AFRICAN ARTS最新文献

{"title":"When the Retina Reflects the Brain: An Unusual Presentation of a Carotid-Cavernous Fistula.","authors":"Valérie Touitou, Natalia Shor, Adam Mainguy, Sara Touhami","doi":"10.1097/WNO.0000000000001443","DOIUrl":"10.1097/WNO.0000000000001443","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45314,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ARTS","volume":"9 1","pages":"e197-e198"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91282602","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"African Textiles, Fashionable Textiles: An Introduction","authors":"Mackenzie Ryan","doi":"10.1162/afar_a_00716","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_a_00716","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45314,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ARTS","volume":"56 1","pages":"6-7"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-08-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44104820","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Igshaan Adams: A Body of Work","authors":"Á. Lima","doi":"10.1162/afar_a_00722","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_a_00722","url":null,"abstract":"| african arts AUTUMN 2023 VOL. 56, NO. 3 During a talk on his 2022 exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, South African artist Igshaan Adams was told by an attendee that many children felt the urge to touch his work: “it’s so interactive and your body feels like dancing” (Adams and Folkerts 2022b: n.p.). Younger viewers, less concerned with posturing at a museum, often respond to artwork with their bodies, a reaction Adams’s oeuvre seems to particularly evoke. I cannot blame them. My first face-to-face encounter with his work sparked a rare sense of awe toward its luxurious sensorial quality. Edmund Husserl writes that “[a] subject whose only sense was the sense of vision could not at all have an appearing body” (Husserl 1989: 158). Touch is a necessary sense for our experience of the body and its image, which is why children’s tactile impulse around Adams’s work is an obvious response to an oeuvre in which embodiment is everywhere to be found. “Touch localizes us in the world in a way that seeing does not,” explains Dermot Moran (2010: 138). No wonder, then, that the prospect of touching the work makes the children want to dance. Adams’s installations and tapestries— works made of mundane materials like plastic beads, wires, and nylon—exude a liveliness that seems palpable. Handwoven using a detailed and time-consuming practice, the artist’s work spurs a tension between the bodies of its producers, the artist and his studio assistants, and the bodies of the viewers. The tension emerges from the potential of these interactions to produce new meanings mediated by the work but not predetermined by it.1 For the young children, tension arises from the conflicting impulses to maintain the expected position of distant viewing and the temptation to break that norm. Adams, who was the 2018 recipient of the prestigious Standard Bank Young Artist award, was born in 1982 and raised in Bonteheuwel, a township at the periphery of Cape Town in an area known as the Cape Flats.2 The child of a Christian Nama-Khoisan woman and a Muslim man, he grew up identified as “Cape Malay” under apartheid’s racial classification system.3 Perhaps due to his multicultural upbringing under segregation, he has shown a keen sensibility to the violence of confinement and categorization, investing instead in experimentation, expansion, and diffusion as the modus operandi of his practice. When asked about children’s interest in touching his works, he responded, “if it was my studio, I would say ‘touch as much as you want’” (Adams and Folkerts 2022b: n.p.). Bonteheuwel/Epping (2021; Figs. 1–2), which was on display at the 2022 Venice Biennale, captures an aerial view of Bonteheuwel’s train station and its informal foot trails to Epping, an industrial neighborhood where many go to seek work. Known in urbanism as “desire lines,” these spontaneous means of connecting areas designed to be apart create an anarchist relationship to space. They are informal paths that developed withou","PeriodicalId":45314,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ARTS","volume":"56 1","pages":"72-81"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-08-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46236147","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Kanga Cloths at Vlisco: An Object-Based Study of Dutch Printing for the Colonial East African Market, 1876–1971","authors":"Mackenzie Ryan","doi":"10.1162/afar_a_00721","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_a_00721","url":null,"abstract":"| african arts AUTUMN 2023 VOL. 56, NO. 3 K anga cloths have been central to the lives of east Africans for over a century, serving primarily as affordable wrappers for the majority of women. Existing scholarship on kanga design has focused on the communicative potential of texts on these affordable, printed cloths (Yahya-Othman 1997; Beck 2000, 2001, 2005; Parkin 2000, 2003; Ong’oa-Morara 2014). Discussions of design are largely anecdotal and do not chronicle change over time (Trillo 1984; Amory 1985; Spring 2005; Zawawi 2005; Bijl 2006; Ong’oa-Morara 2014). This essay utilizes over 5,000 examples of full-cloth kanga cloth, chronicling the design and production of Vlisco, the Dutch textile printer