African Art and the Shape of Time

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exhibition preview African Art and the Shape of Time

Prita Meier and Raymond Silverman, with contributions from Andrew Gurstelle

The A. Alfred Taubman Gallery II in the Maxine and The exhibition’s catalogue and interpretive texts are informed by Stuart Frankel and the Frankel Family Wing. the pioneering work of Suzanne Preston Blier, Johannes Fabian, The University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Bogumil Jewsiewicki, Allen F. Roberts, Mary Nooter Roberts, and 1 Hogon’s stool Arbor Jan Vansina, among others, who have studied the role of visual cul- scholarship and traces the genealogy of its omission. This cri- Dogon peoples, ca. 19th century August 18, 2012–February 3, 2013 ture as an active agent in the production of history, memory, and tique provides a framework for grasping what is at stake in the Wood; 35.56 cm x 31.75 cm x 31.75 cm historical consciousness. But “African Art and the Shape of Time” recognition of the temporal side of African art.4 Private collection, courtesy of Donald Morris Gallery, Inc. The exhibition is made possible in part by the Uni- moves beyond these critical reflections on the past to explore the “African Art and the Shape of Time” was conceived as a foun- Photo: R.H. Hensleigh versity of Michigan Health System. Additional sup- larger conceptual world of temporality. Here the past is elaborated dational exploration of a complex field of inquiry and interpre- This prestige object is sometimes called a throne, port provided by the University of Michigan CEW in a study of time-consciousness, which may be understood as the tation. It is organized around five themes that focus on the role but it is not meant for sitting; it serves instead as metaphorical bridge linking the present and past, Frances and Sydney Lewis Visiting Leaders Fund. ongoing desire to understand the relationship between the past, of material culture in shaping experiences of time. These should connecting a ritual specialist (hogon) with the origi- present, and future. Ultimately, the exhibition considers some of not be seen as an exhaustive or exclusive mapping of African nal ancestors of the Dogon. Its form has been interpreted as representing the Dogon concept of the the contexts in which African art and material culture may func- concepts of time, but rather as conceptual vignettes that allow us universe, with the upper disk signifying the heavens, tion as the materialization of time in space. Each of the thirty to begin to see temporality as a presence that both shapes and is the lower disk the earth, and the central cylindrical ime is essential to human existence, and inter- works presented in the exhibition has been selected to heighten shaped by our lives. element the axis connecting these realms. Alterna- tively, the stool may represent the ark in which the pretations of temporality, or the way time man- the viewer’s awareness that the “things” that people make and use creator, Amma, delivered to earth the nommo, the ifests itself in our lives, are as multifaceted and can be understood as fragments of temporal work, a material trace The Beginning of Things eight ancestors of humankind, here shown as the fluid as time itself.1 Questions about the relation- of the human experience of time. Accounts of the creation of the world or the beginning of a figures supporting the seat. ship between time and lived experience have long The show brings together aesthetically and conceptually new social order often include a watershed moment that marks 2 Mask (Mwana Pwo) concerned individuals and communities in their compelling “objects of time” from a number of public institu- the start of the flow of time. Genesis stories, sacred accounts of Chokwe peoples, ca. late 19th century quests to make sense of what it means to be human. Does time, tions, including the University of Michigan Museum of Art, the formation of the world, can therefore be understood as foun- Wood, tukula powder, clay, string, metal, fur, snake- skin, cloth; 30.1 cm x 28.6 cm x 17 cm for example, “flow” from the past through the present and into the the National Museum of African Art, and the Fowler Museum dational narratives that structure a society’s understanding of its University of Michigan Museum of Art, Gift of Candis T 5 future, like a river? Or is it an eternal constant that only “moves” in at UCLA, as well as several southeast Michigan private collec- temporal place in the cosmos. Dogon genesis stories, for example, and Helmut Stern, 2005/1.201 Photo: Randal Stegmeyer our perception of the world? Is the pace of life a subjective expe- tions. They date from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century explore how the creation of human life is marked not only by the This Mwana Pwo mask represents an original rience or do the laws of the universe shape it? And why is time and represent a range of media and artistic practices, including majesty of divine perfection, but also by the beginning of time’s ancestor and the embodiment of feminine ideals in sometimes experienced as something that passes or is lost?2 “A f r i - wood and ivory sculpture, modern painting, book illumination, passing, or death. The iconography of a Dogon stool (Fig. 1) may Chokwe masquerades. All Mwana Pwo masks share formal similarities, such as almond-shaped eyes, can Art and the Shape of Time” explores the creative dimension jewelry, and time-based video. The interpretive framework of relate to such accounts, with the four pairs of elongated figures an open mouth, and a delicate chin, expressing a of temporality by examining some of the ways African artists have the exhibition is not based on the assumption that these works connecting the base and seat of the stool evoking the divine act notion of timeless beauty. Some features, however, engaged these, and other, ontological questions.3 Current strate- are only about temporality, but rather that exploring the tempo- that bridged heaven and earth during the creation of the world.6 are less fixed: the hairstyle, scarification patterns, and chingelyengelye cross motif seen here all speak gies for thinking about time in Africa tend to privilege the role ral side of things can engender new ways of experiencing them. More concrete, but often equally sacred, are the events that to the carver’s personal and more contemporary language and its corollary, narrative, play in shaping temporal Prita Meier’s introductory essay in the exhibition’s catalogue demarcate Year One in calendric systems of time measurement. conception of beauty. The mask provides a timeless experience. This exhibition demonstrates that artworks may also reflects upon why concepts of time and time-consciousness have The Islamic calendar, for example, begins with the Hijri year, when framework to which fashions are affixed, discarded, and changed, perhaps one day to be regarded as give shape to time, endowing it with concrete and visible form. received little attention in the established canon of African art the Prophet Muhammad emigrated from Mecca to Medina, while timeless themselves.

