 11, 254, 256; “Devotional Collection” 255; “Feeling Her Way” 254–256, 255 Braimah, T.S. 129n20 Bravmann, Rene 289 Brickell, H.M. 65 bridewealth 47, 48 British House of Commons 78 British Pavilion 254, 255 Burke, Nelson 170, 177 Caffarella, R. 63, 66; Learning in Adulthood: A Comprehensive Guide 63 Campbell, B. 8, 99, 121, 136, 138, 147, 149n14 Campt, Tina: Listening to Images 249, 254 Caribbean contemporary art 269 The Carnegie International 219 Carroll, K. 134, 137 Cartesian dualism 22 Cassara Cross, P. 62 casuarina trees project 194 Catherine and Kagucia (2014) 107 Catlett, Elizabeth 9, 187, 188, 188, 189; sculpture 190 Central Pavilion 155; invitational exhibitions in 156 Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA) 276, 279–281, 291

296 Index

Chambers, Eddie 277, 280 Chapin, James 74 Chazen Museum of Art 203 Check List 158, 159 Chikukwa, Raphael 161 “Children Mutilated by Congo Soldiery” 79 choreography 45–46; of Shambaa sacred dance 51n28 Christianity 43, 50n14, 149n12, 209, 214, 233; missionaries 137; mythology 269 chromatic groupings 30 chwuechgogy: Bang’ Jomariek women’s group art education 64–67, 66; study methods with indigenous populations 69–71; West Reru indigenous environment 67–69 Civil Rights Movement 172, 175, 234, 235 Clapperton, Hugh 35 Classen, Constance 25; Worlds of Sense 23 Clifford, James 75 cloth (aso) 97; metaphor within family 98; panels of 94, 96 Cofield, Jaqueline 10–11 collective memories 251–252 Collinet, Georges 205 colonialism 9, 18, 76, 85, 209, 219–221; visual 73, 75, 88 “Colonie Belge: Under Belgian Rule, 1885–1959” (Fabian) 88 colors 30–31, 37n35 commemorative process 206 common denominator approach 55–57, 60n15 communities: collectives in development of 64; visual culture of 14; wholeness of 68 Conan Doyle, Arthur 78 conflict 101–103 conflict prevention 101–103; between Egúngún Oloolu and women traders at Oje market 106–109 Congo Free State 73, 74, 76–80, 85 Congo Square Rhythms Festival 170, 171 Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) 175 Conrad, Joseph 273 contemporary African art 282; culture 221–222; curating of 275–284; dynamism of 276; post‑colonial African art 220–221; problems in 217–219 contemporary African artists 131, 210, 214, 217, 224, 227; and museums 88–90 Contemporary African Artists: Changing Tradition 157, 167n26 contemporary Yoruba art 135–137; change and continuity in 138; creative representations of forms, ideas and values in 137; creativity in 136; defined as 136; distinctiveness and framework of 137; forms, themes and inspirations 146–148; fortunes of 140

contemporary Yoruba artists 133, 147; forms through motifs 148; and identity construction 139 Content: In/sight: Africa Photographers, 1940 to the Present 226 context 15–20, 16, 17; as property of artifacts 20 conventional fieldwork scenario 55 Conwill, Kinshasha Holman 157, 167n26 Coombs, Annie E. 75 Cope, Virginia H. 183 Cordwell, J.M. 134 corporate tax laws 225 creativity 253–256, 255; art of 131; in classical and indigenous Yoruba art 136; culture and identity 133; defined as 132, 133; “fourth dimension” 146; and materiality 136–137; in Yoruba art and culture 134–135, 135; in Yoruba art genres and forms 134 Creole Wild West 172 cross‑cultural futures, “worst case” scenario for 53 cross‑cultural symbolization patterns 55 Cross, P. 64 cultural capital 256, 257, 284 cultural conflicts, problems associated with 101 cultural elements 143, 148 cultural environment 133, 148n1; as catalyst for artistic creativity 149n6 cultural narratives, intertextual articulation among 76–77 cultural power 256, 257 cultural resistance, African artists displaying 75–76 culture 101–103; creativity in 134–135, 135; cross‑pollination of 213; defined as 24; diversity of 132; identity, creativity and 133; insiders and outsiders 25; racial identity 220–221; sensory profile/ sensorium 25; of sub‑Saharan Africa 16 “The Curatorial Burden” 271 curators 276, 278; “first generation” of 280; see also African curators daily markets 104 Dak’ Art 219 dance 34, 45–46, 49; choreography of Shambaa sacred dance 51n28; downward emphasis of 46 dancing nkhoba 48–49 dAPERTuttO 156 Dapper Foundation 290 Darish, Patricia 204 darshan 35 Da Silva, D. F. 249 Daumier, H.: “Peace, An Idyll” 81

Index  297

Davidson, Basil 233–234 Davidson, Donald: Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation 60n16 Dawson, Danny 205 Debord, Guy 24 decontextualized museum objects 203 “decorating”/“dressing the spirits” 40 decorative stoppers 38 Dei, G.J. 68 Delaquis, Ato 281, 282 democracy, transition to 157 Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) 88, 89 Demoiselle (Picasso) 291 Denver Art Museum 1, 3, 12, 203 Dery, Mark 263 “Devotional Collection” 255 Dewalt, B. 69 Dewalt, K. 69 Diaspora Pavilion (2017) 154 diaspora studies, cross‑cultural components in 205–206, 207 Dillard, C.: The Spirit of Our Work 250–251 discourse 57, 73, 76, 88, 133, 155, 206 distanced objectivity 25 Diversity of Creativity in Nigeria 132 Divine Order, relationship between humanity and 228 Documenta 11 (2002) 159 Dodge, Cleveland 74 Dollis, Rita 183 Domination and the Arts of Resistance (Scott) 173 Donaldson, Jeff 236 Don’t Hurt Yourself (Beyoncé) 249 Douglas, Aaron 235 Douglas, Mary 289 Douglass, Frederick 257 Downey, Anthony 158 “dressing the spirits” 48–49 Drewal, Henry J. 5–7, 10–12, 41, 51n17, 54, 57, 188–191, 202–206, 207, 242; “African Art Studies Today” 5; “Ifa: Visual and Sensorial Aspects” 6 Drewal, J.D. 119 Drewal, M.T. 119 Driskell, David C. 190 Dubois, W.E.B. 235 dúdú 30 Dueling Dualisms 238, 238, 240, 241 Dumas, Ronald 184 Durodola, Yusuf 146 Dylan, Bob 272 easel painting 212–215 Eben‑Saleh, M.A. 104 eclectic approach 5