in Helmond, the Netherlands (Figs. 1a–b). Specific regional demands, changing text script, and innovations such as commemorative, advertising, and overtly political kanga can be dated. Women’s unceasing demand for new designs is often repeated anecdotally; this study offers analysis of representative designs alongside growing numbers of imports to give specificity and weight to these assertions across the colonial period. Port cities of the Swahili coast have long been cosmopolitan in nature, with global links increasing in frequency across the nineteenth century (Arabindan-Kesson 2014; Meier 2009, 2016; Longair 2018). Kanga cloth developed and flourished in this Swahili world, and the cities of Mombasa, Zanzibar, and Dar es Salaam served as coastal entrepot for inland distribution of kanga. These cities can be used to determine differing regional demands within east Africa, as each belongs to different political regions during the colonial era, ca. 1880s–1960s. Mombasa was part of British East Africa (1895–1920); then the Protectorate of East Africa, administered by the British (1920–1963); then independent Kenya (1963–). Dar es Salaam was part of German East Africa (1885–1919); then Tanganyika Territory, administered by the British (1916–1961); then independent Tanganyika (1961–1964); then union with Zanzibar to form Tanzania (1964–). Zanzibar is an island previously ruled by the Omani sultanate (1698–1897, with a resident sultan from 1832 or 1840), until it became a British protectorate in 1890. Zanzibar merged with Tanganyika in 1964 following the Zanzibar Revolution, and today remains a semiautonomous region within Tanzania. Such varied colonial rule enabled textile printers working through changing merchant-converter firms and local Indian kanga designers and sellers to flourish. In the case of Tanzania, for example, between 1890 and 1914, German merchant converters such as Hansing & Co. handled kanga imports to German East Africa, commissioning Dutch textile printers in greater numbers than British. Leading Dutch textile printers at this time included Vlisco (P.F. van Vlissingen), HKM (Haarlemsche Katoen Maatschappij or Haarlem Cotton Company), and LKM (Leidsche Katoenmaatschappij or Leiden Cotton Company). This shifts to parallel the changing p","PeriodicalId":45314,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ARTS","volume":"56 1","pages":"56-71"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-08-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45180117","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Complex Geometries: Creativity, Motif, and the Study of Contemporary Handwoven Cloth from Côte d'Ivoire","authors":"Emma C. Wingfield","doi":"10.1162/afar_a_00719","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_a_00719","url":null,"abstract":"| african arts AUTUMN 2023 VOL. 56, NO. 3 It began with a business partnership and grew to a research collaboration. In 2014 I met a group of weavers in the village of Waraniéné, Côte d’Ivoire (Fig. 1). Vali Coulibaly, one of the master weavers and president of the village workshop, shared their interest in collaborating with someone who could help market cloth woven at Waraniéné to Global North consumers. Six master craftspeople, an American designer, an Ivorian operations manager, and myself founded a partnership in 2016 as a mechanism for weavers to sell their strip-woven textiles directly to global consumers.1 In 2020, we officially registered the partnership as a nonprofit organization, with the goal of investing all profits in arts-based initiatives ideated and managed by the craftspeople at Waraniéné.2 My role began as a business partner and transitioned, through my developing relationships as well as academic study, toward a scholarly interest in the creativity of contemporary Indigenous handweaving and the global circulation of art objects. This partnership established relationships, mutual trust, and investment that laid the groundwork to foster a successful research dynamic that would have been out of reach in many other fieldwork contexts. My research would not exist without this partnership.3 I am deeply invested and acutely interested in the ways in which weavers’ innovation in motifs and patterns change the reception of West African textiles in the Global North.4 Not only am I able to situate and critique myself—as researcher and partner from the global North—but I am also in a unique position to understand the market dynamics from the perspective of someone who actively engages with the circulation, sale, and consumption of these cloths. In this analysis, I use my role as researcher, scholar, and advocate to consider contemporary handwoven cloth from Waraniéné through the overlapping lenses of scholarly research, curatorial interpretation, connoisseurship, and commerce. I investigate the creative cycle that individual weavers harness through the weaving process by treating textiles as both individual and alternative archives through a practice I call motif mapping. By drawing multiple iterations of handwoven pattern across time, motif mapping identifies and analyzes numerous, seemingly minor designs that contribute to major shifts in the mastery of the Indigenous weaving process. This practice creates a third digital archive that provides a way to see beyond the commercial or connoisseurial focus of global markets and situates these designs within a visual provenance, without