Popular in Arts and Humanities

Arts and Humanities

Titus Quinctius Flamininus’ “Italian triumph”

McGill University Michael Fronda

Arts and Humanities

Lincoln and the Jews

Brandeis University Jonathan Sarna

Arts and Humanities

Amputations and Convalescence

University of Western Australia Emily Brink

Art

Drawing on the past: Palladio, his precursors and knowledge of ancient architecture

University of Birmingham David Hemsoll

Art

Language, Sound, and Image in Wallace Berman’s Aleph, 1956–1966

University of San Diego Chelsea Behle Fralick

Arts and Humanities

Early Modern Natural Law Theories

University of Copenhagen Knud Haakonssen

Maternity: Mothers and Children in the Arts of Africa

View more insights in Arts and Humanities - Art - Art History

View more figures from University of California Santa Barbara

View the page of Herbert Cole

Read the Study

Next in Art

Redface: Race, Performance, and Indigeneity

Bethany Hughes | University of Michigan

Amputations and Convalescence

Emily Brink | University of Western Australia

On the African continent, images of mothers and children are found wherever the visual arts are, from early rock-art sites in Egypt and the Sahara to the contemporary arts of South Africa. Defining maternity as a biological and cultural phenomenon, Herbert M. Cole goes beyond obvious notions of fertility to consider the importance of maternity in thought, ritual action, and worldview.

Image courtesy of interviewee. June 6, 2024

Log-in or Sign-up to Faculti
Currently viewing this subject insight as a guest. You have insight(s) remaining for this month. Login to view 8000+ figures on the platform.

Generating Workspace...

Export as PDF

The speaker recounts their journey into the field of African art history, beginning in 1962 at Columbia University and culminating in a field study in Nigeria in 1966. They describe their encounter with the Ari house in Ibo country, which centers around the earth goddess Ala, a crucial deity for the Ibo people symbolizing motherhood and moral guardianship. The segment discusses the significance of mud sculptures and the process of building these houses, which often take over a year to complete and involve the community.

The speaker highlights the symbolism of Ala's white face, which represents purity rather than racial connotations, illustrating cultural color symbolism. They expand on the perception of motherhood as a construct shaped by cultural values, contrasting practices in different regions in Africa, such as Ghana, where queen mothers play an influential role in politics and society.

Furthermore, the speaker discusses variations in depictions of motherhood and its cultural significance within various African communities, highlighting the difference between biological maternity, which is universal, and the culturally shaped practices surrounding it. Examples from ancient Egypt's goddess Isis to Ethiopia's veneration of Mary emphasize how maternal figures serve not only as symbols of fertility but also represent political and social forces.

In conclusion, the speaker reflects on the rich diversity of maternal imagery and its implications across African cultures, emphasizing the importance of community, moral conduct, and the significant roles mothers play in shaping societal structures.

Language:

Export as PDF

X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

00:00.165 --> 00:03.765
I went to Columbia in 1962 to study medieval,

00:04.585 --> 00:05.685
art history.

00:05.945 --> 00:10.365
And I took a course on African art, almost by an ex.

00:11.705 --> 00:15.085
And, that hooked me.

00:15.865 --> 00:19.405
So I decided in 1964 to go to Africa

00:20.305 --> 00:23.805
to study it from the people themselves.

00:24.765 --> 00:26.245
I had been taught by two people.

00:26.945 --> 00:29.965
I'd been taught African art by two people who had never been

00:29.965 --> 00:31.285
to the continent of Africa.

00:32.105 --> 00:34.645
And, this was early in the,

00:34.665 --> 00:37.805
in art historians studying Africa.

00:38.025 --> 00:40.045
Anthropologists had done so earlier,

00:40.665 --> 00:41.805
but art historians,

00:41.915 --> 00:45.485
only a half a dozen art historians had done field work.

00:45.625 --> 00:48.485
So I was in that early contingent,

00:48.585 --> 00:53.205
and I chose to go to IBO country in southeastern Nigeria.

00:53.905 --> 00:58.365
And I arrived with my wife and two kids in 1966

00:59.025 --> 01:03.045
and lived in, well, it doesn't matter where I lived.

01:03.625 --> 01:08.205
Uh, and then on my very first field trip in

01:09.445 --> 01:12.985
IBO country, I came across an Ari house.

01:13.765 --> 01:18.265
Uh, this Ari house has at as its center,

01:18.965 --> 01:22.665
the earth goddess, ala a LA,

01:23.765 --> 01:27.625
who is the ground of being for Igbo people.

01:28.405 --> 01:32.985
She is the mother of all of all other deities, of

01:33.615 --> 01:37.265
animals, of plants, and of human beings.