Ẹdan Ògbóni/Òṣùgbó (bronze staff) 119 Egúngún Atipako 94, 96 Egúngún Costume 140 Egúngún costumes 94; with imported fabrics 94, 97, 97; quilted fabrics 97 Egúngún Ẹbọ 101 Egúngún festival 99, 110n1; conventional relationships between markets and 101; costume of transformation 99, 100; reality of 104–106; in traditional markets of Ibadan 104–106; types of 101 Egúngún Ogun 101 Egúngún Oloolu 101, 105; avoidance of markets during procession 107; charms and physical appearance of 108–109; conflict prevention between women traders at Oje market and 106–109; crowd follows 108; financial support to 106–107 Egúngún traditions 94; culture in Ibadan, government support for 107–108; treasured values (asa) of 98 Egypt 161, 162 ekinyi 84 Ekiti Yoruba tradition 15 Elder Dempster transport company 77–78 Eleniyan (2012) 146 Elvehjem Museum of Art 203 The Encyclopedic Palace 161 English‑language culture 58; critique of 59n5 Enwezor, Okwui 159, 161, 218, 225–228; All the World’s Futures 159, 160, 165 The epic crossings of an Ife head 265–266, 266, 267 Ère ìbejì 120, 129n17 Erelú 117–118, 129n12 Ernst, Max 228 Eshun, Ekow 158 Èṣù Comes to Mammy 238, 238, 240–241, 243 Eṣu Ẹlẹ´gba: adaptation in art of John Yancey 236–238, 237–239; agency 233, 234; semioptic pedagogy in 236 ethnoaesthetics 149n8 Ethnographic Museum, Florence 154 Ethnographic Present 18 ethnophilosophy 53 ètò (organization) 127 Euro‑American mainstream 222–223 Eurocentric mainstream culture 235 Eurocentrism 165 Europe 18, 19; “art world” of 20; unification of 211 European paintings 156 European Union 219 Evans, Mari: I Am a Black Woman 254 Evans‑Pritchard, E.E. 59, 76, 87, 289 Evans, Sula 184 “evocative forms” 23, 24, 28

298 Index

Exercises in Conversation 165 exhibitions: Africa Explores 290; by Africans and Diaspora Africans 213; Content: In/ sight: Africa Photographers, 1940 to the Present 226; “Feeling Her Way” 254–256, 255; “Five Continents and One City” 227; “Global Conceptualism—Points of Origin, 1950s–1989” 227; Liberate Voices: Contemporary Art from South Africa 227; Like a Virgin 276, 277; Moments of Beauty 276; The New Energies 278; The Progress of Love 276, 277; Sartorial Moment 279; South Meets West 219, 224, 227; “Unfinished History” 227; When Attitude Becomes Form 278 Expanding Internationalism conference 156 Eyo, Ekpo 291 Fabian, Johannes: “Colonie Belge: Under Belgian Rule, 1885–1959” 88 fabrics 94; quilted 97; of Yoruba society 98 facere 20–21 factum 20–21 Fadipe (1977) 107 Fagg, W. 118, 119 Fagg, William 131–132 Fajuyigbe, Michael Olusegun 9 Fajuyigbe, M.O. 143, 145, 145, 146 Fakeye, Lamidi 149n9; Wall Panel 134, 135 Falola, T. 117 Faradje 80, 85 farms, types of 103–104 Fasooto, S.A. 97 Fault Lines: Contemporary African Art and Shifting Landscapes (Tawadros) 158 Faure, E. 65 Federal Department of Antiquities 14 “Feeling Her Way” 254–256, 255 female waist beads 42–44, 47 Filani, Kunle 121 Filani, M.O. 104 Filani, Olakunle 140, 141 fine arts 54 Fishing for Afro Culture (2021) 140 Five Contemporary African Artists 157 “Five Continents and One City” 227 Florence Lynch Gallery 227 Floyd, George 89 Force Publique 74, 77, 78, 85 Ford Foundation 158 For My People 187 Fortune Is Mine, 2003 140 Fortune of Creation II 141 Forum for African Arts 158, 159 Fradeletto, Antonio 153 Francis, Sylvester 181 Freedberg, David 23 Freire, P. 66

