In Gallery 101 acquisition number 1999.76 at the Dayton Art Institute, you will find the Kuosi (Elephant Mask) Society Costume of the Bamileke people in Cameroon, Africa. Standing almost six feet tall (67 inches), the elephant mask costume was worn during Tso (elephant dance) by a secret society of warriors dedicated to protecting their king. Today the costume maintains order in the Bamileke society and reminds the king that he is not above the gods. The elephant mask costume is worn to display the king’s wealth at the Kuosi celebration. The costume is made of hair, fur, beads, ivory, feathers and twine which are rare, expressing the kings wealth and power (Dallas Museum of Art). The Elephant Mask Costume has both artistic and ritualistic value; symbolizing the wealth, privilege and power the Bamileke people have against their enemies.
In Nigeria, the Yoruba ruler Airowayoye 1 of Orangun-ila wears a similar costume to the Elephant Mask Costume seen in Cameroon. Airowayoye 1 wears a beaded veil that covers his face, a beaded scepter, and sits on a footstool. Much like art in Africa, each piece of Airowayoye 1’s costume holds significant meaning. The beaded veil is said to protect the ruler’s viewers from the power of his eyes. The beaded staff is a symbol of the ruler’s connection with heaven and earth and the height of the crown represents the significant class difference between rulers and common people and (Werbel). Medicines and other ritualistic materials are also placed inside crown to add to the ruler’s superiority and power. He must share this power with the ‘mothers’ or witches which are represented by the birds (O’Riley 246).
There are many similarities seen between the Elephant Mask Costume and the costume worn by th...
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...bers of their tribes. The significance of both costumes is shown by the rare materials used to present the wearers wealth and by the symbolic colors and animals used to decorate them. The geometric shapes, colors and animals used to decorate both costumes all have symbolic meanings rather than for aesthetic purposes, whether it’s to symbolize wealth, power, intelligence, strength, life, death, mortality, fertility, etc.
Works Cited
Dallas Museum of Art. The Kuosi. Online exhibition. n.d. http://museum.dma.org/idc/idcplg?IdcService=SS_QD_GET_RENDITION&coreContentOnly=1&dDocName=dmacon_elephant_mask&dID=4957#tk. 7 April 2014.
O’Riley, Michael Hamper. Art beyond the West. New Jersey: Pearson Education, 2013. Print
Rand. Bamileke Elephant masks Cameroon. Rand African Art. Web. 7 April 2014.
Werbel, Amy. African Art. Saint Michaels College. n.d. Web. 7 April 2014.
The mask is part of the ceremony known as "the Dance of the Goats” or La Danza de los Chivos. The mask on masksoftheworld.com is from Chilpancingo, State of Guerrero, Mexico. However, the traditional Dance of the Goats began in Zitlala, State of Guerrero, Mexico. The villagers created the dance after the Mexican Revolution in 1910. After the war, an epidemic took place that eliminated almost all livestock in the area. Even with the epidemic, the people were able to complete the construction of their primary church, but afterwards were left with nothing. They decided to approach the patron saint of the village, St. Nicholas to express their concerns and worries. Once they were before him, they dressed and danced as goats. Afterwards, the villagers believed that Saint Nicholas had performed a miracle. From then on, they perform the ceremony every year on the day of St. Nicholas on September 10th. The dance represents the tradition of rural life that portrays peasant life and the daily struggle to keep the heritage of peasant families alive. The idea is to capture daily life through art. The purpose of the mask used in this dance is to transform the dancers into the character of a goat.
Both pieces to me seem to represent godlike features. For example, in the palette the king is shown as larger than his enemies and in the stele the king is standing over the people and is much higher than them. As rulers, they are both depicted as strong and heroic and as humans, they are depicted as
...haracters’ clothing is not discussed in the book, so I cannot really apply this theme to it.