01:38.245 --> 01:42.945
And, most embar houses were given

01:43.685 --> 01:47.785
to, or offered to Allah as a kind of sacrifice,

01:47.885 --> 01:52.745
as a community effort, an enormous human effort

01:52.925 --> 01:57.905
and financial, sacrifice for the people.

01:58.605 --> 02:00.745
And sometimes it took more than a year

02:01.045 --> 02:05.785
to construct this house, which is filled with mud sculptures

02:07.155 --> 02:11.455
of local people doing things,

02:11.855 --> 02:15.935
a couple sitting side by side, as you see on the left,

02:16.715 --> 02:20.455
of animals of, other human beings

02:20.515 --> 02:24.255
and holding, a jug of palm wine or,

02:24.475 --> 02:28.335
or, a, a white man emerging from a hole in the ground,

02:28.385 --> 02:32.495
which tells a story of, of early,

02:32.975 --> 02:37.075
Europeans, all kinds of, of things heard about

02:37.135 --> 02:41.275
and hoped for out of mythology and out of daily life.

02:41.375 --> 02:46.275
And there can be as many as 200 modeled clay figures in

02:46.805 --> 02:49.275
Anbar, the one that we're looking at had about

02:49.285 --> 02:51.315
40 figures in it.

02:52.135 --> 02:53.955
Um, but the,

02:54.215 --> 02:57.515
the centerpiece is the goddess Allah.

02:58.295 --> 03:00.885
And you'll notice that the faces of all the,

03:01.025 --> 03:04.005
the human beings that we see are white,

03:04.745 --> 03:07.365
and the people, of course, are dark skinned.

03:08.145 --> 03:12.365
Um, and I asked why Allah's face is painted white,

03:12.425 --> 03:15.525
and she said, well, we sometimes refer to Allah

03:15.745 --> 03:19.045
as dark Allah because she's ambivalent.

03:19.145 --> 03:22.605
She can, destroy people, she can kill people,

03:23.065 --> 03:24.765
and she can be beneficent.

03:25.345 --> 03:28.365
She can, peel yams with the knife

03:28.365 --> 03:29.965
that she holds in her right hand,

03:30.255 --> 03:32.925
which we'll see in the closeup of Allah.

03:33.585 --> 03:37.845
Um, but if you call, if you were

03:37.845 --> 03:41.125
to paint her, her face, black

03:41.185 --> 03:43.685
or dark, she would be angered.

03:44.105 --> 03:46.405
And, this wouldn't be good.

03:46.465 --> 03:48.445
So white isn't honorific white

03:48.785 --> 03:52.445
for the Igbo people is a color of purity, of goodness,

03:53.345 --> 03:54.565
of beauty.

03:55.265 --> 03:58.325
And so Allah is honored by having a white face.

03:58.355 --> 04:01.365
Doesn't have anything to do with the white faces

04:01.505 --> 04:03.005
of Caucasian peoples.

04:03.395 --> 04:06.845
It's simply a, a, local color symbolism,

04:06.845 --> 04:09.325
which is fairly widespread in Africa, actually.

04:11.245 --> 04:14.825
So, this house,

04:15.255 --> 04:20.105
this architectural complex of sculptures is a sacrifice

04:20.835 --> 04:25.585
built in a long ritualized process with men

04:25.585 --> 04:27.745
and women who are initiated into the process

04:28.525 --> 04:30.545
behind a concealing fence.

04:31.285 --> 04:33.985
The house is built over a period of months

04:34.165 --> 04:35.945
and sometimes more than a year.

04:37.245 --> 04:41.785
And I came to realize that Allah as the centerpiece, as the,

04:42.165 --> 04:45.625
as the, the deity to whom this, this,

04:45.765 --> 04:47.785
effort is dedicated,

04:50.675 --> 04:55.105
that that motherhood in the, in the form

04:55.125 --> 04:58.825
of Allah is a kind of ramifying

04:59.425 --> 05:00.545
cultural phenomenon.

05:01.695 --> 05:04.105
That she is the font of morality.

05:05.045 --> 05:08.465
She is the guardian of tradition among the IBO people.

05:09.245 --> 05:13.585
And if you offend her by polluting the earth, for example,

05:13.585 --> 05:17.745
through bloodshed, she's going to come after you.

05:17.915 --> 05:20.425
She's going to, to, give you trouble.

05:21.165 --> 05:25.425
Uh, if you make good, good gestures towards her

05:26.065 --> 05:30.985
sacrifice, for her, then she will, she will

05:32.265 --> 05:34.425
repay you by giving you children

05:34.645 --> 05:37.825
and, abundant fields, yam

05:37.845 --> 05:41.305
and so forth, researching Allah

05:41.405 --> 05:45.705
and maari houses over a period of more than a year,

05:46.425 --> 05:49.425
I realized that, motherhood

05:50.045 --> 05:53.065
was a cultural cons construct.