Frieze 226 Frohne, Andrea 10, 11 Fugitive Pedagogy (Givens) 252–253 funfun 30 “Funtumfunafu—Denkyemfunafu” 222 Furstenberg, Adelina von 271 Fusion: West African Artists at the Venice Biennale 157 “The Future of African Art Studies: An African Perspective” (Abiodun) 5 gao 43 gẹ`lẹ`dẹ´ 120, 121 gender 113, 128n1; and power 113 geopolitics 153, 160, 165 Gerbrands, Adrian 4, 5 Ghana: assistance of diplomatic missions in 224; market forces in 215; painting in 215–217 Ghana Freedom 163 Ghana Pavilion 163, 164 Giardini di Castello 152–154 Gibson, James 247, 248 Giddens (1979) 19 Gilliam, Sam 272, 273 Gilroy, Paul: The Black Atlantic 250 Giovanni, Nikki 196 Givens, E.: Fugitive Pedagogy 252–253 Gladwell, Malcolm 23 Glaveanu, V. 133 Glendora: An African Quarterly on the Arts 218 “Global Conceptualism—Points of Origin, 1950s–1989” 227 globalism 226–227 globalization: of art 231; inter‑cultural dialogue 223; and modern African artist 222–224; super‑culture of 223 global super‑culture 223 Glover, Ablade 281, 282 God’s Transistor Radio 274 Gonzales, Rhonda M. 50n14 Goodyear, Charles 78 Gore, Canon 87 graphic communication system 202 Gray, Andre Leon 236 ‘great Mothers’ 119, 129n16 Green, Edward C. 48, 49 Greene, Graham 273 Green, Jonathan 288 Green, Nancy 240, 244n13 Griaule, Marcel 289, 291 Gryseels, Guido 89 Guggenheim Museum 226 Hall, B.L. 68 Hallen, Barry 7; “The Knowledge‑Belief Distinction and Yoruba Discourse” 60n17

Index  299

Hall, Stuart 76 Hampton, Charles 17 Harlem Renaissance 235 Harold Scheub of African Languages and Literature 204 harp 84, 84 Harris, Alice 78 Harris, Lyle Ashton 158 Harris, Michael 136, 138 Harrison, Benjamin 77 Harris, Victor 9, 170, 171, 172, 173, 175, 181, 181, 182, 183–185; from crown to mask 178–180, 180 Hart, Winnie Owens 236 Hassan, Salah 156, 159, 166n19, 218; Authentic/Ex‑Centric: Conceptualism in Contemporary African Art 158 Hazlewood, Carl 271 healers 46; spiral movements 47; spirits 50n6; usage of beads 43; use of shanga 44 hearing 28, 35 Heidegger, M. 287 Henige, David: Perceiving Africa: Books, Maps and Manuscripts 204 “heritable sensibilities” 190 Herskovits, Melville 291 Herzog, Melanie Anne 9 High Museum of Art, in Atlanta 203 hip beads 47 Hip, Hopped to Death 236, 238, 238, 241–243 historians, of art 23–24 Hochschild, Adam 80 Hodder, B.W. 104 Homage to My Young Black Sisters (1969) 191 Homo Sapiens 213 Hou Hanru 226 Houlberg, Marilyn Hammersley 15, 16 Howes, David 25 I Am a Black Woman (Evans) 254 Ibadan 101; Agbole in 101; British rule in 106; Egungun enactment in 101, 102; Egúngún festival in 99; government support for Egúngún culture in 107–108; idea of an Oba 104; traditional culture in 107; traditional markets in 103–106 Ibigbami, Ige 145 identity: complexity of 205; construction of 131–132, 134, 139; creativity, culture and 133 “Ifa: Visual and Sensorial Aspects” (Drewal) 6 I Have Given the World My Songs 187 II (2020) 146 Ila‑Orangun 16 Ile‑Ife 16, 17; Akodi Orisa in 140, 149n15; Babalawo in Ifa consultation 58; Ori

Olokun art center at 137; women’s group in performance 57 illusionistic naturalism 215 Ilobu 14–15 ìlutí 28 imaging health 48–49 Imaledo, Funmi Saliu 8 imperial visuality 75 Index on Censorship 226 indigenous counter‑visuality 75–76 indigenous knowledge systems 202–205 information technology 214, 222 Ingold, Tim 247–248 Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (Davidson) 60n16 interiority, stages of 249 inter‑kingdom market 104 international anti‑apartheid movement 156 Internet 223–224 intertextual articulation, among cultural narratives and texts 76–77 “In the Path of the Leopard: Motherhood and Majesty in Early Danhome” 286 “In the Rubber Coils. Scene—The Congo ‘Free’ State” 80 invitational exhibitions 156, 159–160; boundaries in 162; geographic diversity in 161 Irele, Abiola 16 Islam 43, 50n14, 209, 214 isolationism 159–160 “Is Primitive Art Art?” (Blocker) 4 ivory 78 Ìwà (character) 2, 6, 12 Ìwà (characterization) 6 Ìyáàgan 118, 129n13 Iyami 194–199 Ìyámọdẹ 118, 129n15 Ìyá, ọmọ àti ajá rẹ (Mother, Child and Her Dog) 125, 125–126 Jackson, Michael 272 Janzen, John M. 48, 49; Ngoma: Discourses of Healing in Central and Southern Africa 49n1 Jarvis, P. 64, 65 Jayawardane, Neelika 160 Jewsiewicki, Bogumil 88 Jim Crow laws 172 Jivetti, B.A. 64 The Joan Mitchell Foundation 225 Johannesburg Biennale 226–227 Johannesburg Biennial (1997) 159 John 78 John Mason, Babalòrìṣà 205 The John Simon Guggenheim Foundation 225 Johnson, James Weldon 235 Johnson, Samuel 99, 106