recontextualization or categorization. I navigate the vast field of contemporary handwoven cloth circulation, their complex geometric motifs, and weaver creativity through these overlapping sites of investigation, which operate simultaneously and sometimes paradoxically. By focusing on an individual contemporary handwoven cloth industry—Waraniéné—this researc","PeriodicalId":45314,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ARTS","volume":"56 1","pages":"34-43"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-08-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48280204","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"African Textiles, Fashionable Textiles: A Historiography","authors":"Sarah Fee","doi":"10.1162/afar_a_00715","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_a_00715","url":null,"abstract":"I did not go looking for textiles, they came looking for me. I originally went to southern Madagascar in the late 1980s with the intention of studying funerary monuments, which from the nineteenth century had become ever more visible and elaborate. But in the village that graciously hosted me, women soon drew me into helping them card and spin cotton, which the neighboring village then dyed and wove into burial cloth. It became apparent that as much— or more—energy, artistry, and money went into weaving and shrouds than into tombs. Yet, when I proposed the dissertation topic of handweaving to my supervisor, a French archaeologist, he was aghast. Why this frivolous topic? He, like many others, would continually try to steer me to Malagasy funerary monuments, made by specialists—by men—of stone or carved wood. A microcosm of early African art history—with its notorious preference for sculpture—perhaps compounded by the fact that in Madagascar weavers are most always women. Female and frivolous, associations that scholars show fed into the academy’s longstanding rejection of textiles, dress, and fashion as serious subjects of inquiry. What set me free, and many in my generation, was the collective volume Cloth and Human Experience (Schneider and Weiner 1989). Its mostly feminist-anthropologist authors shed blinding light on the great social and aesthetic significance of cloth around the world and women’s creative agency in making and activating it. The volume’s chapter on Madagascar by Gillian Feeley-Harnik ultimately helped win over my supervisor to my cause. Typical of the time, few chapters focused on dress, and my own dissertation was in the mold of “the anthropology of cloth,” exploring the making, gifting, and ritual use of handweavings. Still far in the distance in the 1980s, as Victoria Rovine (2015) has observed in hindsight, was seeing fashionability in Africa; only in recent years has she, and many colleagues, replaced the noxious F-words with a set of I-words: innovation, impetus, intention, individual .... Thus, if some quarters were debating whether African textiles were worthy of study, others simply got on with it. Textiles rank among “the most potent field of an indigenous aesthetic,” as John Picton, an early pioneer in the field, concludes (this issue, p. 82). And researchers, for this and many other reasons, simply could not ignore them. In the 1970s and ‘80s, the pages of African Arts offered a steady stream of articles, mainly by female scholars, on particular traditions, many of which have come to form the familiar African textile canon: resist-dyed indigo, kente, ikats of the Dida, Kuba raffia, kaasa blankets, Akwete brocades, Sokoto robes. Articles included, too, newly invented traditions such as tapestry and screen printing, born of cooperatives. Major monographs and surveys appeared, with a volume of Textile History (Idiens 1980) dedicated to “traditional African weaving and textiles.” (For detailed overview of the historio","PeriodicalId":45314,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ARTS","volume":"56 1","pages":"1-5"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-08-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44461095","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Language of Beauty in African Art curated by Constantine Petridis","authors":"Edleeca Thompson","doi":"10.1162/afar_r_00712","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_r_00712","url":null,"abstract":"The first major exhibition of African art at the Kimbell in twenty­five years, The Language of Beauty in African Art encouraged visitors to consider how African language is used to describe concepts of beauty in African art.1 More than 200 works, representing fifty­six sub­Saharan countries, were gathered from over sixty collections around the world. Seven years in the making, the exhibition was organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and curated by Constantine Petridis in collaboration with Jennifer Casler Price, the Kimbell’s curator of Asian, African, and Ancient American Art. Price commented that the exhibition focused on “looking at African art through the aesthetics of the indigenous people” rather than through a lens rooted in Western art history.2 The exhibition occupied eight galleries in the Renzo Piano Pavilion and focused on spe­ cific cultural themes and artistic conventions. Gracing the entrance were larger­than­life photographs of Igbo Maiden Spirit maskers (photographed in 1935 by G.I. Jones near Awka, Nigeria), setting the stage for exploring concepts of ugliness and beauty