72 | african arts Spring 2013 vol. 46, no. 1 vol. 46, no. 1 Spring 2013 african arts | 73 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/AFAR_a_00046 by guest on 25 September 2021

Other_121210-001_072-081_CS6.indd 72-73 12/13/12 9:37 PM exhibition preview African Art and the Shape of Time

Prita Meier and Raymond Silverman, with contributions from Andrew Gurstelle

72 | african arts Spring 2013 vol. 46, no. 1 vol. 46, no. 1 Spring 2013 african arts | 73 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/AFAR_a_00046 by guest on 25 September 2021

Other_121210-001_072-081_CS6.indd 72-73 12/13/12 9:37 PM in the Christian calendar Year One is calibrated to commemorate 4 Bell (kunda) Kongo peoples; ca. late 19th century the year of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth (from the nineteenth cen- Wood; 22.7 cm x 12 cm x 6 cm tury on this calendar has been the global civil calendar). Both cal- Private collection, courtesy of Donald Morris Gallery, endars, which in their contemporary use are seldom associated Inc. Photo: R.H. Hensleigh with the origins of a new religion, bifurcate the temporal plane The faces of this double-bell are carved with elabo- into a “before” and “after” the dawn of a new world order defined rate geometric designs and human forms to produce by the assertion of a sacred truth. Calendars therefore are not only a cosmogram—a schematic rendering of the Kongo universe. Together they visualize the belief that the pragmatic tools of periodization, but also visual systems mark- human soul moves through different stages in this ing where one stands in relationship to the origins of a particular world and the other. One bell presents a male with the accouterments of leadership, perhaps a chief, worldview that has its origins in religious belief. the other side depicts a woman, perhaps his wife, Similarly, many iconic African artworks commemorate the with round belly, holding her breasts, a reference beginning of new epochs or memorialize persons who inaugu- to female fecundity. The other bell shows a male positioned as in burial, and on the reverse side a rated a shift from one social order to another. A Pwo mask (Fig. bound in profile with knees bent, perhaps a slave, 2), for example, represents an important female ancestor who again suggesting burial, thus alluding to the afterlife. is associated with the beginning of Chokwe civilization. Such In ritual use the sound of the kunda would have sig- naled the opening of a new temporal plane. masks were performed to honor adult women and mothers in central Africa’s Chokwe, Lwena, and Luna communities. Unlike the famous Chowke sculptures depicting the cultural hero Chib- inda Ilunga, Pwo masks represent female ancestors as abstract ideals, not specific historical personages. When she is danced— always by a man—Pwo embodies a sense of the “ancients,” of belonging to the civilizational order created by the mythic hero Kalala Ilunga, the founder of the institution of sacred kingship in central Africa. When the perfect female ancestor in the guise of Pwo enters the world of humans, the past and the present are joined on a common historical plane and for a moment a distant foundational figure becomes both contemporary and eternal. tarily inhabits the present, imparting to the living the wisdom to shape the future with greater clarity. Its form and iconogra- Moving Through Time phy visualizes a foundational Kongo concept about the structure Other artworks give visual form to important insights about of the cosmos in which the realm of the living and the other- the temporal structure of the cosmos and the way time may be world mirror each other, existing in a dualistic and symbiotic comprehended in spatial terms, as something through which relationship. Wyatt MacGaffey (2002:17, 19) has postulated that humanity moves. Whether people conceive of time as cyclical or the figures carved on the center of each side of the bell represent linear, it is transformed into a human experience because we can another aspect of this complementary relationship, the human imagine our mobility with or within it. The objects in this sec- experience of both realms. One bell represents a political leader tion provide insight into different logics about the nature of such and his wife, radiating health and authority, while the other bell, movement. A staff (sono) finial from Guinea Bissau or Guinea referencing the afterlife, features two figures stripped of adorn- (Fig. 3), for example, evokes movement across time and space. ments and status symbols, their postures suggesting the transfor- The equestrian figure represents an ancestor who migrated from mative experience of death. the Empire of Mali to the Senegambia region of West Africa between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. To this day accounts of this migration are important to Maninka cultural identity and the staff figure allows people to imagine their ori- 3 staff finial (sono) 5 shrine figure (ikenga) Beafada, Badyaranke, Maninka or Fula peoples; ca. gins in a distant but once-great empire as well as the historical Igbo peoples; ca. late 19th–first half of 20th century 17th–19th century continuities of that heritage. Wood, kaolin; 74.29 cm x 15.87 cm x 19.98 cm Copper alloy; 14.27 cm x 8.89 cm x 5.53 cm In contrast, a Kongo double-bell (kunda) from the Demo- Private collection, courtesy of Donald Morris Gallery, Private collection, courtesy of Donald Morris Gallery, Inc. Inc. cratic Republic of Congo (Fig. 4) represents temporality in more Photo: Dirk Bakkert Photo: Austin Kennedy abstract terms, as a porous and cyclical experience. This seem- Among the Igbo, shrines to the right hand (ikenga) Iron staffs (sono) surmounted by copper alloy finials offer testimony to a man’s social and political prow- functioned as insignia of leadership and authority ingly humble percussion instrument would have been worn as an ess. The right hand is the conduit through which his in the Senegambia region of West Africa, where amulet or held in one hand by a religious expert who mediated personal power is believed to flow, protecting and communities trace their origins to the ancient state between the sacred and the profane to pay homage to a politi- bringing prosperity to himself, his family, and his of Mali (which existed in the thirteenth through community; the scarification, elaborate coiffure, title sixteenth centuries). The figurative composition may cal leader or to invoke a deified ancestor (MacGaffey 2002:12). stool, severed human head, long knife, bared teeth, be interpreted as an ancestral leader on horseback In Kongo thought ancestors are understood to exist “elsewhere and ram’s horns are all metaphors of strength and accompanied by attendants. These staffs symboli- in time,” but they can be called upon to cross into the pres- success. Ikenga were situated at the center of a per- cally served as temporal bridges linking the present 7 sonal shrine, where they would be presented with and past, allowing contemporary rulers to imagine ent—to move through time. Once the bell is set in motion with food or offerings that alluded to wealth and power. the historical continuity of their social and political a flick of the wrist it produces a dense, muffled rattle, signaling The encrusted surface of this ikenga attests to the power and their origins in a distant but once-great the opening of a new temporal plane on which the past momen- attention it received from its original owner. empire.