05:53.805 --> 05:58.205
And when I did my second bout of field work in the early

05:58.725 --> 06:00.605
seventies in southern Ghana,

06:01.565 --> 06:03.925
I came up upon images

06:04.145 --> 06:06.885
and shrines of queen mothers

06:08.405 --> 06:11.505
and ahan society in Southern Ghana.

06:12.325 --> 06:16.065
The Ashanti peoples and the FTI peoples are matrilineal,

06:16.405 --> 06:20.025
and they accord great respect to mothers,

06:20.045 --> 06:22.785
and especially to queen mothers who are

06:23.345 --> 06:25.425
involved in choosing kings.

06:25.495 --> 06:28.225
They're not necessarily the actual biological

06:28.375 --> 06:29.705
mothers of kings.

06:29.705 --> 06:31.505
They can be the king's aunt,

06:32.125 --> 06:36.305
but she, she has a role in choosing the king

06:36.845 --> 06:40.705
and in, serving as a kind of

06:41.415 --> 06:42.985
counselor for all women.

06:44.005 --> 06:46.585
And she's an important political force.

06:47.645 --> 06:52.345
So I realized that maternity images

06:52.485 --> 06:54.825
of mothers and children,

06:54.965 --> 06:57.065
can be political instruments as well.

06:58.125 --> 07:02.665
And so the, the sculpture that you see on the screen is

07:03.005 --> 07:07.745
of a queen mother with her feet raised on, a footstool.

07:08.165 --> 07:12.745
And she is wearing sandals to keep her feet from,

07:12.745 --> 07:16.265
being polluted by the ground in this instance.

07:16.845 --> 07:18.905
So Earth in

07:19.675 --> 07:23.385
Ghana is not treated in the same way as it is

07:23.515 --> 07:24.705
among the Igbo people.

07:25.405 --> 07:26.945
So that made me realize

07:27.055 --> 07:31.825
that there are many cultural differences in the images

07:32.085 --> 07:35.505
of maternity and in how they are visualized

07:35.645 --> 07:40.065
and how, motherhood is carried on, carried on.

07:40.925 --> 07:44.125
So my research

07:44.825 --> 07:46.405
for this book on maternity

07:47.845 --> 07:50.125
stresses these cultural differences.

07:51.015 --> 07:54.685
Biological maternity, of course, is the same everywhere.

07:56.725 --> 08:01.015
Fertilized sperm reaches fertilized egg

08:01.185 --> 08:03.415
after nine months, a child is born.

08:03.555 --> 08:05.815
That's it. This is the same everywhere.

08:06.755 --> 08:10.215
But the cultural, ideas

08:10.555 --> 08:12.975
and practices around eternities

08:13.835 --> 08:17.135
are enormously varied from one place to another.

08:17.915 --> 08:22.015
For example, in ancient Egypt, ISIS was a great

08:22.565 --> 08:23.775
culture bringer.

08:24.355 --> 08:28.455
Uh, a a mother goddess who was responsible

08:28.995 --> 08:31.415
in ancient Egyptian thought

08:31.835 --> 08:34.055
for the annual flooding of the Nile.

08:35.325 --> 08:39.635
So it was Isis who brought agriculture

08:40.015 --> 08:41.395
to the Egyptian people.

08:41.855 --> 08:44.155
She brought, she introduced marriage,

08:44.455 --> 08:46.155
she introduced weaving.

08:46.775 --> 08:50.995
She was a great magician and doctor, a protector of women

08:51.255 --> 08:54.155
and children of childbirth and so forth.

08:54.855 --> 08:58.445
So here again, is an example of,

09:00.515 --> 09:04.705
motherhood and images of mothers, which are

09:05.485 --> 09:09.665
in great quantities in, the art history

09:09.925 --> 09:13.705
of Egypt, for example, there are hundreds, probably

09:14.225 --> 09:18.385
thousands of images of Isis with her son Horace.

09:19.005 --> 09:23.305
Um, and she was responsible too for,

09:23.885 --> 09:25.865
Egyptian political life.

09:26.645 --> 09:28.585
So Isis was a political force,

09:28.925 --> 09:31.465
as was the queen mother in Ghana.