in African art. An Acoustiguide mobile app featured Director Erik M. Lee introducing the exhibition, with commentary by Yaëlle Biro on the history of Western appreciation of African art. For all its successes, The Language of Beauty in African Art at the Kimbell highlighted the challenges museums face when displaying African art in the formal museum environ­ ment. Renzo Piano’s architectural color scheme of gray concrete walls, oak floor, and diffused natural light made for a warm gallery atmo­ sphere, with casework and label copy echoing Piano’s color palette. While didactics promoted indigenous perspectives, the display environ­ ment maintained its postmodern aesthetic. The first section, “Whose Beauty?” consid­ ered how African art has been displayed and interpreted in and outside of Africa. A male figure identified as the Chokwe royal ances­ tor, Chibinda Ilunga, introduced visitors to the duality of meanings in African language, while recognizing the sculpture’s utotombo, or craftsmanship, as well as its cibema, or beauty and goodness (Fig. 1). Another display of Kota reliquary figures exemplified the Western fascination with figural abstraction and aes­ thetics of African art rather than its indigenous functions. The “How Objects Speak” section included prestige works, decorative cups, headrests, and stools. From this gallery, visitors had an open view into the next section, which explored the “Moral Meanings of Beauty.” An impressive Baga shoulder mask (d’mba) commanded the space as a monumental symbol of the beautiful, maternal power of women along with personal adornments inscribing status and moral distinction (Fig. 2). A collection of helmet masks (sowei) evidenced the high­ est “Standards of Beauty” for women; their","PeriodicalId":45314,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ARTS","volume":"56 1","pages":"91-93"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46926681","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Arts of Africa: Studying and Conserving the Collection, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts by Richard B. Woodward, Ash Duhrkoop, Ndubuisi Ezeluomba, Sheila Payaqui, Ainslie Harrison, Casey Mallinckrodt, and Kathryn Brugioni Gabrielli","authors":"Michael S. Baird","doi":"10.1162/afar_r_00714","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_r_00714","url":null,"abstract":"This catalogue, dedicated to the permanent collection of African art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia, is innovative in both approach and form and makes a distinct contribution to the genre of museum catalogues centered on African art in major museum collections. The Arts of Africa emphasizes scientific analysis and conservation, providing a perspective that has not been applied to a book­length, compre­ hensive treatment of an African art collection in a major US museum. Objects that were the subject of analysis by the conservation depart­ ment cover a wide geographic and temporal expanse, from a depiction of the Last Supper from eighteenth­century Ethiopia to a Twins Seven­Seven work. Instead of treating objects as exemplars of particular types, the emphasis on conservation as a mode of inquiry consid­ ers the specific objects within the collection. The conservation perspective brings into focus a central argument and structuring principle of the book: the biographies of objects do not end with their entry into the museum. Instead, the works continue to acquire meaning in their interactions with new audiences and their transplantation into a new environment. The publication is notable for these efforts to make the museum a self­conscious presence, an element of the objects’ stories. Accordingly, the conventional photographs of isolated objects are complemented by photographs representing objects within the life of the museum, including in the context of educa­ tional programs, in the galleries, and in the conservation lab. The Arts of Africa was published to mark the end of a multiyear, cross­departmental, Mellon Foundation­funded initiative that aimed to apply expertise in the fields of cura­ tion and conservation to the study of African art objects. It is the second publication from the VMFA’s African art collection; the earlier catalogue (Woodward 2000) was consider­ ably shorter—94 pages, compared to the 296 pages in this volume. While The Arts of Africa is accessible to nonspecialist audiences, the most seasoned expert will surely appreciate the unique perspectives on even the most canoni­ cal works. For example, the inclusion of rarely seen views of objects, like the back of a flour sack painting by Congolese artist Tshibumba Kanda­Matulu, provide literally new per­ spectives to complement the methodological contributions. The book consists of an introduction, six chapters, and three appendices. Chapters 1 and 2 cover the early history of African art at the VMFA and the establishment of the museum’s permanent collection. Chapter 3 outlines the changing conceptions of the goals of conservation for African art, addressing ethical as well as aesthetic concerns. By far the largest section of the book, chapter 4 details findings of the conservation initiative in relation to specific objects in the collection. Chapters 5 and 6 contextualize the collection of the VMFA within larger trajectories of the display and collect","PeriodicalId":45314,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ARTS","volume":"56 