74 | african arts Spring 2013 vol. 46, no. 1 vol. 46, no. 1 Spring 2013 african arts | 75 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/AFAR_a_00046 by guest on 25 September 2021

Other_121210-001_072-081_CS6.indd 74-75 12/13/12 9:37 PM in the Christian calendar Year One is calibrated to commemorate 4 Bell (kunda) Kongo peoples; ca. late 19th century the year of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth (from the nineteenth cen- Wood; 22.7 cm x 12 cm x 6 cm tury on this calendar has been the global civil calendar). Both cal- Private collection, courtesy of Donald Morris Gallery, endars, which in their contemporary use are seldom associated Inc. Photo: R.H. Hensleigh with the origins of a new religion, bifurcate the temporal plane The faces of this double-bell are carved with elabo- into a “before” and “after” the dawn of a new world order defined rate geometric designs and human forms to produce by the assertion of a sacred truth. Calendars therefore are not only a cosmogram—a schematic rendering of the Kongo universe. Together they visualize the belief that the pragmatic tools of periodization, but also visual systems mark- human soul moves through different stages in this ing where one stands in relationship to the origins of a particular world and the other. One bell presents a male with the accouterments of leadership, perhaps a chief, worldview that has its origins in religious belief. the other side depicts a woman, perhaps his wife, Similarly, many iconic African artworks commemorate the with round belly, holding her breasts, a reference beginning of new epochs or memorialize persons who inaugu- to female fecundity. The other bell shows a male positioned as in burial, and on the reverse side a rated a shift from one social order to another. A Pwo mask (Fig. bound in profile with knees bent, perhaps a slave, 2), for example, represents an important female ancestor who again suggesting burial, thus alluding to the afterlife. is associated with the beginning of Chokwe civilization. Such In ritual use the sound of the kunda would have sig- naled the opening of a new temporal plane. masks were performed to honor adult women and mothers in central Africa’s Chokwe, Lwena, and Luna communities. Unlike the famous Chowke sculptures depicting the cultural hero Chib- inda Ilunga, Pwo masks represent female ancestors as abstract ideals, not specific historical personages. When she is danced— always by a man—Pwo embodies a sense of the “ancients,” of belonging to the civilizational order created by the mythic hero Kalala Ilunga, the founder of the institution of sacred kingship in central Africa. When the perfect female ancestor in the guise of Pwo enters the world of humans, the past and the present are joined on a common historical plane and for a moment a distant foundational figure becomes both contemporary and eternal. tarily inhabits the present, imparting to the living the wisdom to shape the future with greater clarity. Its form and iconogra- Moving Through Time phy visualizes a foundational Kongo concept about the structure Other artworks give visual form to important insights about of the cosmos in which the realm of the living and the other- the temporal structure of the cosmos and the way time may be world mirror each other, existing in a dualistic and symbiotic comprehended in spatial terms, as something through which relationship. Wyatt MacGaffey (2002:17, 19) has postulated that humanity moves. Whether people conceive of time as cyclical or the figures carved on the center of each side of the bell represent linear, it is transformed into a human experience because we can another aspect of this complementary relationship, the human imagine our mobility with or within it. The objects in this sec- experience of both realms. One bell represents a political leader tion provide insight into different logics about the nature of such and his wife, radiating health and authority, while the other bell, movement. A staff (sono) finial from Guinea Bissau or Guinea referencing the afterlife, features two figures stripped of adorn- (Fig. 3), for example, evokes movement across time and space. ments and status symbols, their postures suggesting the transfor- The equestrian figure represents an ancestor who migrated from mative experience of death. the Empire of Mali to the Senegambia region of West Africa between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. To this day accounts of this migration are important to Maninka cultural identity and the staff figure allows people to imagine their ori- 3 staff finial (sono) 5 shrine figure (ikenga) Beafada, Badyaranke, Maninka or Fula peoples; ca. gins in a distant but once-great empire as well as the historical Igbo peoples; ca. late 19th–first half of 20th century 17th–19th century continuities of that heritage. Wood, kaolin; 74.29 cm x 15.87 cm x 19.98 cm Copper alloy; 14.27 cm x 8.89 cm x 5.53 cm In contrast, a Kongo double-bell (kunda) from the Demo- Private collection, courtesy of Donald Morris Gallery, Private collection, courtesy of Donald Morris Gallery, Inc. Inc. cratic Republic of Congo (Fig. 4) represents temporality in more Photo: Dirk Bakkert Photo: Austin Kennedy abstract terms, as a porous and cyclical experience. This seem- Among the Igbo, shrines to the right hand (ikenga) Iron staffs (sono) surmounted by copper alloy finials offer testimony to a man’s social and political prow- functioned as insignia of leadership and authority ingly humble percussion instrument would have been worn as an ess. The right hand is the conduit through which his in the Senegambia region of West Africa, where amulet or held in one hand by a religious expert who mediated personal power is believed to flow, protecting and communities trace their origins to the ancient state between the sacred and the profane to pay homage to a politi- bringing prosperity to himself, his family, and his of Mali (which existed in the thirteenth through community; the scarification, elaborate coiffure, title sixteenth centuries). The figurative composition may cal leader or to invoke a deified ancestor (MacGaffey 2002:12). stool, severed human head, long knife, bared teeth, be interpreted as an ancestral leader on horseback In Kongo thought ancestors are understood to exist “elsewhere and ram’s horns are all metaphors of strength and accompanied by attendants. These staffs symboli- in time,” but they can be called upon to cross into the pres- success. Ikenga were situated at the center of a per- cally served as temporal bridges linking the present 7 sonal shrine, where they would be presented with and past, allowing contemporary rulers to imagine ent—to move through time. Once the bell is set in motion with food or offerings that alluded to wealth and power. the historical continuity of their social and political a flick of the wrist it produces a dense, muffled rattle, signaling The encrusted surface of this ikenga attests to the power and their origins in a distant but once-great the opening of a new temporal plane on which the past momen- attention it received from its original owner. empire.

74 | african arts Spring 2013 vol. 46, no. 1 vol. 46, no. 1 Spring 2013 african arts | 75 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/AFAR_a_00046 by guest on 25 September 2021