300 Index

Johnson, Sargent Claude 235 Johnson, William Henry 235 Jones, Kellie 158, 226, 280 Jones, Lois Mailou 235 Joseph, J. 252 The Journal of Aesthetic Education (Blocker) 4 Jung, Carl 230 Junk Art 208 Kalilu, Razak Olatunde 135–136 Karasek, Alfred 43–45, 47 Kárìnkápọ` (Togetherness) 124–125 Kayode, Rotimi Fani 281 Keim, Curtis 75, 76, 81–83, 82, 84, 203; African Reflection: Art from Northeastern Zaire 74 Kentridge, William 156 Kenya: adult education in 62–63; adult literacy program 62–63; bang’ jomariek women’s group in 61, 62; Luo women of 61–62; pre‑colonial times in 63–64; rural populations in 61 Kenya Pavilion 161–163 Khan, Hassan 160 kibwebwe/kidembwa 45 Kiluva‑Ndunda, M. 64 Kim, S.Y. 63 King Leopold’s Soliloquy (Twain) 74 “King of Carnival” 174 King, Walter Eugene 243n4 Kiriji War 101, 106 Kishambaa 48, 51n25 kit dak architecture 69–71 knowledge (imọ`) 26 “The Knowledge‑Belief Distinction and Yoruba Discourse” (Hallen and Sodipo) 60n17 Knowles, Malcolm 64, 65 Knudsen, B.T. 251 Konate, Abdoulaye 160 Kortun, Vasif 280 Koza, Julie 204 Krewes 173 Kubler, George: The Shape of Time 290 Kumalo, Sydney 156 labor, division of 119 Lagos: artistic development in 276; nudity in 280 Landers, Richard 35 Lang–Chapin Expedition 80, 88 Lang, Herbert 74, 81–83, 82 language 24, 56, 58, 286, 291; cultures and 58; formal 188, 190; pejorative 173; philosophy of 57; process of learning 286; universal 214, 230; visual 2, 135, 138, 191 language‑based approaches 23 Latham, John 160

Lave, J. 67, 70 Lavergne, Albert 136 Lawal, Babatunde 54, 121 Lawrence, Jacob 216, 235 Lazaar, Lina 162 “learned ability to walk” (lile kọ´ irin) 34 Learning in Adulthood: A Comprehensive Guide (Merriam, Caffarella, and Baumgartner) 63 Lee‑Smith, Hughie 216 legitimate peripheral participation 70 Lenius, Marguerite E. H. 7 Leopold II, King 73, 74, 77; defaced monuments of 89 Leopold, King 77; actions grew in United States, resistance to 78–80, 79 Leopoldville District 79 “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” 208, 231 Lewis, Collins “Coach” 181 Lewis, Herbert S. 204 Lewisohn, Cedar 89 Liberate Voices: Contemporary Art from South Africa 227 Like a Virgin 276, 277 Limited Editions Club 187 Lind, Maria 280 linguistic/logocentric approaches 23 linguistics 22, 23, 58 Lips, Julius 75, 85 Listening to Images (Campt) 249, 254 Little, Marilyn 204 Lloyd, P.C. 103 Locke, Alain 235, 291 Lock, Hew 89 Lodge, Henry Cabot 79 The Louisiana Weekly 176 Louisiana World Exposition 179 Luanda Encyclopedic City 161, 162 Lubaki, Antoinette 88 Lucie‑Smith, Edward 76 Luigi Pigorini National Museum, Rome 154 Lumumba, Patrice 89 Luo women: chwuechgogy among 71; opportunity for adult education 64; of Western Kenya 61–62 Mabogunje, A.L. 104 Macel, Christine: Viva Arte Viva 159, 163, 165 Madagascar Pavilion 163 Madonna (1982) 188 Magesa, L. 68 Magiciens de la Terre (Martin) 154, 156 Mahama, Ibrahim 160 Makinde, T. 115 makoa 44, 45 Maldonado‑Torres, N. 246

Index  301

male–female cosmological unity 114 male nudity, in African sculpture 83 Mandingo Warriors 170, 171, 180, 180, 181, 181, 182, 185 Mangbetu artists 76, 84; categories of socially critical art 81–83, 82; reactions to social/ political events 85 Mangbetu court music 204 Mangbetu people 80; artists in Belgian Congo 73 Mardi Gras 172–175, 181 Mardi Gras Indians 172 marriage 114–115, 119 Marthene‑Tayou, Pascal 227 Martin, Jean‑Hubert: Magiciens de la Terre 154, 156 masking traditions 180–181, 181, 182, 183–185 Mason, John 37n35 material culture 24; arts and 28; disciplines of art history and 23; understandings of 22, 23, 35 Mayo, Virginia 89 May You Live in Interesting Times 160 Mbari Mbayo art workshop, in Osogbo 137 mbeeko 46, 47 Mbiti, John 68 Mbunza, King 74 McEvilley, Thomas 154 McNulty, M.L. 104 Meek, Vicki 236 Mehretu, Julie 227 memorialization 206 memory 253–256, 255 Menil Foundation 290 Merali, Shaheen 163 Merriam, S.B. 63, 66; Learning in Adulthood: A Comprehensive Guide 63 metamodern approach 2 metamodernism 6, 12; curatorial application of 2–3; as curatorial guiding principle 3 metaphors 18, 24, 34, 38, 97, 285; of cloth 97, 98; sensory 26 Methodology, Ideology and Pedagogy of African Art: Primitive to Metamodern 6 Metropolitan Museum of Art 5 Mexico, pre‑Hispanic arts of 188 Mezirow, J. 66 mghanga 48 migration 223; of African Americans 234; and displacement in work 227 Mikael, S. Weissmann 103 The Milk of Dreams 160 mimicry 75 mirror neurons, defined as 25 Mirzoeff, Nicholas 75, 76 Mitchell, W.J.T. 23, 76