09:32.485 --> 09:37.465
And if we were to move to, if we move to the Sun UFO people

09:38.365 --> 09:42.585
of, northern co Devo, ivory Coast

09:42.765 --> 09:47.535
and southern Mali, pardon me, west

09:47.755 --> 09:51.425
of, of Ghana,

09:52.405 --> 09:55.665
we find ancient mother in this

09:56.345 --> 10:00.945
stylized image of a suckling child with

10:01.485 --> 10:02.665
his, mother.

10:03.205 --> 10:07.105
And ancient mother is the head of the all male,

10:07.925 --> 10:12.865
the titular head anyway, of the all male initiation society,

10:13.115 --> 10:16.665
often referred to as Poro, PORO, in,

10:17.085 --> 10:18.185
in Suno culture.

10:19.205 --> 10:24.105
And it is said that ancient mother, who is a creator deity

10:25.025 --> 10:28.945
swallows, initiates male initiates at the beginning

10:28.945 --> 10:33.625
of their initiations at the age of, 10 or 11

10:33.685 --> 10:38.625
or 12, and then, gives birth to them

10:38.845 --> 10:41.225
as adults many years later.

10:42.685 --> 10:47.095
And it is also said that ancient mother nourishes

10:47.515 --> 10:51.455
and nurtures her children with the milk

10:51.675 --> 10:56.405
of knowledge, which is the marvelous phrase in my view

10:57.105 --> 10:59.125
for what initiation is all about.

10:59.575 --> 11:04.285
Initiation in all cultures is about schooling, is about,

11:04.865 --> 11:09.545
learning to, to be an adult, learning,

11:09.605 --> 11:14.425
responsibility, learning, the, the lessons of morality

11:14.645 --> 11:15.745
and, and so forth.

11:16.925 --> 11:21.145
As one passes through grades in, in,

11:21.335 --> 11:25.465
schooling, which is our initiation, one learns more.

11:25.685 --> 11:30.545
And hopefully you end up, being a,

11:31.145 --> 11:33.905
a responsible adult doesn't always happen,

11:34.085 --> 11:36.065
but that's the ideal.

11:37.005 --> 11:40.425
Uh, so ancient mother nurtures

11:40.605 --> 11:42.585
and gives the milk of knowledge

11:42.585 --> 11:45.025
to her initiates over a very long

11:45.045 --> 11:47.745
and protracted initiation process

11:48.605 --> 11:50.065
for sun UFO people.

11:51.695 --> 11:56.325
Um, then if we were to move to Ethiopia in south

11:57.185 --> 12:00.885
in, sorry, in northeastern, Africa,

12:01.585 --> 12:03.725
we have images of Mary

12:03.905 --> 12:07.325
and her beloved son, Jesus Christ

12:08.345 --> 12:13.175
and Mary in Ethiopian history,

12:13.905 --> 12:18.455
which embraced Christianity in by the fourth century, ad

12:19.805 --> 12:23.495
Mary, became a political force

12:24.025 --> 12:26.935
under the emperor, Zara Yakob,

12:28.925 --> 12:33.185
who reigned in the middle of the 15th century,

12:34.795 --> 12:39.545
Zaria Cobb as emperor institutionalized the cult of Mary

12:40.165 --> 12:43.105
and Mary became more important as a deity

12:43.605 --> 12:47.545
for Christian Ethiopians than Christ himself was.

12:49.235 --> 12:52.745
There was an alt, Zaria Cobb ordered

12:52.895 --> 12:56.995
that an altar be made to Mary in every church,

12:57.575 --> 13:01.035
and that the 29th of every month was a feast day

13:01.295 --> 13:05.035
or a a, a, a day that was

13:05.935 --> 13:08.195
set aside to celebrate Mary.

13:09.455 --> 13:13.675
The hundred miracles of Mary were, some of them at least,

13:13.745 --> 13:15.835
were recited at every church service,

13:16.695 --> 13:19.715
and thousands upon thousands of images

13:20.335 --> 13:23.395
or icons of Mary, like the one you see,

13:23.395 --> 13:27.915
which is a 17th century, image of Mary

13:27.975 --> 13:29.195
and her beloved son.

13:30.235 --> 13:34.155
Thousands upon thousands of images were made, they were,

13:34.185 --> 13:37.515
held in households and of course in the hundreds

13:37.515 --> 13:38.555
and hundreds of churches.

13:40.135 --> 13:44.035
So the cult of Mary was used by Zaria Cobb to

13:44.605 --> 13:48.395
unify his empire in the 15th century.

13:48.655 --> 13:52.755
And Mary continues to be a critically important

13:53.485 --> 13:56.635
deity for Ethiopian Christians.

13:58.305 --> 14:02.955
Then the question arises, often, the image

14:02.975 --> 14:07.835
of a mother and child is often referred to as a mother,

14:08.455 --> 14:11.715
as a frail fertility goddess.