Other_121210-001_072-081_CS6.indd 74-75 12/13/12 9:37 PM 6 Bowl figure 8 Queen Victoria figure Luba peoples; ca. late 19th–20th century Yoruba peoples; late 19th–early 20th century Wood; 738.41 cm x 12.7 cm x 10.16 cm Wood; 61.7 cm x 14.5 cm x 28.5 cm Private collection in Michigan Fowler Museum at UCLA. Gift of the Wellcome Photo: R.H. Hensleigh Trust, X65.9049 This bowl was used as an instrument to shape Photo: Don Cole, © Fowler Museum at UCLA connections between past and future events. The In 1900 Nigeria was designated a British Protec- female bearing the bowl may represent Mijibu wa torate. This marvelous portrait of Queen Victoria, Kalenga, the legendary diviner from whom all others Empress of the British Empire, is a product of the draw their power. He is represented as a woman complex negotiations that shaped life in colonial because the body of strong women may serve as the Nigeria at that time. While the work, a Yoruba abode of important male spirits and ancestors. The sculptor’s interpretation of a photo of the Queen, bowl would have contained symbolic objects; when visualizes the contemporary authority of the Brit- assembled by a diviner these were read as a micro- ish Empire, its proportions and overall style are an cosm of time and space, revealing the normally enig- elegant example of classic Yoruba figuration that matic relationships among events. A woman’s head stands as a poignant testimony to the creative acts as its lid, suggesting an analogy between the ways in which Africans responded to the new world bowl and the diviner’s body as spiritual containers. order. Here the artist appropriates an iconic image of British colonization and recasts the Queen as a composite being—part British, part Yoruba—indelibly marked by the colonial encounter. Embodied Time Many African cultures have developed traditions of figuration that present the human body as medium and metaphor for understanding the passage of time and temporality more generally. This section focuses on the way time is made material through processes of embodiment. An Igbo ikenga figure from southeast Nigeria (Fig. 5) was commissioned by a powerful man as a personal shrine that embodies his life history and past successes. The meaning and use of the ikenga is multivalent and varied, but it functions primarily as a material locus of the owner’s chi (described as a personal divinity or life force) (Bentor 1998:70, Ogbechie 2005:67; see also Cole and Aniakor 1984:24–34). With teeth bared and knees bent, the figure gives visual expression to the accumulation of past successes that can help him act with determination in the future. This emphasis on the constitutive relationship between the past and future suggests that the future may not really be a function of what lies ahead, but rather a result of what is in the past.

Other African cultures developed complex figural traditions is seen as an embodied steward of history. Luba bowl-bearer fig- in which sculptures representing idealized female ancestors ures (Fig. 6) exemplify this concept since they feature two “bod- 7 Qur’an Swahili; Siyu, Kenya; late 18th or early 19th century reproduce and reinforce ideas about the body as a receptacle ies of memory.” Such sculptures show a kneeling woman, who Leather, paper, ink; 26.4 cm x 20.3 cm x 7.6 cm that holds time. Between the seventeenth and early twentieth holds history in her body and also presents a vessel with a female Fowler Museum at UCLA. Gift of Jerome L. Joss, centuries, when the Luba model of statecraft expanded and was head as a lid in her outstretched hands. Like her physical body X90.184a-b Photo: Don Cole, © Fowler Museum at UCLA appropriated by diverse communities across central Africa, a the vessel also functions as a container of knowledge. The kneel- Swahili port cities have been globally connected corpus of royal art forms was developed to make history useful ing woman signifies either a diviner’s wife or the first diviner, centers of Islamic trade and learning for over a mil- lennium. This beautifully illuminated Qur’an created in the present. These works were the product of the Luba con- Mijibu wa Kalenga. The bowl represents a “gourd of promise,” a in Siyu, a once-powerful town in present-day Kenya, cept of “body memory,” in which the body acts as a receptacle diviner’s tool (Roberts 2000: 69–70). In the hands of a diviner the enshrines the Islamic lunar calendar as the Swahili for engaging the past in the present (Roberts and Roberts 1996). sculpture performs oracular work, helping him to achieve a state mode of reckoning ritual time. Its Arabic text is writ- ten in a calligraphic style developed abroad, yet the In Luba political and religious thought the female body is seen of heightened perception between remembrance, reminiscence, dynamism of its design and restrained color scheme as the only armature strong enough to hold the ancestral soul of trance, and invention, and allowing him to pierce the boundaries is unique to Siyu, speaking to the Africanization of an important deceased male. In a broader sense the female body between the past, present, and future. Islamic culture on the Swahili coast.

76 | african arts Spring 2013 vol. 46, no. 1 vol. 46, no. 1 Spring 2013 african arts | 77 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/AFAR_a_00046 by guest on 25 September 2021

Other_121210-001_072-081_CS6.indd 76-77 12/13/12 9:38 PM 6 Bowl figure 8 Queen Victoria figure Luba peoples; ca. late 19th–20th century Yoruba peoples; late 19th–early 20th century Wood; 738.41 cm x 12.7 cm x 10.16 cm Wood; 61.7 cm x 14.5 cm x 28.5 cm Private collection in Michigan Fowler Museum at UCLA. Gift of the Wellcome Photo: R.H. Hensleigh Trust, X65.9049 This bowl was used as an instrument to shape Photo: Don Cole, © Fowler Museum at UCLA connections between past and future events. The In 1900 Nigeria was designated a British Protec- female bearing the bowl may represent Mijibu wa torate. This marvelous portrait of Queen Victoria, Kalenga, the legendary diviner from whom all others Empress of the British Empire, is a product of the draw their power. He is represented as a woman complex negotiations that shaped life in colonial because the body of strong women may serve as the Nigeria at that time. While the work, a Yoruba abode of important male spirits and ancestors. The sculptor’s interpretation of a photo of the Queen, bowl would have contained symbolic objects; when visualizes the contemporary authority of the Brit- assembled by a diviner these were read as a micro- ish Empire, its proportions and overall style are an cosm of time and space, revealing the normally enig- elegant example of classic Yoruba figuration that matic relationships among events. A woman’s head stands as a poignant testimony to the creative acts as its lid, suggesting an analogy between the ways in which Africans responded to the new world bowl and the diviner’s body as spiritual containers. order. Here the artist appropriates an iconic image of British colonization and recasts the Queen as a composite being—part British, part Yoruba—indelibly marked by the colonial encounter. Embodied Time Many African cultures have developed traditions of figuration that present the human body as medium and metaphor for understanding the passage of time and temporality more generally. This section focuses on the way time is made material through processes of embodiment. An Igbo ikenga figure from southeast Nigeria (Fig. 5) was commissioned by a powerful man as a personal shrine that embodies his life history and past successes. The meaning and use of the ikenga is multivalent and varied, but it functions primarily as a material locus of the owner’s chi (described as a personal divinity or life force) (Bentor 1998:70, Ogbechie 2005:67; see also Cole and Aniakor 1984:24–34). With teeth bared and knees bent, the figure gives visual expression to the accumulation of past successes that can help him act with determination in the future. This emphasis on the constitutive relationship between the past and future suggests that the future may not really be a function of what lies ahead, but rather a result of what is in the past.