mivigha 41–43, 45 Mjema, Salome: Blood, Milk, and Death: Body Symbols and the Power of Regeneration Among the Zaramo of Tanzania 51n30 mkatu/sheghe 43, 44, 47, 48 modern African artist 217, 221; globalization and 222–224 Modern Art 208 modernism 156, 209, 215, 220, 224, 231 modernization 99, 107, 226 Mogaji 104 Moments of Beauty 276 “Monbuttou” 82 monochromatic mythographs 122–128 Montana, Allison “Tootie” 176, 177, 179, 180 Montana, David 177, 178 Montana, Joyce 180 moral themes 85 Morel, Edmund 77–78, 79 Morgan, J. P. 79 Morgan, J. P., Jr. 74 Morrison, T. 246 Morris, Tiyi 183 Mother and Child (2013) 142 motion 26 mphepo 51n15 Mpoyo “Mpoy,” Pierre‑Victor 155 mtulunja/utundu 44 Mudimbe, Vumbi 75 Mukuna, Kazadi wa 204 Mullane, M. 246, 248 muono 61–66, 69, 70 Museum for African Art, in New York 227 Museum of Modern Art 4 museums: contemporary artists and 88–90; see also individual entries Mutu, Wangechi 273 Mwiria, Kilemi 62 mythologies, value of 269 naming/voicing 29–30 Nasiru, Babatunde 121 Nasiru, Tunde 145, 149n5; Sango Pot 135, 136 Nasser, Gamal Abdul 155 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People 235 National Commission for Museums and Monuments 157 National Gallery of Zimbabwe 157 nationalism 159–160 National Museum, Lagos 143 National Museum of African Art 4 National Urban League 235 “Native Prisoners at Boma Taking the Air” 77, 77–78 natural disasters 210–211 “Nego‑feminism” 288

302 Index

“Negroid Period” 208 The New Energies 278 Newman, Barnett 228 Newman‑Scott, Kristina 269 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival 176 Newton, Isaac 272 New York City 189, 205, 206, 224 Ngcobo, Gabi 280 ngoma/cults of affliction 38, 49n1 Ngoma: Discourses of Healing in Central and Southern Africa (Janzen) 49n1 Nigeria 19, 138; art traditions in 134; contemporary art in 138; cultures in 132; landmark moment in modern art history 283 Nigeria Pavilion 163, 164, 165 Niklas, L.P. Swanström 103 Nishimura, Emi 161 Nka: A Journal of Contemporary African Art 218 Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art 226 Nkanga, Mbala 204 nkhoba: anthropomorphic medicine containers 38, 39, 40; with corncob stopper 38, 39; corporeal aspects of 38; dancing 48–49; in‑depth art historical analyses of 51n15; relationship between artistic form of 41; scant visual reference to human form 41; waist beads 38, 40 Nnaemeka, Obioma: The Politics of Mothering: Womanhood, Identity, and Resistance in African Literature 287–288 No Longer at Ease (Achebe) 269 notion of balance/spatial orientation 26–27 notion of indeterminacy 27 notion of language game 57 notion of objectivity 55 Ntendu, Tshyela 88 nudism/nudity 280–281; depiction of 127 Nwafor, J.C. 104 Nwagbogu, Azu 162–163 Nwoko, D. 133, 289 Nyamrerwa 68 Nzeba, Joelle Sambi 89 Oba Koso 105 Ọbàtálá 115, 128n7 obi asa (progenitors of traditions) 138 obìnrin (female) 114, 128n2 O’Brien, S. 252 Ode Aje 105, 106 Odita, Odili Donald 227 Odù Ifá 114–115, 128n5 ọgbà (garden) 103 Ogbè Atè see Odù Ifá Ògbóni/Òṣùgbó cult 117–118

Ogden Museum of Southern Art 185 ogo Ẹlẹ´gba 237, 242 Ogoga of Ikere 15 Ogonga, Jimmy 161, 162 Oguibe, Olu 2, 11, 156, 159, 166n19, 227, 265, 283; Authentic/Ex‑Centric: Conceptualism in Contemporary African Art 158 Ogunji, Wura‑Natasha 11, 266, 267, 269 Ogunjobi, Seyi 143 Ogunnic Exploits (2001) 140 Oguntona, T. 133 Ojeikere, J.D. Okhai 276–279, 284 Oje market 99, 103, 104; conflict prevention between Egúngún Oloolu and women traders 106–109 Ojo, John 121 Ojo, J.R.O. 132 Okediji, Moyo 10, 15, 17, 57, 58, 61, 83, 113, 120, 121–122, 136, 138, 139, 139–141, 147, 149n13, 149n14, 149n20, 236, 242, 272, 288; monochromatic mythographs and female power 122–128 Okédijí, Moyosore 205; “An Artist Speaks: The Contemporary Arts Amidst Changing Traditions” 204 Okediji, Oladejo 121 Okeke‑Agulu, Chika 165 Okeke, Uche 270 oko etílé 103 Okondo, King 74, 83–85 oko ọba/abúléko 103 Okundaye, Nike 141–142, 142, 147, 149n18 ọkùnrin (male) 114, 128n2 Oladimeji, Tirimisiyu 99 Olajubu, O. 118 Olaoba, O.B. 101 Olorì 129n9 Olowe of Ise‑Ekiti 15, 20 Olugbala, Baba 236 Olugebefola, Ademola 236 olutoju asa (custodians of tradition) 138 Onabolu, Aina 283 Onaism movement 121, 139, 140, 149n11 Onifade, Mufu 142–143 Op Art 208 “Open Frontiers” 289 Opoku, A.M. 27 oriki Ologbin 94 Ori Olokun art center, at Ile‑Ife 137 òrìṣà 34, 35, 115, 120, 128n8, 233; symbols and images 234 Orò, society of elders 30 orúkọ àbíkú 29 orúkọ abisọ 29 orúkọ àmútọ`runwà 29 orúkọ ẹ`yà 29

