Unwrapping the Universe: Art and Cosmology Among the Bakongo
A two volume project I am developing in connection with an exhibition of the same title to be shown at the Museum of Ethnography (Geneva) and the Royal Museum for Central Africa (Tervuren, Belgium) beginning in 2015. The project takes the Kongo concept of the universe as a packet or bundle and aims to “unwrap” the conceptual layers of specific art objects to gain a better understanding of their cosmological complexities and interrelated meanings and to describe the conceptual and functional associations of these objects within their cultural context. Unwrapping’s first volume explores the myriad art forms, including figurative sculpture, masks, divination implements, basketry, textiles, and ceramics, that have been created by the peoples of Central Africa (including the Bakongo, the Basolongo, the Kituba and the Yombe) to reflect their cosmological precepts and embody their worldview and will discuss their significance – and the interrelationships they both express and create – cross-culturally and historically as well as within present day contexts. “Ma kisi nsi: Kongo a Sansala Art”, an essay I published in the book Angolan Art, Dapper Museum (Paris, France), 2010, encapsulates many of the concepts covered in more detail in Unwrapping: Vol. I. The second volume is a collection of contemporary Kisansala and Portuguese texts I gathered between 2000 and 2007 in the lower part of the Zaire River that describe key institutions, cultural principles and oral histories of the Bakongo. The collection documents and contextualizes these texts and is written in the tradition of travel narratives that began in the late XV century and includes seminal works on Kongo historiography and culture by writers such as Duarte Lopes-Antonio Pigafetta (1491-1554), Giovanni Cavazzi da Montecocculo (1621-1678), Karl Laman (late XIX century) and Kimbwandende kia Bunseki FuKiau (late XX century).
Preliminary Proposal
Exhibition: Unwrapping the Universe: Art Among tha Bakongo
CAC dates: September 16, 2017 to June 3, 2018
Curator/Author: Bárbaro Martínez Ruiz, Director of Orbis Africa Advanced Research Center
Organizer: Orbis Africa
Summary:
Unwrapping the Universe borrows from the African Bantu concept of the universe as a packet or bundle. The aim of the exhibition is to "unwrap" the conceptual layers in specific art objects to gain a better understanding of their cosmological complexities and interrelated meanings. Doing so creates interpretative webs that describe the conceptual and functional associations of these objects within their cultural context. Describing these interrelationships serves to reveal overarching connections, the significance of which will be approached cross-culturally, historically, as well as within present day contexts. Based largely on African field-documented accounts, the exhibition places art and humans in the web of cosmological interrelationships fundamental to traditional Central African culture, illuminating a fluid, multi-dimensional universe in which "all things" coexist.
♣A publication will accompany the exhibition. The attached sheets identify its sections and offer sample images.
Related projects:
An interactive website will be developed in association with this exhibition.
Exhibition tour:
Cantor Arts Center: September – December 2018
+ 1 additional venues (east coast) Yale Art Gallery, requested
+ 3 venues, in Europe, Horniman Museum, London; Museum of Ethnography, Geneva, and Royal Museum of Central African Art, Tervuren, being approved
Potential audience:
Art History, Anthropology, History, Social Sciences, Religious Studies, Symbolic Thought and Human Cognition. Exhibition/publication concept is informed by Modern Physics on string theory and the dimensions of the universe.
Description:
Culturally related peoples of Central Africa (e.g. Kongo and related cultural group) create myriad art forms that reflect their cosmological precepts and embody their world view. The ideas are manifested in masquerades, sculpture, symbols, gestures, various objects and actions that are represented in the exhibition by an estimated 120 objects, including figurative sculpture, masks, divination implements, basketry, textiles, and ceramics.
Within ritual and ceremonial contexts, these objects are also considered “live” and people interact with them as the embodiment of active spiritual or supernatural forces. As varied and complex as life itself, these forces are part of a broader, universal whole within which everything is conceptually and actively interconnected. To understand this world view, objects must be considered individually and, most importantly, in relation to one another. The goal of this exhibition is twofold: 1) to explicate the complex of spiritual and social meanings encapsulated in the individual artifacts, and 2) to illustrate the network of spiritual and social meanings of which individual objects are a part.
The Kongo people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Popular Republic of the Congo and Angola associate the term nkisi / mpungu with three-dimensional objects that embody spiritual or supernatural powers. Songye, Luba, Tabwa, Chokwe, Lunda, and other Central African peoples similarly use the variants kisi or kishi to denote a spiritual manifestation. In Kongo cosmology the earth is a self-sufficient packet in which human life, nature, and spirits coexist. This earth-packet lives within a larger “cosmic bundle,” the universe. All Bantu peoples seem to share this view and—as in our Western societies—the sun and the moon are perceived as particularly influential forces, critical to success in life. Graphic systems (articulated, for example, in painting and scarification patterns) and sculpture embody or recall such cosmic and spiritual forces, engaging—serving as the vessel and vehicle for—their specific regenerative or directional powers.