76 | african arts Spring 2013 vol. 46, no. 1 vol. 46, no. 1 Spring 2013 african arts | 77 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/AFAR_a_00046 by guest on 25 September 2021

Other_121210-001_072-081_CS6.indd 76-77 12/13/12 9:38 PM 10 The Preacher III (2000) Wosene Kosrof (b. 1950, Ethiopia) Acrylic on canvas; 111.6 cm x 92.1 cm x 3.2 cm National Museum of African Art, 2001-1-1 Photo: Franko Khoury, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution Wosene Kosrof is an Ethiopian-born American artist who explores the formal and symbolic properties of the Amharic script, transforming this ancient system of writing into a new formal language of painterly abstraction that anchors his ongoing exploration of the meanings of “tradition” and “heritage.” According to Wosene, “the letters are vehicles for reimagining history and memory, they are a chain from the past to the future.” Here recollections of listening to jazz and African American spirituals are merged with those of hymns and the recitation of sacred poetry experienced during childhood visits to church in Ethiopia. The letters are not always legible and do not form words; they evoke instead the way memories flicker in and out view, their meanings changing over time.

the Qu’ran, which is divided into pre-Hijra and post-Hijra chap- ters. The dynamism of the decorative program of the Qur’an’s chapter headings is typical of Swahili visual codes and recalls the rhythmic vegetal forms that are a hallmark of Swahili low-relief architectural design. Though the manuscript is produced using 9 The Ancestor Converged Again (1995) Global Time El Anatsui (b. 1944, Ghana) imported hand-made Italian paper, the artist chose as his key Expansive trading networks within Africa and across the Wood, tempera; 102 cm x 272 cm x 9 cm colors red, yellow and black, the canonical triad of many central Atlantic and Indian Ocean have meant that Africans have had National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institu- and east African cultures. NOW tion, purchased with funds provided by the Annie a translocal perspective for millennia. African societies whose Laurie Aitken Endowment, 98-11-1 Societies wanting to expand their economic and political Conceptualizing the Now may be the most elusive aspect of prosperity depended on mercantile trade and cross-cultural Photo: Franko Khoury, National Museum of African authority beyond their territorial holdings have long deployed the human understanding of time. For where does the present work have developed a spectrum of practices allowing them to Art, Smithsonian Institution the moral and judicial codes of “universal’ religion, such as end and where do the past and future begin? In philosophy the El Anastsui is an internationally acclaimed sculptor absorb, subvert, and negotiate diverse political, religious, and and installation artist who explores the relationship Christianity or Islam, to engage or conquer others. The rise of Now is sometimes privileged as the defining space of temporal conceptual systems. Interestingly, such societies have developed between the past, present, and future. He works in a the mercantile empires of Spain, Portugal, and Holland was in experience because a person must exist in the present to per- range of media, including wood, ceramic, and metal, aesthetic strategies that exploit mimicry and code-switching. focusing on the essential nature and formal power part the result of the ability to measure and coordinate time ceive the past and conceive the future. For David Hoy (2009:41), Fundamental to the latter are the conceptual tools that permit of his materials to explore the effects of colonialism across vast distances. Universal, or standard time as we think the phrase “there is no time but the present” captures the sense the absorption of new ways of being “on time,” which is to say and globalization on the African experience. He has of it now, originates in the sixteenth century, when an inter- that the present is “more real” than the past and future. Another described his wood sculptures as contemplations of synchronizing time frames in order to overcome spatial and of the “texture and grain of Africa’s history.” Here connected world system began to be imagined as a result of view suggests that the present is articulated by the past and the cultural differences. Understanding different and intersecting he has transformed discarded pieces of weathered the global expansion of North Atlantic capitalism (Pratt 1992, future, that “The Now that we experience temporally is never the concepts of time and modes of reckoning time is central to acts wood into a row of witnesses, whose bodies bear Trouillot 2002). This was the inception of our current global Now of time, since this Now is always already gone by” (ibid., p. sharp ridges made with electric tools and stains of of intercultural communication. To engage a stranger one must caustic color—a metaphor for the deep wounds of perspective, when modern individuality and its concomitant 92). That is, the present is not self-contained or “real,” but simply meet that person on a shared temporal plane. This is true of sub- colonialism that still mark the heritage, history, and societal structures began to “make sense” for the newly forming what we privilege in our interpretations of the world because we jugation as well—one of the most effective strategies for denying memory of Africa’s peoples. world of capitalist production and consumption. think we experience consciousness in the Now. another person’s humanity is to view them as living in the past or African societies began to negotiate the spread of clock and Such notions have particular resonance for the contemporary out of sync with one’s own temporal development. spread of Islam in Africa was also connected to economic devel- calendar time from the North Atlantic region in the sixteenth artists represented in “African Art and the Shape of Time,” who African concepts of time, just like North American or Euro- opments, and the Islamic calendar was appropriated early on in century. However, it was not until the nineteenth century that explore their place in the Now by considering how our expe- pean ones, are very place-specific. Until the late nineteenth cen- many mercantile cultures.8 Western imperialism radically reconfigured Africa’s social, polit- rience of the present is shaped by the politics of history and tury time was measured against biological (human and animal) Expansive trade networks crossing the Saharan desert and ical, and cultural networks. “Colonial time” is poignantly given memory. As postcolonial artists practicing at the interstices of and environmental change in small agricultural or pastoral com- the Indian Ocean brought Muslim merchants and clerics to form in a Yoruba statue of Queen Victoria (Fig. 8) that references multiple cultures and philosophical traditions, they are particu- munities, while societies seeking to connect to the most power- West and East Africa and people in the communities in which the fiftieth anniversary of her coronation. While the statue visu- larly conscious of how Africa is often seen to belong to the past. ful imperial centers of their time often became conversant with they settled began to see themselves as living in the “time of alizes the authority of the British Empire in Nigeria in the late A related concern is the pervasive idea that embracing moder- the worldviews espoused in these places. By the twelfth and Islam.” A Qur’an (Fig. 7) from Siyu, a Swahili port town in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the proportions and nity means severing one’s connection to the past, to “tradition.” thirteenth centuries, for example, the Mali Empire and the city- Lamu archipelago, for example, is a lavishly illuminated manu- overall style of the work provide an elegant example of classic Artists such as Emeka Ogboh, Wosene Kosrof, and El Anatsui states of the Swahili coast had successfully appropriated Islam script that enshrines the establishment of Islamic time, which Yoruba figuration. The Queen is the European colonizing other, seek to question the perceived boundaries between ‘‘modernity” and its social and cultural codes to engage the global market- begins with the Hijra, the emigration of the Prophet Muham- but transformed into a Yoruba aesthetic object, thereby suggest- and “tradition” by presenting the past, present, and future as place. Of course, many Africans converted to Islam for spiritual mad from Mecca to Medina in 622 ce. His journey marks Year ing that the acquiescence to colonial time was far more complex malleable concepts and spaces that merge and converge, and are reasons and some became great scholars of the faith. But the One in the Islamic calendar and it defines the temporal plane of than is often imagined. thus perpetually recreated.