Index  303

Òsẹ´ Ìtúrá 115 Òsẹ´ Otúrá 118 Oshitola, Kolawole 28, 29, 33, 34 “other” modernisms 2 The Other Story (Araeen) 278 Otite and Albert 101 Owewe Wee I 146, 147 Ọwórín méjì 117, 129n11 Oyebode, M. 101 Oye‑Ekiti art workshop experiment 137 Oyewumi, Oyeronke 128, 287–288 Oyo Yoruba 105, 136 Oyo‑Yoruba Egúngún 94, 96 painting 230, 269; Èṣù Comes to Mammy 240–241, 243; in Ghana 215–217; Hip, Hopped to Death 236, 238, 238, 241–243; “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” 231; Psychoses of Power 238–241, 243 Pan‑African philosophy 235 Pánsá kò fúnra (Vigilance) 123, 123–124, 129n18 Pa Ojeikere 279, 281 “Paradigm for Sensing” 25 participant–observer 25 Pasha, Emin 82 Past, Present and Future (2021) 140 Pauly, Nancy 8 Payne, Malcolm 157 “Peace, An Idyll” (Daumier) 81 Peace Corps 286 Perceiving Africa: Books, Maps and Manuscripts 204 performance art 263, 264, 266, 278 periodic markets 104 peripherality 70 personal memories, of Black women 254 person–environment relationship 247 Phillips, Wesley 184 photography 67 Picasso, P. 208, 218, 231, 275; Demoiselle 291; “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” 208; “Negroid Period” 208 Pica, Vittorio 152, 154, 165 Picton, J. 3, 6–7, 132 Pogoson, O. 119 The Politics of Mothering: Womanhood, Identity, and Resistance in African Literature (Nnaemeka) 287–288 The Pollock‑Krasner Foundation 225 Popoola, Dotun 145–146 post‑Black art aesthetic 272 post‑colonial African art 220–221 post‑coloniality 149n7 postmodern genres 219 postmodernism 217, 220, 224–225 “post‑Ona concept” 142

pottery 65–66, 66 Powell, E. H. 249 Powell, Richard 272 Poynor, Robin 99 pre‑Hispanic arts, of Mexico 188 primitive art 59n2, 229 primitive cultures 209 primitivism 1–2, 4 Primitivism in 20th Century Art 4 primitivism model 3, 6 productive cultural interactions 114 The Progress of Love 276, 277 proverb 56; intellectual merits of 59n6 provincial market 104 Psychoses of Power 238, 238, 238–241, 243 Punch 80 pupa 30 Quaker Oats Company 240 quilted fabrics 97 race memories 251 raciality, analytics of 249 Radiance: They Dream in Time 163 Rahmoun, Younès 160 Ranaivo, Rina Ralay 163 Rancière, Jacques 246, 248 Reading the Contemporary: African Art from Theory to the Marketplace 227 Red Hawk Hunters 170, 177 Reminiscences Revisited (Aniakor) 202, 203 Rex 174, 175 Richard, P.R. 104 Rigg, Marlon: “Black Is, Black Ain’t” 273 Riria‑Ouko, J. 62 Roberts, Allen 203–204 Roberts, Antonius 10, 193–195, 195, 196, 198, 200n4, 201n5, 201n6; The Genesis 197; spiritual and topographic representation 196–197 Roberts, Iyabo 279 Roberts, Zelma Louise Bowe 196 Rockefeller Foundation 156 Rockefeller, John D., Jr. 79 Rockefeller, William 74 Roosevelt, Theodore 78, 79 Rosenberg, D.G. 68 Rose, Tracey 227 Rotimi, Ola 132 rubber 77, 78, 84 Rugoff, Ralph 160 Ryan, Thomas 79 Sacred Spaces 194, 195, 197; Clifton Heritage Park, Nassau 195, 195, 200, 200; John F. Kennedy Drive and Blake Road, Nassau

304 Index

198; maternal music of shaping casuarina plant 198–199, 199 Sada, P.O. 104 Said, Edward 76 samba 69 Sambourne, Lindley 80 Ṣangó (Thundergod warrior) 27, 34 Sango Pot 135, 136 Sartorial Moment 279 sashes (ooja) 94, 96 Satti, Azza 163 Saussurean semiotics 23 Savage, Phoenix 136 Schatzberg, Michael 204 Scheub, Harold 204 Schildkrout, Enid 75, 76, 81–83, 203; African Reflection: Art from Northeastern Zaire 74 Schooler, Jonathan H. 23 Schweinfurth, George 74, 83 science of vision 23 Scott, James C.: Domination and the Arts of Resistance 173 Scott, John 179 Scultura Negra 154, 155, 165 Sealey‑Ruiz, Yolanda 246 Second Johannesburg Biennale 226 The Second Johannesburg Biennale 219 seeing 23–24 self‑reflexivity 5, 6 semioptic analysis 236 semioptics 121, 236 senses function 247–248 senses/sensing 22–24, 26, 30; anthropologists of 41; hearing 28; motion 30, 34; sight 30, 33; smell 33; touch 30, 31 sensiotics 6, 7, 13n17, 22–24, 41; beyond Africa 35–36; elaborated as 24–25; and Yorùbá sensorium 26–31, 27, 31–33, 33–35 sensorially engaged participant 25 sensorium 23, 25; Yorùbá 26–31, 27, 31–33, 33–35 sensory history 23 sensory metaphor 26 sensuous scholarship 25 Sensuous Scholarship (Stoller) 248 Seven Songs 141, 141 seventh sense 27 ‘Seven Yoruba Masters’ 132 sexuality 46; link between female and concentricity in Shambaa thinking 47 Shainman, Jack 227 Shambaa communities 40, 46; perpetuation and wellbeing of 42; relationship between perceptions and healers’ artistic medicinal depiction 41; rites’ relevance to 43; spirit‑based rain medicines 48–49 shanga (jewelry) 41–42, 42

