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This volume accompanies the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History exhibition of the art of the African Lega. African art specialist Cameron provides information about the physical world of the Lega people and then discusses their social community and the three structures that provide the framework for Lega life--family, circumcision camp, and the Bwami society. She discusses artistic practice and aesthetics, indications of identity and status, and the art objects themselves. The book is extensively illustrated with color reproductions of the art works, as well as a few color and b&w photographs of the people. Oversize: 9x12". Distributed by the U. of Washington Press. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.
From Preface: "This publication challenges the prevailing opinion among scholars of African art that the word doll is an inappropriate designation for many genres of African art to which it is often applied. The word, it seems, evokes a limited set of images that are incompatible with the stereotype of African sculpture as objects laden with ritual and religious associations, associations which to many minds preclude any consideration of play as part of their existence. Our basic premise for this volume is that the problem is not the application of doll to African contexts but rather a profound misunderstanding of what a doll is. Playing with dolls, we argue, is serious business, and we in the United States and elsewhere in the Western world probably take ours too lightly. While the average parent views these figures as relatively inconsequential objects, it is becoming increasingly clear to social scientists that they can be active in establishing value systems and constructing identities...."
Beautifully illustrated, Portrait Photography in Africa offers new interpretations of the cultural and historical roles of photography in Africa. Twelve leading scholars look at early photographs, important photographers' studios, the uses of portraiture in the 19th century, and the current passion for portraits in Africa. They review a variety of topics, including what defines a common culture of photography, the social and political implications of changing technologies for portraiture, and the lasting effects of culture on the idea of the person depicted in the photographic image.
Cameroon is a land of much promise, but a land of unfulfilled promises. It has the potential to be an economically developed and democratic society but the struggle to live up to its potential has not gone well. Since independence there have been only two presidents of Cameroon; the current one has been in office since 1982. Endowed with a variety of climates and agricultural environments, numerous minerals and substantial forests, and a dynamic population, this is a country that should be a leader of Africa. Instead, we find a country almost paralyzed by corruption and poor management, a country with a low life expectancy and serious health problems, and a country from which the most talent...
In Embodying Relation Allison Moore examines the tensions between the local and the global in the art photography movement in Bamako, Mali, which blossomed in the 1990s after Malian photographers Seydou Keïta and Malick Sidibé became internationally famous and the Bamako Photography Biennale was founded. Moore traces the trajectory of Malian photography from the 1880s—when photography first arrived as an apparatus of French colonialism—to the first African studio practitioners of the 1930s and the establishment in 1994 of the Bamako Biennale, Africa's most important continent-wide photographic exhibition. In her detailed discussion of Bamakois artistic aesthetics and institutions, Moor...
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The seventy-five masterpieces presented here, drawn from public and private American collections, are among the most celebrated icons of African art, works that are superb artistic creations as well as expressions of a society's most profound conceptions about its beginnings. All are reproduced in color and are accompanied by entries that illuminate the distinctive cultural contexts that inspired their creation and informed their appreciation."--BOOK JACKET.
Activating the Past explores critical historical events and transformations associated with embodied memories in the Black Atlantic world. The assembled case-studies disclose hidden historical references to local and regional encounters with Atlantic modernity, focusing on religious festivals that represent political and economic relationships in “fetishized” forms of power and value. Although memories of the slave trade are rarely acknowledged in West Africa and the Americas, they have retreated, so to speak, within ritual associations as restricted, repressed, even secret histories that are activated during public festivals and through different styles of spirit possession. In West Afr...
How does coding change the way we think about architecture? This question opens up an important research perspective. In this book, Miro Roman and his AI Alice_ch3n81 develop a playful scenario in which they propose coding as the new literacy of information. They convey knowledge in the form of a project model that links the fields of architecture and information through two interwoven narrative strands in an “infinite flow” of real books. Focusing on the intersection of information technology and architectural formulation, the authors create an evolving intellectual reflection on digital architecture and computer science.
Mapping Modernisms brings together scholars working around the world to address the modern arts produced by indigenous and colonized artists. Expanding the contours of modernity and its visual products, the contributors illustrate how these artists engaged with ideas of Primitivism through visual forms and philosophical ideas. Although often overlooked in the literature on global modernisms, artists, artworks, and art patrons moved within and across national and imperial borders, carrying, appropriating, or translating objects, images, and ideas. These itineraries made up the dense networks of modern life, contributing to the crafting of modern subjectivities and of local, transnationally in...