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Other_121210-001_072-081_CS6.indd 78-79 12/13/12 9:38 PM 10 The Preacher III (2000) Wosene Kosrof (b. 1950, Ethiopia) Acrylic on canvas; 111.6 cm x 92.1 cm x 3.2 cm National Museum of African Art, 2001-1-1 Photo: Franko Khoury, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution Wosene Kosrof is an Ethiopian-born American artist who explores the formal and symbolic properties of the Amharic script, transforming this ancient system of writing into a new formal language of painterly abstraction that anchors his ongoing exploration of the meanings of “tradition” and “heritage.” According to Wosene, “the letters are vehicles for reimagining history and memory, they are a chain from the past to the future.” Here recollections of listening to jazz and African American spirituals are merged with those of hymns and the recitation of sacred poetry experienced during childhood visits to church in Ethiopia. The letters are not always legible and do not form words; they evoke instead the way memories flicker in and out view, their meanings changing over time.

78 | african arts Spring 2013 vol. 46, no. 1 vol. 46, no. 1 Spring 2013 african arts | 79 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/AFAR_a_00046 by guest on 25 September 2021

Other_121210-001_072-081_CS6.indd 78-79 12/13/12 9:38 PM Much of El Anatsui’s work is framed by his interest in under- Notes ago dispensed with the colonial-period notion that art Griaule, Marcel. 1965. Conversations with Ogotemmêli: standing how the colonial past bleeds into the present, and he is an expression of a territorially bound ethnic identity, An Introduction to Dogon Religious Ideas. London: This exhibition preview is based on the accompanying they still favor geography to contextualize their subject International African Institute. sees his wood sculptures as contemplations of the “the texture and exhibition catalogue. We express our sincere gratitude to 9 matter, creating a symbolic and cultural geography of grain of Africa’s history.” The Ancestors Converged Again (Fig. 9) the entire staff of the University of Michigan Museum of Hoy, David Couzens. 2009. The Time of Our Lives: A an artwork in which it is a visual fragment of a culture Art for their support and collaboration. Critical History of Temporality. Cambridge, MA: MIT is an assemblage of pieces of weathered wood arranged vertically that is defined by its place on the continent. Even recent 1 David Hoy (2009) makes a distinction between Press. in a single line, each piece indelibly marked by decades of expo- studies of the global presence and reach of African art time and temporality: “time” refers to clock-time, the deploy spatial metaphors, such as “cross-culturation” Kubler, George. 1962. The Shape of Time: Remarks on sure to the elements before the artist interrupted its life by mark- measurable time of physics and the natural world, while and “transnationalism,” in order to focus on the move- the History of Things. New Haven, CT: Yale University ing it with ridges and bright accents of color. The changes he has “temporality” refers to the time of human existence, ment of culture across space. Movement in time or Press. which he refers to as “the time of our lives.” wrought on his materials encourage the viewer to contemplate the temporality is often ignored. 2 Though the exhibition necessarily intersects LaGamma, Alisa. 2002. Genesis: Ideas of Origin in Afri- 5 Alisa LaGamma (2002) curated an important effects of historical experiences on African identity. Reconstituted with the study of temporality as a subject of inquiry in can Sculpture. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. exhibition that specifically dealt with the multivalent on the wall of the museum as worn and stained bodies, each piece the history of ideas, it does not focus on time itself as an meaning and imaging of the origins of moral charters, MacGaffey, Wyatt. 2002. “Ethnographic Notes on Kongo object in African systems of thought, which is the pur- of wood is an ancient witness, his or her twisted and cut body a lineages, and cosmologies. Musical Instruments.” African Arts 35 (2):12–19, 90. view of philosophy. The ontological problem of time— metaphor for the deep wounds that colonial and postcolonial vio- 6 Marcel Griaule’s once celebrated publication the question of what constitutes time—is considered ______. 2000. Kongo Political Culture: The Concep- Conversations with Ogotemmeli (1965) has been criti- lence have left on the body of the African continent. only insofar as it is visualized or given material form in tual Challenge of the Particular. Bloomington: Indiana cally reassessed by recent scholarship. For example, Wosene Kosrof, an Ethiopian-born American artist, treats the the objects selected for the exhibition. It is also impor- University Press. Walter van Beek (2004) points out that the Dogon tant to note that philosophers such as Kwame Anthony past as a fluid form that can be constantly recast in the present. The creation myths “documented” by Griaule are the result Mudimbe, Valentin Y. 1988. The Invention of Africa: Appiah (1992) have criticized ascribing an “African” of his own Surrealist proclivities as well as Ogotemmeli’s Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge. Bloom- Preacher III (Fig. 10) is a complex interpolation of his childhood character to the diverse thought-systems practiced imaginative narratives. How many Dogon actually ington: Indiana University Press. memories of Ethiopia and his transformative experience as an MFA on the African continent. He prefers the designation would have recognized this vision of the cosmos is now “philosophies in Africa” (and the African Diaspora), not Ogbechie, Sylvester Okwunodu. 2005. “The Historical student in Washington DC. In it he reworks the ancient forms of unclear. “African philosophy.” Today scholars mainly focus on Life of Objects: African Art History and the Problem of the Ethiopic alphabet as gestural abstractions to evoke the sensory 7 Wyatt MacGaffey (2000:207), in a discussion of questions of historiography in the study of the philo- Discursive Obsolescence.” African Arts 38 (4):62–95. Kongo ideas about the porous borders between this and impact of another “tradition,” American gospel music, that inspired sophical in African indigenous cultures, considering, the “otherworld,” argues that “[t]he land of the dead is Pratt, Mary Louise. 1992. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing him to think about the manner in which cultural forms with “deep for example, how the colonial era and the struggle for also elsewhere in time.” and Transculturation. London: Routledge. independence shaped the formation of Africana studies histories” are reinvented in contemporary practice. Like Anatsui’s 8 David Robinson (2004:6) has noted that “[t]ime and its corollary, “traditional African philosophy.” See Roberts, Mary Nooter. 2000. “Proofs and Promises: was a more transportable commodity than space.” Ancestors, his work invites a consideration of why and when certain Mudimbe 1988. Setting Meaning before the Eyes.” In Insight and Artistry 9 National Museum of African Art. Collections artistic forms are perceived as traditional and authentically local, 3 The title of our exhibition is inspired by George in African Divination, ed. John Pemberton, pp. 63–82. database. http://africa.si.edu/collections/ view/objects/ Kubler’s groundbreaking book, The Shape of Time; Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. while others are haunted by the specter of inauthenticity. asitem/search$0 040/0?t:state:flow=36093cec-e69f- Remarks on the History of Things (1962). Kubler pro- The Nigerian sound and video artist Emeka Ogboh uses time- 4736-a5ad-4f946ad671c8. Roberts, Mary Nooter, and Allen F. Roberts. 1996. posed a new model for understanding historical change based media to make the urban experience of time—its speed, Memory: Luba Art and the Making of History. New York: in the study of visual culture. Rather than classify- Museum for African Art. complexity, and dissonance—intensively palpable. He is especially ing objects to produce linear chronologies of stylistic References cited change over time, he considered larger patterns and Robinson, David. 2004. Muslim Societies in African His- interested in heightening peoples’ awareness of the complete era- Appiah, Kwame Anthony. 1992. In My Father’s House: shifts in human creativity. This essay draws on his criti- tory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Africa in the Philosophy of Culture. New York: Oxford sure of the perceived boundaries between the past, present, and cal insights, but focuses on another aspect of the “shape University Press. Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. 2002. “The Otherwise Modern: future in Lagos and other global megacities. In [dis]connect II (Fig. of time”: the means by which objects create temporal Caribbean Lessons from the Savage Lot.” In Critically 11) he layers the pulsating sound of electronic music with video and experience. Bentor, Eli. 1988. “Life as an Artistic Process: Igbo Modern: Alternatives, Alterities, Anthropologies, ed. audio recordings of Lagos’s traffic hubs to create a visual and aural 4 The historiography section of the introduc- Ikenga and Ofo.” African Arts 21 (2):66–94. Bruce M. Knauft, pp. 220–40. Bloomington: Indiana tory essay considers why one of the major challenges Cole, Herbert M., and C.C. Aniakor. 1984. Igbo Arts: University Press. work that lyrically dismantles the traditional sense that time is a lin- of African art history has been to move beyond the Community and Cosmos. Los Angeles: Museum of Cul- idea that an object “stands for” a culture linked to a Van Beek, Walter E.A. 2004. “Haunting Griaule: Experi- ear phenomenon. The film presents diverse peoples, vehicles, and tural History, University of California. particular territory. While Africanist art historians long ences from the Restudy of the Dogon.” History in Africa even Egungun masquerades emerging from and converging into 31:43–68. each other in a loop of discontinuous sounds and images. In a sense, the artists in NOW politicize the relationship between the past, present, and future, reclaiming history and suggesting new possibilities for the future, and thus reveal how and why time mat- ters so critically to the way we understand African art.