The Portuguese arrived in Benin, in modern Nigeria, between 1472 and 1486 to find an established and ancient kingdom with remarkable social and ritual complexity, with art that was comparatively naturalistic, and with a political system that was, on the surface, recognizable to the Europeans: monarchy. Even more importantly, they found a land rich in pepper, cloth, ivory, and slaves, and immediately set out to establish trade (Ben-Amos 35-6). Though we often imagine "first contacts" between Europeans and Africans as clashes of epochal proportions, leaving Europeans free to manipulate and coerce the flabbergasted and paralyzed Africans, this misjudges the resilience and indeed, preparedness, of the Benin people. The Benin were able to draw on their cultural, political, and religious traditions to fit the European arrival in an understandable context. Indeed, as the great brass plaques of the Benin palace demonstrate, the arrival was in fact manipulated by the Benin to strengthen, not diminish, indigenous royal power.
Initially there was a great deal of debate about Benin art and its display, as it did not equate with the perceptions then held about Africa. Until the British conquest of Benin in 1897, little was known about Benin and its culture apart from brief interaction with other Europeans in the sixteenth century. The perception of Africa was of a primitive, savage and uncivilised land, full of ‘abuses and fetishes and idolatries’, (Hodgkin, 1975, p33). Therefore, when the British invaded Benin they treated any artefacts they found as ‘war booty’ (Woods, 2008, p30) and sold anything of any value to pay for the expedition. They removed artefacts and artwork without recording any contextual evidence of form or function. These ideas are evident in the photographs in figures 1.10 on page 31, 2.2 on page 50 in Cultural Encounters (AA100, Book 3) and Plate 3.1.14 in the Illustration Book: Plates for Book 3 and 4 where artefacts are bundled into piles with centralised white figures suggesting only British triumph (Loftus, 2008). The ‘clever workmanship’ (Gallewey, 1893b, p37) and ‘delicacy of detail’ (Bacon, 1897, p39) attest to the quality of the artwork and the subsequent bidding by rival museums and galleries for the pieces did not prevent the perception that Africa, and thus Benin, as being barbaric and primitive.
I visited the Oriental Institute of Chicago Museum, which contains various artifacts, I choose a Model Hippopotamus from Egypt. The hippopotamus is dated to Egypt’s Middle Kingdom, circa 1878 BC. According to wall text at the Oriental Institute of Chicago, hippopotamuses in Egyptian culture represented the enemies of the ruler. I was attracted to the Model Hippopotamus based on its size/shape, lines, texture, and the color.
This essay deals with the nature of a cross cultural encounter between the Benin people and Portuguese traders in the 15th and 16th centuries, which resulted in the depiction of Portuguese figures in Benin brass plaques. It will propose that this contact between people with different cultures was on the basis of'mutual regard' (Woods, K. 2008, p. 16), and although the Portuguese had qualms about idolatry in Benin it will show that assumptions by Europeans up to the 20th century of the primitive nature of tribal African societies was inaccurate with regard to the Benin people, who had a society based on the succession of the King or 'Oba', a Royal Family and Nobility. The essay will finally suggest that Benin’s increase in wealth following the arrival of the Portuguese led to a resurgence in bronze sculptures and the introduction of a new form, the rectilinear plaque. The plaque under consideration, is of a forward facing man, with an aquiline nose, thin lips, neatly trimmed beard, wearing a sun hat with flaps and looking intently at the viewer. He is dressed in a typical 16th century Portuguese style, wearing a decorated tunic with padded shoulders and tight breeches with short boots.
Many African cultures see life as a cycle we are born, we grow and mature, enter adulthood, and one day we will eventually die but the cycle continues long after death. In Africa art is used as a way to express many things in their society, in this paper I will focus on different ways traditional African art are used to describe the cycle of one’s life. Since Africa is such a large continent it is important to keep in mind that every country and tribe has different rituals and views when it comes to the cycle of life. It is estimated to be well over a thousand different ethnic groups and cultures in Africa today. Thousands of cultures in Africa see the stages of life bound together in a continuous cycle; a cycle of birth, growth, maturity,
The color of clothing that the women wear is an important element because it helps to show the women’s power and privileges. The color of clothing a woman wears reflects how much freedom she will have. Th...