14:12.735 --> 14:17.435
And yes, fertility is certainly involved in images of,

14:17.975 --> 14:19.955
of mothers

14:19.955 --> 14:24.235
and with children, they appear ens, shrines that are for,

14:24.855 --> 14:29.435
childbirth sometimes for they appear in medicine,

14:29.545 --> 14:33.315
shrines in healing shrines, in ancestral shrines.

14:34.015 --> 14:38.275
And, yet there are many images of mothers

14:38.275 --> 14:40.355
and children that are not deities

14:40.375 --> 14:43.595
and that are not necessarily about fertility

14:44.825 --> 14:46.535
among the Yoruba people.

14:46.835 --> 14:50.535
For example, in southwestern Nigeria, about

14:51.065 --> 14:54.845
250 miles west of the Ebo whom I studied,

14:55.815 --> 15:00.285
there are thousands, tens of thousands of images

15:00.745 --> 15:03.765
of mothers with children suckling

15:03.905 --> 15:05.565
or with children on their backs

15:05.825 --> 15:09.405
or with children arranged around them in various ways.

15:10.435 --> 15:15.125
None of those Yoruba m fraternities represent deities.

15:15.435 --> 15:19.805
They all, according to research, done among the Yoruba,

15:19.955 --> 15:23.685
they all represent worshipers of the deities,

15:24.265 --> 15:27.605
and they will be found enshrined to those deities.

15:28.425 --> 15:32.165
And they're often given by worshipers to

15:33.115 --> 15:37.845
enhance the shrines of, the various deities,

15:37.845 --> 15:40.245
whether it's, sh go the god of thunder

15:40.545 --> 15:44.565
or, any other of,

15:44.825 --> 15:48.605
the many deities in the pantheon of,

15:48.905 --> 15:50.765
Yoruba religious thought.

15:51.125 --> 15:54.805
I want to speak a little bit about the difference between

15:56.185 --> 15:59.885
our ideas of motherhood in the western world

16:00.065 --> 16:01.325
and African ones.

16:02.065 --> 16:05.765
Uh, what we have to realize is that

16:07.365 --> 16:10.915
young children are with their mothers, both males

16:10.915 --> 16:14.235
and females, until they undergo in,

16:14.385 --> 16:16.635
this is in rural Africa, by the way,

16:16.815 --> 16:19.315
and I should probably have said at the beginning

16:19.315 --> 16:23.075
that I'm speaking of Africa in,

16:24.595 --> 16:26.705
50, 60, 70 years ago.

16:27.165 --> 16:31.105
Africa, today, of course, is often urbanized and,

16:31.405 --> 16:32.705
and people are educated.

16:32.925 --> 16:36.385
And, and what I'm speaking of is,

16:38.405 --> 16:43.205
probably early 20th century Africa up until the,

16:43.205 --> 16:46.685
sixties in, around the year

16:46.905 --> 16:51.205
of independence rather than, in the 21st century

16:51.425 --> 16:52.605
and 2024.

16:53.305 --> 16:57.245
Uh, my research was in 1966 and, and, and,

16:57.425 --> 17:02.365
and 67 and through the seventies and early eighties.

17:03.025 --> 17:06.565
So that's that. Those are the historical benchmarks for,

17:06.705 --> 17:08.645
for my discussion of motherhood.

17:09.145 --> 17:10.925
Uh, not so much today,

17:11.665 --> 17:13.885
but I, I do want to stress the difference

17:13.885 --> 17:16.735
because children are with their mothers

17:16.785 --> 17:21.135
until they are initiated as, young women

17:21.755 --> 17:23.255
or they'll stay with their mothers.

17:23.315 --> 17:27.415
But young boys will leave their mothers at the ages of,

17:27.525 --> 17:32.135
between six and 10 or 12,

17:33.695 --> 17:36.795
but they're with their mothers as infinite infants,

17:37.775 --> 17:38.795
24 7.

17:39.815 --> 17:42.915
And the mothers will give birth to a child

17:43.175 --> 17:47.035
and she'll be back to work, a day or two later,

17:47.415 --> 17:51.605
and she will carry that child with her, at all times

17:52.425 --> 17:56.485
and, will feed the child on demand

17:57.225 --> 17:59.965
and will suckle the child until he

18:00.025 --> 18:03.325
or she is three, sometimes longer than that.

18:04.465 --> 18:06.435
Whereas in our world,

18:08.425 --> 18:12.915
mothers are not with their children to, to

18:12.915 --> 18:14.195
that extent.

18:14.295 --> 18:17.635
And, and for that ex extensive period, day

18:17.855 --> 18:20.435
and night, wherever you see women,

18:21.055 --> 18:22.155
you're going to see children.