Raymond Silverman is Professor of History of Art, Afroamerican and African Studies, and Museum Studies at University of Michigan (Ann Arbor). Since the early 1980s his research and writing have focused on visual culture in Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, and Ethiopia. Currently he is work- 11 [dis]connect II (2011) ing on a project that examines the relationship between the religious and Emeka Ogboh (b. 1977, Nigeria) commercial significance of painting associated with contemporary Ortho- Video. Courtesy of the artist. © Emeka Ogboh dox Christianity in Ethiopia. [email protected] Emeka Ogboh focuses on the aural and visual landscapes of such megacities as Lagos to question Prita Meier is Assistant Professor of African art at the University of Illi- assumptions about the “flow” of time and temporal nois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research focuses on the visual culture of experience. The cadence and speed of urban life is east African port cities. She has a book in preparation titled Architecture the focus of this work, where images and sounds of of the Elsewhere: Swahili Port Cities, Empire and Desire and has pub- how people and technologies move through Lagos are presented as a space where boundaries between lished in African Arts, Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, Art- the past, present, and future blur. Here the norma- forum, and Arab Studies Journal, as well as several exhibition catalogs tive linearity of cinematic time is disrupted and and edited volumes. [email protected] instead segments of time are constantly folding into each other.

80 | african arts Spring 2013 vol. 46, no. 1 vol. 46, no. 1 Spring 2013 african arts | 81 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/AFAR_a_00046 by guest on 25 September 2021