1","pages":"95-96"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42293622","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Artifacts from the Perspective of Effutu Masquerade Performance: An Aesthetic Album","authors":"V. Micah, Evans Kwadwo Donkor, Owusu-Ansah Ankrah","doi":"10.1162/afar_a_00709","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_a_00709","url":null,"abstract":"| african arts SUMMER 2023 VOL. 56, NO. 2 The creation of masquerading artifacts like masks, hats, stilts, flywhisks, African bells with ring strikers (castanets), and costumes from the inception of the culture in Ghana has been a matter of strict philosophical discourse, especially within the conceptualization of forms in a blend of mostly European and, rather less, from African perspectives. To date, the masquerade artists and the leaders of Winneba have maintained a blend of European and African frames of reference in conceptualizing their ideas and costumes. The Effutu Municipal Assembly notes that Winneba was traditionally known as “Simpa,” “which was derived from the name of the leader of the Effutus, ‘Osimpa’, who led the Effutus of the Guan ethnic stock from the Northern part of Ghana to the present location” (2015: 3). The name “Winneba” originated from European sailors, who were often aided by the favorable wind to sail along the bay; the constant use of the words “windy bay” turned into the name Winneba. The town was one of the first communities in the country to meet European traders; it served as a port where foreign goods were discharged and transported to the interior and to major commercial areas such as Agona Swedru and Akim-Oda. Because of its role as a harbor town and a place of early European settlement, it became the administrative capital of the then Central Province of the Gold Coast (Ghana). The cocoa boom in forestry areas led to the relocation of major trading companies in the 1940s to Agona Swedru, and this affected the growth of Winneba. The township incurred even greater loss when the port of Tema was completed and port activities in Winneba were thus shut down. With this, most commercial activities also shifted from Winneba to Tema and Accra (Effutu Municipal Assembly 2015). Winneba is primarily a fishing community that uses dinghies for fishing. The Effutu people in Winneba have rich cultures, including the Kakamotobi masquerading festival, Aboakyer deer hunt, and others. The fishing community is gradually turning into a cosmopolitan area, which has taken a toll on the citizens (Micah 2014). Davies (2010), discussing Phyllis Galembo’s fascination with masquerades in Ghana, reveals that the Kakamotobi masquerading festival began as a party. Galembo’s masquerade photographs support the historic antecedents of Effutu’s masquerade culture:","PeriodicalId":45314,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ARTS","volume":"56 1","pages":"48-63"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48641216","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Colonial Legacies: Contemporary Lens-Based Art and the Democratic Republic of Congo by Gabriella Nugent","authors":"Pedro Monaville","doi":"10.1162/afar_r_00713","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_r_00713","url":null,"abstract":"| 93 living and the dead. These objects commanded astonishment in their form and power, tran­ scending all notions of ugliness and beauty. The exhibition opened with a symposium and lectures by curator Petridis, Babatunde Lawal, and Frederick John Lamp. Friday and Wednesday evening lectures included talks by Christa Clarke, Zoë Strother, and Elyan Jeanine Hill. The Kimbell also hosted guided tours, workshops, films, book readings, and a special Juneteenth celebration. While displays did not include audiovisual interactives, patrons seemed genuinely interested in the objects and frequently revisited galleries. That said, the missed opportunity to engage visitors with additional audiovisual content could have enlivened an already dynamic collec­ tion of art, capturing a wider range of visitor demographics. Without question, The Language of Beauty in African Art at the Kimbell was one of the most important exhibitions of traditional African art in recent years. The scope and quality of objects was only surpassed by attention to detail in descriptions of cultural meanings through didactics and audio tours. The thematic approach in the arrangement of objects provided more focused comparisons of cross­cultural styles and techniques. Placing emphasis on language, and verbal expressions used to describe physical and moral beauty, allowed for deeper learning about the meaning of the art for African peoples. The Kimbell’s website featured discussions between Jennifer Casler Price and Constan­ tine Petridis, a video on the making of the exhibition, and a virtual tour. The catalogue includes contributions by Yaëlle Biro, Herbert M. Cole, Kassim Kone, Babatunde Lawal, Constantine Petridis, Wilfried van Damme, and Susan Mullin Vogel. (Constantine Petridis, ed. The Language of Beauty in African Art. The Art Institute of Chicago. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022. 356 pp. 315 color, 30 b/w ill., $65.00).","PeriodicalId":45314,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ARTS","volume":"56 1","pages":"93-95"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45354682","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}