18:22.895 --> 18:27.115
Um, in, in African villages,

18:27.255 --> 18:30.525
the children are around everywhere.

18:30.525 --> 18:32.925
They're on their mother's backs. They're being suckled.

18:32.925 --> 18:34.685
They're, they're walking around.

18:34.795 --> 18:37.805
They're, they're, they're part of the

18:38.445 --> 18:39.485
everyday existence.

18:40.065 --> 18:41.805
Uh, and of course,

18:44.115 --> 18:47.045
when they reach school age, they're, they're off to school.

18:47.185 --> 18:51.535
But Village life

18:52.235 --> 18:55.535
is, in some respects, child centered

18:56.085 --> 18:59.215
because children were important

18:59.955 --> 19:02.335
and large families were important in

19:02.335 --> 19:03.895
agricultural communities.

19:04.355 --> 19:06.495
And most of the art producing peoples,

19:07.035 --> 19:09.895
the sculpture producing peoples are agriculturalists

19:09.955 --> 19:11.215
rather than nomads.

19:11.515 --> 19:13.255
So large families were important.

19:13.995 --> 19:18.815
And, the regeneration of the community

19:18.955 --> 19:22.375
and, and, the regeneration of the human race

19:22.915 --> 19:24.135
was critically important.

19:24.715 --> 19:29.215
Umbari houses, for example, celebrated the goddess

19:29.215 --> 19:32.855
of the earth, Allah and other local deities, but they all,

19:32.955 --> 19:36.295
but umbari houses were also recreations

19:36.555 --> 19:37.895
of the community itself.

19:39.115 --> 19:42.215
And they were offered in sacrifice

19:42.215 --> 19:44.615
because of some sort of a disaster

19:45.125 --> 19:46.895
that visited the community.

19:47.475 --> 19:51.055
It might have been, a high degree number

19:51.075 --> 19:52.375
of infant mortalities.

19:52.995 --> 19:55.575
It might have been a, a plague of locusts or,

19:55.715 --> 19:59.815
or something of the very, very poor agricultural year.

20:00.875 --> 20:04.895
But that's what, caused Allah

20:04.895 --> 20:09.455
through divination, through the fortune tellers to demand,

20:10.115 --> 20:14.615
a sacrificial offering, a new house for her to

20:15.265 --> 20:16.415
dwell in.

20:16.875 --> 20:20.015
And that is what the Embar house is.

20:20.855 --> 20:24.495
A sacrifice, a new house for the goddess of the earth

20:24.875 --> 20:28.815
or an important local river, God, God, or goddess.

20:29.355 --> 20:30.655
Not always Allah,

20:30.715 --> 20:35.505
but probably 60, 70% of the embar houses

20:35.575 --> 20:40.545
that I saw during my research, were offered

20:40.685 --> 20:43.625
to, to this earth goddess.

"Exploring the Intersection of African Art and Cultural Symbolism: A Personal Journey"

00:00:00 - I went to Columbia in 1962 to study medieval, art history. And I took a course on African art, almost by an ex. And, that hooked me. So I decided in 1964 to go to Africa to study it from the people themselves. I had been taught by two people. I'd been taught African art by two people who had never been to the continent of Africa. And, this was early in the, in art historians studying Africa. Anthropologists had done so earlier,
00:00:41 - only a half a dozen art historians had done field work. So I was in that early contingent, and I chose to go to IBO country in southeastern Nigeria. And I arrived with my wife and two kids in 1966 and lived in, well, it doesn't matter where I lived. and then on my very first field trip in IBO country, I came across an Ari house. this Ari house has at as its center, the earth goddess, ala a LA,
00:01:28 - She is the mother of all of all other deities, of animals, of plants, and of human beings. And, most embar houses were given to, or offered to Allah as a kind of sacrifice, as a community effort, an enormous human effort and financial, sacrifice for the people. And sometimes it took more than a year to construct this house, which is filled with mud sculptures
00:02:11 - a couple sitting side by side, as you see on the left, of animals of, other human beings and holding, a jug of palm wine or, or, a, a white man emerging from a hole in the ground, which tells a story of, of early, Europeans, all kinds of, of things heard about and hoped for out of mythology and out of daily life. And there can be as many as 200 modeled clay figures in Anbar, the one that we're looking at had about
00:02:52 - but the, the centerpiece is the goddess Allah. And you'll notice that the faces of all the, the human beings that we see are white, and the people, of course, are dark skinned. and I asked why Allah's face is painted white, and she said, well, we sometimes refer to Allah as dark Allah because she's ambivalent. She can, destroy people, she can kill people, and she can be beneficent. She can, peel yams with the knife that she holds in her right hand,
00:03:33 - but if you call, if you were to paint her, her face, black or dark, she would be angered. And, this wouldn't be good. So white isn't honorific white for the Igbo people is a color of purity, of goodness, of beauty. And so Allah is honored by having a white face. Doesn't have anything to do with the white faces of Caucasian peoples. It's simply a, a, local color symbolism, which is fairly widespread in Africa, actually.