The Shape of Time (Kubler) 290 Sharpe, Louis 3 Sheba, E.A. 133 Shikes, Ralph E. 76, 81 Shonibare, Yinka 227 The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945–1994 227 Sieber, Roy 291 Sifuna, H. 67–68 sight 41 Sikkema, Brent 227 Silva, Bisi 11, 158, 264 Singing Head 187 Singing Their Songs 187 siwindhi 69 “the sixth sense” 27 slavery 78; abolition of 275; and colonialism 18, 231; history of 179 Smedley, Audrey 204 Smith, Felipe 174 Smith, Jerome 175, 176 Smith, Mark M. 23 Smithsonian American Art Museum 187 Smithsonian National Museum of African Art 189, 206, 207 Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs 181 social anthropology 60n24 social anthropology, of colonial period 18 socially critical art, international characteristics of 80; artistic reactions to social/ political events 80; communication to audience 80–81; moral themes using allegory 81; satirical humor 80 socio‑cultural practice 115 socio‑historical context 77, 77–78 Sodipo, J.O.: “The Knowledge‑Belief Distinction and Yoruba Discourse” 60n17 sókí approach 198 Soko, Ray 279 Sonariwo, Adenrele 162 Songhay people 248 sonic expressions 250 sonic imagination 246, 247, 252–253, 257; and creativity 253 sonic memory 245, 247, 251–252, 257; personal and collective dimensions of 246 sonorities: in Black communities 251, 252; in creative and artistic production 257; creative process, memory, and 253–256, 255; as form of embodied knowledge 249–251 Sosu, Selasi Awusi 163 sound 28–30, 45, 245–246, 249–251, 253, 254, 257, 258; and musical performances 250 South Africa 155–157, 161, 166n18, 211, 213, 280, 283

Index  305

“South African art” 283 South Meets West 219, 224, 227 Soyinka, Wole 27 Spear, Thomas 204 spirit‑based rain medicines 48–49 spirit‑derived illness 38, 48 The Spirit of Fi Yi Yi 170, 178–179, 180–182, 183–185 The Spirit of Our Work (Dillard) 250–251 spirits 49, 50n6; healers to dress nkhoba 41; reciprocities between humans and 38 Stage, C. 251 Stagl, Sandro Orlandi 161 Standard History of New Orleans Louisiana 173 Stanislaus, Grace 157, 167n26 Stoller, Paul 25; Sensuous Scholarship 248 stoppers 38, 40; decorative 38 Street, S. 245, 246, 254 Structural Adjustment 227–228 Structural Adjustment Program 158 Studio Museum 157, 227, 273 sub‑Saharan Africa 48; art of 188; cultures of 16; non‑figurative abstractions in 113 The Sunday Times 17 Surrealism 218 Swantz, Marja‑Liisa: Blood, Milk, and Death: Body Symbols and the Power of Regeneration Among the Zaramo of Tanzania 51n30 synaesthesia 27 Sytsma, Janine 9 Szeemann, Harold 156 tabula rasa 56 Tambourine and Fan 175 Tanggaard, L. 133 Tawadros, Gilane: Fault Lines: Contemporary African Art and Shifting Landscapes 158 Taylor, Diana 251; The Archive and the Repertoire 250 10th Triennial Symposium on African and African Diaspora Art 205 terrorism 211 Tesfagiorgis, High W. 191 texere see context texts, intertextual articulation among 76–77 textuality 23 theory of articulation 76–77 theory of intertextual articulation 76–77 “the outsider or uninitiated usually sees through the nose” (imú ni àlejò fi í ríran) 26 Thompson, Barbara 47, 51n15 Thompson, R.F. 134, 203 Three Shades of Black: African, African American and Latin American Altars 1–3, 12

Tisdell, E.J. 69 Tolliver, E. 69 Torcello, Neri 162 Torí ọmọ (for the Child’s Sake) 122–123 “Trade Routes: History and Geography” 226 tradidere see tradition tradition 15–20, 16, 17; artifacts and 19; idea of 19; traditional vs. 14; transformations of and within 20 traditional: idea of 19; vs. tradition 14 traditional African art 14, 208, 209, 214; demise of 209–212 traditional African sculptures 152 traditional markets, in Ibadan 103–104 traditional religious arts, of ancient cultures 231 “traditional tools” 17 trance/altered states of consciousness 27, 34 treasured values (asa) 94, 97, 98 tribal art 209, 210, 214 tribal societies 210 Tshibumba Kanda Matulu 73, 76, 88 Tunisia Pavilion 162, 163, 165 Turner, Henry O. 216 Tutuola, Amos 19 Twain, Mark 78, 79; King Leopold’s Soliloquy 74 Twins Seven Seven 19 two‑dimensional picture surface 215 Udechukwu, Obiora 270, 272 Uganda Pavilion 165 Ugbodaga‑Ngu 121 ughanga 38, 41, 43, 44, 48, 50n14; beliefs and practices 50n14 Ukwu, U.I. 104 “Unfinished History” 227 United States 18, 19; adaptation of Yoruba symbols and images in 233–236; andragogy in 64; “art world” of 20; Black artists in 263; governmental and institutional sponsorship of arts 225; oppression against Black people in 250; resistance to Leopold’s actions grew in 78–80, 79; slave market in 179 University of African Art 291 University of Indiana, Chicago 268 University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN) 268 University of Texas (UT), Austin 263 Upton, A. 252 urban paintings, chronically abuses during Belgian rule 88 uweezi 43, 45 Vagale, L.R. 104 Vanderbilt, William K. 74 Van Dyke, Kristina 277