For a long time now body art and decoration has been a custom in many cultural groups. Through research we have learned about the different types of body art and ornamentation such as permanent and nonpermanent tattooing, scarification, and piercings. These forms of body art and ornamentation are done for a variety of reasons, ranging from identification purposes to religious rituals. “Skin, as a visible way of defining individual identity and cultural difference, is not only a highly elaborated preoccupation in many cultures; it is also the subject of wide-ranging and evolving scholarly discourse in the humanities and social sciences” (Schildkrout, 2004). The process of ornamentation and body art is usually a painful experience, but it is a way to signify a person’s self-discovery and their place in society. In this paper, I will explore the different aspects of body art and ornamentation in two different cultures; the Maori people of New Zealand and the Yoruba’s of West Africa and explain the cultural importance of their art.
The clothing also represents the breakdown of the society. To begin, most of the boys were wearing school uniforms and some were wearing choir robes. This shows they are educated, civilized young men, who are most likely from, or around the city. As time passes, the boys do not remain fully clad. They shed their shoes and shirts. Their hair grows longer, and they are dirtier. This resembles their civilized ways beginning to fade. They also started using face paint for camouflage, and it eventually becomes a ritual.
... for the dead (Carnival 9). These ceremonies were called masked balls. Masks also are worn by the moko jumbies to hide their familiar faces. Moko jumbies originated as West African shamans. They are tall guardians that protect people from the evil jumbie spirits. During carnival they can be seen covered from head to toe and walking on stilts. Today the costumes are made of almost anything as long as the colors are bright and wild. Many of the costumes at carnival are enormous and need the right construction so they are light enough for the dancers to move around in.
Adichie portrays the persisting existence of traditional African culture through Odenigbo’s mother – who symbolizes the extreme end of traditional beliefs. When Odenigbo’s mother visits Odenigbo and Olanna at their apartment in Nsukka, she is immediately personified as the traditional Nigerian village woman. Unaccepting of modern attitudes and advancements, she “peered suspiciously at the stove, knocked on the pressure cooker and tapped the pots...
Throughout the year hotels, convention centers, and other high capacity venues are transformed into a social haven and meeting ground for fellow Otakus and cosplay fans or cosplayers for short. The act of cosplay, the abbreviated form of “costume play”, is defined by Oxford Dictionary as “the practice of dressing up as a character from a movie, book, or video game, especially one from the Japanese genres of manga and anime”. However, there is much more to a cosplayer than this simple definition leads one to believe. To its most dedicated patrons, cosplay is an art form incorporating unlimited mediums, such as textile fabrication, woodworking, clay sculpting, resin casting, and even theatrical makeup. Some enthusiasts take cosplay far more seriously than a weekend social hobby. While some would be content with purchasing a commissioned piece or mass produced costume for their convention adventures others are not satisfied until they have handcrafted a masterpiece with 100% accuracy. These cosplayers will spend week or months and hundreds of dollars insure their costume is a perfect adaption of their selected character. Yet for some that is still not enough. There are those who will not be content until they have become the living embodiment of their chosen character. They become the method actors of cosplay, memorizing the characters personality, walk, quirks, and vocalics. Going even deeper into the realm of cosplay, there are still those who are so obsessed with becoming a character they will paint their skin, whether it be pink, grey, green, or any color in between. This is where a sensitive debate explodes. Coloring yourself grey or pink for your Marceline or Princess Bubblegum adventure time cosplays will ...
The African pygmies are made up of four main groups called the Binga, Twa, the tribes of Rwanda, and the tribes of Ituri (Columbia). All of which are individually composed of several subgroups, and there are over 200 different languages spoken among these tribes (Milios). The diverse culture displayed among these groups serves as just one obvious reason for expected confrontation. Although, today they fight not against each other, but against one common enemy; the Bantu (Thomas). The Bantu people make up the majority of the population of Central Africa, and they have a normal body structure, much unlike the pygmies (Milios). Pygmy men generally do not grow taller than four feet and nine inches, while the women will average four feet...