"Cultural Constructs of Motherhood in African Art and Tradition"**

00:04:15 - this architectural complex of sculptures is a sacrifice built in a long ritualized process with men and women who are initiated into the process behind a concealing fence. The house is built over a period of months and sometimes more than a year. And I came to realize that Allah as the centerpiece, as the, as the, the deity to whom this, this, effort is dedicated, that that motherhood in the, in the form
00:04:59 - cultural phenomenon. That she is the font of morality. She is the guardian of tradition among the IBO people. And if you offend her by polluting the earth, for example, through bloodshed, she's going to come after you. She's going to, to, give you trouble. if you make good, good gestures towards her sacrifice, for her, then she will, she will repay you by giving you children and, abundant fields, yam
00:05:41 - and maari houses over a period of more than a year, I realized that, motherhood was a cultural cons construct. And when I did my second bout of field work in the early seventies in southern Ghana, I came up upon images and shrines of queen mothers and ahan society in Southern Ghana. The Ashanti peoples and the FTI peoples are matrilineal, and they accord great respect to mothers,
00:06:23 - involved in choosing kings. They're not necessarily the actual biological mothers of kings. They can be the king's aunt, but she, she has a role in choosing the king and in, serving as a kind of counselor for all women. And she's an important political force. So I realized that maternity images of mothers and children, can be political instruments as well. And so the, the sculpture that you see on the screen is
00:07:08 - And she is wearing sandals to keep her feet from, being polluted by the ground in this instance. So Earth in Ghana is not treated in the same way as it is among the Igbo people. So that made me realize that there are many cultural differences in the images of maternity and in how they are visualized and how, motherhood is carried on, carried on. So my research
00:07:47 - stresses these cultural differences. Biological maternity, of course, is the same everywhere. Fertilized sperm reaches fertilized egg after nine months, a child is born. That's it. This is the same everywhere. But the cultural, ideas and practices around eternities are enormously varied from one place to another. For example, in ancient Egypt, ISIS was a great culture bringer. a a mother goddess who was responsible

"Divine Motherhood: The Political and Cultural Influence of Female Deities in African History"

00:08:31 - for the annual flooding of the Nile. So it was Isis who brought agriculture to the Egyptian people. She brought, she introduced marriage, she introduced weaving. She was a great magician and doctor, a protector of women and children of childbirth and so forth. So here again, is an example of, motherhood and images of mothers, which are in great quantities in, the art history
00:09:14 - thousands of images of Isis with her son Horace. and she was responsible too for, Egyptian political life. So Isis was a political force, as was the queen mother in Ghana. And if we were to move to, if we move to the Sun UFO people of, northern co Devo, ivory Coast and southern Mali, pardon me, west of, of Ghana,
00:09:56 - stylized image of a suckling child with his, mother. And ancient mother is the head of the all male, the titular head anyway, of the all male initiation society, often referred to as Poro, PORO, in, in Suno culture. And it is said that ancient mother, who is a creator deity swallows, initiates male initiates at the beginning of their initiations at the age of, 10 or 11
00:10:38 - as adults many years later. And it is also said that ancient mother nourishes and nurtures her children with the milk of knowledge, which is the marvelous phrase in my view for what initiation is all about. Initiation in all cultures is about schooling, is about, learning to, to be an adult, learning, responsibility, learning, the, the lessons of morality
00:11:16 - As one passes through grades in, in, schooling, which is our initiation, one learns more. And hopefully you end up, being a, a responsible adult doesn't always happen, but that's the ideal. so ancient mother nurtures and gives the milk of knowledge to her initiates over a very long and protracted initiation process for sun UFO people. then if we were to move to Ethiopia in south
00:12:01 - we have images of Mary and her beloved son, Jesus Christ and Mary in Ethiopian history, which embraced Christianity in by the fourth century, ad Mary, became a political force under the emperor, Zara Yakob, who reigned in the middle of the 15th century, Zaria Cobb as emperor institutionalized the cult of Mary

"Exploring the Role of Mary in Ethiopian Christianity and Its Cultural Implications"