306 Index

Vatican policy, on colonial Africa 149n12 Venice Biennale 277; African national participation (1938–1968) 155–156; first thirty years 154–155; global interest in participation 153; global turn (1990–1999) 156–158; history of 152–154; inadequacies of 153–154; institutional change (1999–2015) 158–159, 160; nationalism, isolationism, and invitational exhibitions (2019–2022) 159–160; new national pavilions (2011–2015) 161–162, 162; new national pavilions (2017–2022) 162–163, 163, 164, 165 Verger, P. 118–119 visual artists 143, 277, 280 visual arts 22, 138, 278; development of 220; governmental support for 225 visual colonialism 73, 75, 88 visual culture 2, 9, 10, 14, 75, 122, 132, 133, 135, 146, 147, 170, 187 visual experience/visual literacy 23, 133, 148n2 visual language 2, 135, 138, 191 Viva Arte Viva (Macel) 159, 163, 165 Vizenor, Gerald 253 Vlado, Nicole 265 Vogel, S. 20, 75, 136, 157, 167n26 Voodoo Historical Museum 184 Wadende, Akinyi 7 Wagner, B. 134 Wagner, P. 134 waist beads (shanga) 41–42, 42, 46; dance, sexuality, and 45; female 42–44, 47 Walker, Alice 64 Walker Art Center, in Minneapolis 227 Walker, Margaret 187 Walker, Rosalyn 290 Walker, William 81 Wall Panel (Fakeye) 134, 135 Wangboje, Solomon 121 Washington, Booker T. 79 Wass, Betty 204 water keg 264 Webber, Thomas L. 251–253 Weems, Renée E. J. 251–252 Wemega‑Kwawu, Rikki 10, 282 Wenger, E. 69, 70 West Africa, Yorùbá‑speaking peoples of 22 Western art 216, 222; armed with knowledge from 216–217; connoisseur 213; critic 222; extravagant in 217; theory 236 Western culture 56, 59n6; art/philosophy as defined in 53; dominance on minor cultures 222; fieldworkers 55; history of dialogue between African and 58; overlap between African meanings and 56

Western education 62 Western educational meta‑language 64 Western epistemes 248–249 Western Gender theory 287 West Reru study: bang’ jomariek women’s group in 61, 62; indigenous chwuechgogical environment 67–69; kit dak architectural metaphor 71; study site area, agricultural workforce 62, 63; thnographic method used in 69–71; transformative dimension of adult learning 66–67; wholeness in community 64 West Usambara Mountains, Tanzania: dancing nkhoba 48–49; initiations and female waist beads 42–44; nkhoba (see nkhoba); sensiotics 41; Shambaa people 38; “We Are the Dancing People and We Have Been Through These Initiations!” 44–48 Wewe, Tola 121, 140–141, 141, 149n18 When Attitude Becomes Form 278 white beads 51n30 White, Deborah Gray 253 “white man” (òyìbó), strangeness of 35 White Supremacy Theory 213 The Whitney Biennale 219 Wild, Zenya: Blood, Milk, and Death: Body Symbols and the Power of Regeneration Among the Zaramo of Tanzania 51n30 Williams, George Washington 77 Willis, Deb 280 Wilson, J. A. 256 wisdom (ọgbọ´n) 26 Wittgenstein 57, 60n15 women: of African diaspora 191; of bang’ jomariek with critical thinking abilities 67; community collectives of 62; power among Yorùbá 119–121, 120; roles in Spirit of Fi Yi Yi and Mandingo Warriors 183; vulnerability in Africa 127 words 29; nature and scope of 29 “WorldMap/AfricaMap” project 285 World’s Fair (1893), Chicago 240 Worlds of Sense (Classen) 23 World Summit on the Environment (1991) 211 worldview, defined as 204 World War I 153 World War II 153 Worringer, Wilhelm: Abstraction and Empathy 212 Yahaya, Mudi 281 Yai, O.B. 146 ` lábíyì 27, 34, 59n6 Yáì, Ọ Yancey, John 10, 233, 236; adaptation of Eṣu Ẹlẹ´gba in 236–238, 237–239; Èṣù Comes to Mammy 240–241, 243; Hip, Hopped to Death 236, 238, 238, 241–243; Psychoses of Power 238–241, 243

Index  307

Yancy, G. 253 Yanda 82 yarn painting 146, 149n20 Yellow Pocahontas Tribe 178, 179 Yemoja Protecting Her Children (2021) 140 Yemòwó 115, 128n6 Yeyelorisa 138, 147 Yiadom‑Boakye, Lynette 163, 164 Yorùbá 202; artistic concepts 26; arts (ọnà) for 28; composite cosmology and natural resources 113; cosmology 104–105; cult of twins 16; Ẹ` fẹ´ /Gẹ` lẹ` dẹ´ masquerades epitomize for 26, 27; female power and art among 119–121, 120; markets 105; markets concept in 103; mythology 236; Orisa (gods) among 99; roles and values of 116–117; of southwestern Nigeria 132; tradition of 15 Yorùbá aphorism 97 Yorùbá art 113, 131; change and continuity in 137–138; creativity in 134–135, 135; identity in 131; museum and gallery displays of 14 Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art (Abiodun) 4 Yorùbá artist, Eṣu Ẹlẹ´gba 233, 234 Yorùbá culture 14, 128; woman in 115, 121 Yorùbá female power: Abiyamọ (True Mother) 126–128; celebration of 113, 121; Ìyá, ọmọ àti ajá rẹ (Mother, Child and Her Dog) 125, 125–126; Kárìnkápọ` (Togetherness) 124,

124–125; monochromatic mythographs and 122–128; Pánsá kò fúnra (Vigilance) 123, 123–124; Torí ọmọ (for the Child’s Sake) 122–123 Yorùbá festivals 107 Yorùbá Ifá 30–31, 31 Yoruba: Nine Centuries of Art and Thought 15 Yorùbá sensorium 26–31, 27, 31–33, 33–35 Yorùbá society: complexity of gender equilibrium 118; fabrics of 98; patriarchal nature of 117; social and religious institutions 97; social, political and economic trends in 132 Yorùbá symbols and images 233; adaptation in America 233–236 Yorùbá Temple, establishment of 234 Yorùbá women: bàn`tẹ´, basic attire associated with 124; power of 117; principal occupations of 121; spiritual powers of 121; in trade and markets 117 Yorùbá woodcarving, stages of 129n21 Zaramo community 51n30 Zaugg, Isabelle Alice 161 Zaya, Octavio 226 Zimbabwe Pavilion 161 Zinsou Foundation 290 Zionism 269, 270 Zondi, Michael Gagashe 156 Zulu 174–175 Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club 174