Other_121210-001_072-081_CS6.indd 80-81 12/13/12 9:38 PM Much of El Anatsui’s work is framed by his interest in under- Notes ago dispensed with the colonial-period notion that art Griaule, Marcel. 1965. Conversations with Ogotemmêli: standing how the colonial past bleeds into the present, and he is an expression of a territorially bound ethnic identity, An Introduction to Dogon Religious Ideas. London: This exhibition preview is based on the accompanying they still favor geography to contextualize their subject International African Institute. sees his wood sculptures as contemplations of the “the texture and exhibition catalogue. We express our sincere gratitude to 9 matter, creating a symbolic and cultural geography of grain of Africa’s history.” The Ancestors Converged Again (Fig. 9) the entire staff of the University of Michigan Museum of Hoy, David Couzens. 2009. The Time of Our Lives: A an artwork in which it is a visual fragment of a culture Art for their support and collaboration. Critical History of Temporality. Cambridge, MA: MIT is an assemblage of pieces of weathered wood arranged vertically that is defined by its place on the continent. Even recent 1 David Hoy (2009) makes a distinction between Press. in a single line, each piece indelibly marked by decades of expo- studies of the global presence and reach of African art time and temporality: “time” refers to clock-time, the deploy spatial metaphors, such as “cross-culturation” Kubler, George. 1962. The Shape of Time: Remarks on sure to the elements before the artist interrupted its life by mark- measurable time of physics and the natural world, while and “transnationalism,” in order to focus on the move- the History of Things. New Haven, CT: Yale University ing it with ridges and bright accents of color. The changes he has “temporality” refers to the time of human existence, ment of culture across space. Movement in time or Press. which he refers to as “the time of our lives.” wrought on his materials encourage the viewer to contemplate the temporality is often ignored. 2 Though the exhibition necessarily intersects LaGamma, Alisa. 2002. Genesis: Ideas of Origin in Afri- 5 Alisa LaGamma (2002) curated an important effects of historical experiences on African identity. Reconstituted with the study of temporality as a subject of inquiry in can Sculpture. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. exhibition that specifically dealt with the multivalent on the wall of the museum as worn and stained bodies, each piece the history of ideas, it does not focus on time itself as an meaning and imaging of the origins of moral charters, MacGaffey, Wyatt. 2002. “Ethnographic Notes on Kongo object in African systems of thought, which is the pur- of wood is an ancient witness, his or her twisted and cut body a lineages, and cosmologies. Musical Instruments.” African Arts 35 (2):12–19, 90. view of philosophy. The ontological problem of time— metaphor for the deep wounds that colonial and postcolonial vio- 6 Marcel Griaule’s once celebrated publication the question of what constitutes time—is considered ______. 2000. Kongo Political Culture: The Concep- Conversations with Ogotemmeli (1965) has been criti- lence have left on the body of the African continent. only insofar as it is visualized or given material form in tual Challenge of the Particular. Bloomington: Indiana cally reassessed by recent scholarship. For example, Wosene Kosrof, an Ethiopian-born American artist, treats the the objects selected for the exhibition. It is also impor- University Press. Walter van Beek (2004) points out that the Dogon tant to note that philosophers such as Kwame Anthony past as a fluid form that can be constantly recast in the present. The creation myths “documented” by Griaule are the result Mudimbe, Valentin Y. 1988. The Invention of Africa: Appiah (1992) have criticized ascribing an “African” of his own Surrealist proclivities as well as Ogotemmeli’s Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge. Bloom- Preacher III (Fig. 10) is a complex interpolation of his childhood character to the diverse thought-systems practiced imaginative narratives. How many Dogon actually ington: Indiana University Press. memories of Ethiopia and his transformative experience as an MFA on the African continent. He prefers the designation would have recognized this vision of the cosmos is now “philosophies in Africa” (and the African Diaspora), not Ogbechie, Sylvester Okwunodu. 2005. “The Historical student in Washington DC. In it he reworks the ancient forms of unclear. “African philosophy.” Today scholars mainly focus on Life of Objects: African Art History and the Problem of the Ethiopic alphabet as gestural abstractions to evoke the sensory 7 Wyatt MacGaffey (2000:207), in a discussion of questions of historiography in the study of the philo- Discursive Obsolescence.” African Arts 38 (4):62–95. Kongo ideas about the porous borders between this and impact of another “tradition,” American gospel music, that inspired sophical in African indigenous cultures, considering, the “otherworld,” argues that “[t]he land of the dead is Pratt, Mary Louise. 1992. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing him to think about the manner in which cultural forms with “deep for example, how the colonial era and the struggle for also elsewhere in time.” and Transculturation. London: Routledge. independence shaped the formation of Africana studies histories” are reinvented in contemporary practice. Like Anatsui’s 8 David Robinson (2004:6) has noted that “[t]ime and its corollary, “traditional African philosophy.” See Roberts, Mary Nooter. 2000. “Proofs and Promises: was a more transportable commodity than space.” Ancestors, his work invites a consideration of why and when certain Mudimbe 1988. Setting Meaning before the Eyes.” In Insight and Artistry 9 National Museum of African Art. Collections artistic forms are perceived as traditional and authentically local, 3 The title of our exhibition is inspired by George in African Divination, ed. John Pemberton, pp. 63–82. database. http://africa.si.edu/collections/ view/objects/ Kubler’s groundbreaking book, The Shape of Time; Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. while others are haunted by the specter of inauthenticity. asitem/search$0 040/0?t:state:flow=36093cec-e69f- Remarks on the History of Things (1962). Kubler pro- The Nigerian sound and video artist Emeka Ogboh uses time- 4736-a5ad-4f946ad671c8. Roberts, Mary Nooter, and Allen F. Roberts. 1996. posed a new model for understanding historical change based media to make the urban experience of time—its speed, Memory: Luba Art and the Making of History. New York: in the study of visual culture. Rather than classify- Museum for African Art. complexity, and dissonance—intensively palpable. He is especially ing objects to produce linear chronologies of stylistic References cited change over time, he considered larger patterns and Robinson, David. 2004. Muslim Societies in African His- interested in heightening peoples’ awareness of the complete era- Appiah, Kwame Anthony. 1992. In My Father’s House: shifts in human creativity. This essay draws on his criti- tory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Africa in the Philosophy of Culture. New York: Oxford sure of the perceived boundaries between the past, present, and cal insights, but focuses on another aspect of the “shape University Press. Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. 2002. “The Otherwise Modern: future in Lagos and other global megacities. In [dis]connect II (Fig. of time”: the means by which objects create temporal Caribbean Lessons from the Savage Lot.” In Critically 11) he layers the pulsating sound of electronic music with video and experience. Bentor, Eli. 1988. “Life as an Artistic Process: Igbo Modern: Alternatives, Alterities, Anthropologies, ed. audio recordings of Lagos’s traffic hubs to create a visual and aural 4 The historiography section of the introduc- Ikenga and Ofo.” African Arts 21 (2):66–94. Bruce M. Knauft, pp. 220–40. Bloomington: Indiana tory essay considers why one of the major challenges Cole, Herbert M., and C.C. Aniakor. 1984. Igbo Arts: University Press. work that lyrically dismantles the traditional sense that time is a lin- of African art history has been to move beyond the Community and Cosmos. Los Angeles: Museum of Cul- idea that an object “stands for” a culture linked to a Van Beek, Walter E.A. 2004. “Haunting Griaule: Experi- ear phenomenon. The film presents diverse peoples, vehicles, and tural History, University of California. particular territory. While Africanist art historians long ences from the Restudy of the Dogon.” History in Africa even Egungun masquerades emerging from and converging into 31:43–68. each other in a loop of discontinuous sounds and images. In a sense, the artists in NOW politicize the relationship between the past, present, and future, reclaiming history and suggesting new possibilities for the future, and thus reveal how and why time mat- ters so critically to the way we understand African art.

80 | african arts Spring 2013 vol. 46, no. 1 vol. 46, no. 1 Spring 2013 african arts | 81 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/AFAR_a_00046 by guest on 25 September 2021

Other_121210-001_072-081_CS6.indd 80-81 12/13/12 9:38 PM