00:12:43 - for Christian Ethiopians than Christ himself was. There was an alt, Zaria Cobb ordered that an altar be made to Mary in every church, and that the 29th of every month was a feast day or a a, a, a day that was set aside to celebrate Mary. The hundred miracles of Mary were, some of them at least, were recited at every church service, and thousands upon thousands of images
00:13:23 - which is a 17th century, image of Mary and her beloved son. Thousands upon thousands of images were made, they were, held in households and of course in the hundreds and hundreds of churches. So the cult of Mary was used by Zaria Cobb to unify his empire in the 15th century. And Mary continues to be a critically important deity for Ethiopian Christians. Then the question arises, often, the image
00:14:08 - as a frail fertility goddess. And yes, fertility is certainly involved in images of, of mothers and with children, they appear ens, shrines that are for, childbirth sometimes for they appear in medicine, shrines in healing shrines, in ancestral shrines. And, yet there are many images of mothers and children that are not deities and that are not necessarily about fertility
00:14:46 - For example, in southwestern Nigeria, about 250 miles west of the Ebo whom I studied, there are thousands, tens of thousands of images of mothers with children suckling or with children on their backs or with children arranged around them in various ways. None of those Yoruba m fraternities represent deities. They all, according to research, done among the Yoruba, they all represent worshipers of the deities, and they will be found enshrined to those deities.
00:15:33 - enhance the shrines of, the various deities, whether it's, sh go the god of thunder or, any other of, the many deities in the pantheon of, Yoruba religious thought. I want to speak a little bit about the difference between our ideas of motherhood in the western world and African ones. what we have to realize is that young children are with their mothers, both males
00:16:14 - this is in rural Africa, by the way, and I should probably have said at the beginning that I'm speaking of Africa in, 50, 60, 70 years ago. Africa, today, of course, is often urbanized and, and people are educated. And, and what I'm speaking of is, probably early 20th century Africa up until the, sixties in, around the year of independence rather than, in the 21st century

"Cultural Perspectives on Motherhood and Community in Traditional African Societies"

00:16:53 - my research was in 1966 and, and, and, and 67 and through the seventies and early eighties. So that's that. Those are the historical benchmarks for, for my discussion of motherhood. not so much today, but I, I do want to stress the difference because children are with their mothers until they are initiated as, young women or they'll stay with their mothers. But young boys will leave their mothers at the ages of, between six and 10 or 12,
00:17:37 - 24 7. And the mothers will give birth to a child and she'll be back to work, a day or two later, and she will carry that child with her, at all times and, will feed the child on demand and will suckle the child until he or she is three, sometimes longer than that. Whereas in our world, mothers are not with their children to, to that extent.
00:18:17 - and night, wherever you see women, you're going to see children. in, in African villages, the children are around everywhere. They're on their mother's backs. They're being suckled. They're, they're walking around. They're, they're, they're part of the everyday existence. and of course, when they reach school age, they're, they're off to school. But Village life is, in some respects, child centered
00:18:59 - and large families were important in agricultural communities. And most of the art producing peoples, the sculpture producing peoples are agriculturalists rather than nomads. So large families were important. And, the regeneration of the community and, and, the regeneration of the human race was critically important. Umbari houses, for example, celebrated the goddess of the earth, Allah and other local deities, but they all, but umbari houses were also recreations
00:19:39 - And they were offered in sacrifice because of some sort of a disaster that visited the community. It might have been, a high degree number of infant mortalities. It might have been a, a plague of locusts or, or something of the very, very poor agricultural year. But that's what, caused Allah through divination, through the fortune tellers to demand, a sacrificial offering, a new house for her to dwell in.
00:20:40 - A sacrifice, a new house for the goddess of the earth or an important local river, God, God, or goddess. Not always Allah, but probably 60, 70% of the embar houses that I saw during my research, were offered to, to this earth goddess.

Faculti AI can make mistakes

Faculti

Popular in Arts and Humanities

Titus Quinctius Flamininus’ “Italian triumph”

Lincoln and the Jews

Post-Kantian perfectionism

Amputations and Convalescence

Drawing on the past: Palladio, his precursors and knowledge of ancient architecture

Language, Sound, and Image in Wallace Berman’s Aleph, 1956–1966

Early Modern Natural Law Theories

Maternity: Mothers and Children in the Arts of Africa

Next in Art

Guide

Platform and Category Pages

Contact Us

FAQs

What is Faculti?

How do you select interviews?

Interview Process

Page Structure

Popular in Arts and Humanities

Guide

Platform and Category Pages

Contact Us

FAQs

What is Faculti?

How do you select interviews?

Interview Process

Accessibility Options

Contrast Adjustment

Text Size Adjustment

Text Spacing Adjustment

Line Height Adjustment

Cursor Size Adjustment

Page Structure Options

Page Structure