Within this bundled universe, conceptual paths become webs of interconnectedness that are conceived by different Central African peoples as journeys— for some “an extraordinary journey through a consequential path," for others “the path that crosses no streams.” Each object in the exhibition will be approached as being part of a conceptual path that is directly linked to human intentions and aspirations. The exhibition's analytical strategy is to "unwrap" cosmological meanings contained in the formal and symbolic components of the objects and to demonstrate their links, or “paths” to other objects that, when considered together, constitute the conceptual “universe” or cosmological reality of these peoples.
Alluding to the Bantu concept of the universe as a packet, or bundle, Unwrapping the Universe aims to disclose the conceptual layers of the objects to illuminate their semantic and cosmological complexities. Unwrapping exposes webs of meaning (and action) that link or distance certain types of art objects from others. Clarifying the interrelationships discloses a unique world view that will be analyzed from cross-cultural, historic, and other perspectives.
About the authors:
An authority on African and Caribbean artistic, visual, and religious practices, Bárbaro Martínez Ruiz received his doctorate from Yale University in 2004 and is currently an assistant professor in Stanford’s Department of Art and Art History. He lectures frequently on African Art and Afro-Caribbean religions and has curated exhibitions on contemporary and African art.
Consulting:
Scholars:
Tom Seligman (Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University)
Robert Farris Thompson (Yale University)
Allen Roberts and Mary Nooter Roberts (UCLA)
Wyatt MacGaffey (Haverford College)
Dunja Hersak (Université Libre de Bruxelles)
Manuela Palmeirim (Universidade do Minho, Portugal)
Boris Wastiau (Museum of Ethnography, Geneva)
Manuel Jordan (The Musical Instrument Museum, Arizona)
Wayne Modest (Tropical Museum, Amsterdam)
Field contributors:
Chitofu Sampoko, Maliya Chitofu, Bernard Mukuta Samukinji, Henry Kaumba,, Pedro Raul, Pedro Lopes, Osvaldo Fresneda Bachiller, Felipe Garcia Villamil, K. K. Bunseki FuKiau, and Blaise Matondo Ngo.
Represented countries:
Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Popular Republic of the Congo
Represented peoples:
Kongo, Yombe, Beembe, Bwende, Sande, Vili, Kisolongo, Kisansala, Monakutuba, Woyo and others
(more below)
PARADIGMS–EXHIBITION/PUBLICATION CORE SECTIONS/PATHS
(Including sample art objects)
The Bundled Universe: Conceptual Microcosms
•Nkisi / Mpungu: bundles, packets, figures, in their multiplicity of manifestations as "power" (agency) objects
•Ngombo; divination baskets and instruments, including tutelary/guardian spirit figures themes: cosmograms, color symbolism, mediatory/revelatory objects, ancestral spirits, problem-solving, human condition and strategies, "medicines"
The Selective Universe: Configured Thought Systems and Agency
•Nkaka: cosmology and the origins of the world; chief's crowns, graphic systems, agential equations
•Mulalambo and Jila: "the path," figurative sculpture, humans and the cosmos
themes: symbolic thought systems, "living the universe," diversity of materials
Universe in Gestures: Art and Expression
•Pakalala: gestures, signs, expressions, messages in African art themes: art as/and expression, conveying meaning; demeanors and intentions
Mintaining the Cosmos: Context and Intent
•Altars, ancestral ensembles: recreating context for art, "universe" altars, shelters, figure combinations, original field data on specific objects and object-groupings themes: human-spirit relations, human purpose, needs and aspiration
The Spirit's Nature: Aesthetics and the Environment
•Style and environment, cross-cultural: ancestral figures/masks from stylistic zones: Kongo, Kwango, Mongo, Kete, Kuba, Luba, Lunda, Maniema, Ituri, Uele
themes: aesthetics and natural environment; relationship between aesthetics, world-views, and concepts of nature
Merging World Views: The Historical Dimension
•Nzambi: the Creator, cross and Nzambi figures(Kongo, Songo, Holo, Chokwe
themes: from the advent of Christianity in Central Africa to the slave trade; journey to "present day" concerns (HIV-AIDS)
INTERPRETATION
Interpretive materials and texts for the exhibition and publication represent multiple voices. These include scholarly perspectives, the first-hand accounts of field collaborators (including their names), and contemporary artists' interpretations. Video and sound will be included as didactic components of the exhibition.
GOALS
•To present specific Central African art forms as representative of complex and sophisticated thought systems and cosmological views; to "unfold" those systems and views
•To allow for a better understanding of concepts pervading the relationship between people and art in Africa
•To address the purpose of such relationships within a religious and philosophical backdrop; intertwined with human needs and aspirations
•To present a three-dimensional, and organic, web of conceptual interrelationships anchored by different art forms; to formally and semantically link apparently unrelated realms of knowledge or experience
•To understand graphic and figural representations as part of the same semantic equation
•To question "our" (western) perceptions of art by highlighting essential pieces that are typically treated as peripheral or non-art
•To group objects according to conceptual relationships and not following the general norms of museum displays (geographic, typological, thematic)
•To include a diversified range of "voices" in the exhibition's interpretive materials and highlight "local voices" or perspectives
•To correlate the idea of "webs," paths," and "layers" with computer technology: web, internet, database, mind mapping programs, etc.
