Intro
PHOTO: G:\Press\FEATURES group\NigerianArt-CrestMask.jpg
Alt tag: Central Nigerian crest mask, with stylized human features and ropes of plant-fiber hair plaits (Hughes Dubois, 2010)
Credit: © Hughes Dubois, 2010
Caption:
The exhibition Central Nigeria Unmasked: Arts of the Benue River Valley, at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art, traces the artistic traditions that emerged across central Nigeria’s Benue River Valley during a 400-year span. Some highlights of the exhibit are being shared with you through images provided by the Smithsonian.
Produced by artists from more than 25 ethnic groups living along the river’s Lower, Middle and Upper reaches, the objects on display — made of wood, ceramic and metal — reveal the exchange of ideas and forms among different communities. This crest mask, by the Lower Benue artist Ochai, shows a bold and expressive carving style.
Ochai (active circa 1910-1950)
Crest mask (Oglinye)
Idoma/Akweya peoples
Early to mid-20th century
Wood, pigment, plant fiber, beads
Private collection, Paris
L2010.50.3
Photograph © Hughes Dubois, 2010
1
PHOTO: G:\Press\FEATURES group\PHOTOS\NigerianArt-StandingFemaleFigure.jpg
Alt tag: Wood sculpture of full-bodied female figure with stylized features (Hickey-Robertson, 2010)
Credit: Hickey-Robertson, 2010
Caption:
This carved female figure is related in style to sculptures documented in the Jukun town of Wurbon Daudu, which were used for individual healing and community protection.
Other works from this Lower Benue locale are all very distinctive, with sharply cantilevered heads, flat faces and ornate headdresses.
Standing female figure
Jukun peoples, Wurbon Daudu (most likely)
Late 19th/early 20th century
Wood
The Menil Collection, Houston
L2010.62.2
Photograph Hickey-Robertson, 2010
2
PHOTO: G:\Press\FEATURES group\PHOTOS\NigerianArt-ShrineFigure.jpg
Alt tag: Wood sculpture of a mother holding an infant on her lap (Don Cole, 2010 / Fowler Museum at UCLA)
Credit: Don Cole, 2010/© Fowler Museum at UCLA
Caption:
The Idoma artist Oba, who lived in the Lower Benue village of Otobi, carved this female shrine figure, called an Anjenu. Anjenu figures, believed to attract nature spirits who dwelled in the Benue and other local rivers, were kept on shrines where offerings could be made.
This particular Anjenu depicts a mother holding an infant in her lap, and is one of many maternal sculptures produced in the area. Maternal sculptures were designed to protect women’s health and fertility.
Oba (active 1930s-circa 1950)
Shrine figure (Anjenu)
Idoma/Akweya peoples
Early to mid-20th century
Wood, strings, beads, pigment
Fowler Museum at UCLA; gift of Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey Kuhn
X95.36.4
Photograph by Don Cole, 2010. © Fowler Museum at UCLA
3
PHOTO: G:\Press\FEATURES group\PHOTOS\NigerianArt-FigurativeAx.jpg
Alt tag: Figurative ax adorned with a stylized human head at the base of the ax blade (Don Cole, 2010 / Fowler Museum at UCLA)
Credit: Don Cole, 2010. © Fowler Museum at UCLA
Caption:
The Tiv peoples of the Lower Benue region, who were known as skilled metalworkers, produced this figurative ax decorated with a stylized human head. Tiv clan leaders possessed metal regalia in iron and copper alloys that indicated their status and power.
Among the lost-wax cast objects associated with the Tiv are staffs, axes, snuff takers, tobacco pipes and ritual voice disguisers. Many have figurative elements, the style of which is recognizably Tiv.
Figurative ax
Tiv peoples
Early 20th century
Copper alloy, iron
Fowler Museum at UCLA; anonymous gift
X79.827
Photograph by Don Cole, 2010. © Fowler Museum at UCLA
4
PHOTO: G:\Press\FEATURES group\PHOTOS\NigerianArt-ElephantMask.jpg
Alt tag: Stylized elephant mask, mounted atop a cloaked figure (State Dept. / Jane Chun)
Credit: State Dept. / Jane Chun
Caption:
This large elephant mask, with stylized trunk and tusks, was used in Lower Benue masquerades as a metaphor for greatness and to signal the local chief’s potential for destructive power.
The masquerade was performed in an indigo burial cloth (as seen here) worn as a cloak over other layers of cloth to increase its size. Approaching the village compound, the performer would burst in aggressively, knocking over food-drying platforms and scattering cooking pots and audience members, who remained at a respectful distance.
Elephant mask (Itrokwu)
Idoma/Akweya peoples, Otobi village
Circa 1944
Wood, pigment, paint
Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, 73.1996.1.75
L2010.40.4
Photograph by Jane Chun (State Dept.)
5
PHOTO: G:\Press\FEATURES group\PHOTOS\NigerianArt-ThreeVisitors.jpg
Alt tag: Three museum visitors examining a wood sculpture from central Nigeria (State Dept. / Jane Chun)
Credit: State Dept./Jane Chun
Caption:
Because Central Nigeria Unmasked places a comprehensive collection of artwork within a broader context, “it sheds light on a heretofore little-understood but long-admired art-producing region,” says exhibition curator Karen Milbourne. “Many of these works of art are among those that most fascinated [Western] artists and collectors in the mid-20th century. These works of art have long been loved but up until now, they have not been adequately understood.”
Here, museum visitors admire a wood sculpture from central Nigeria’s Middle Benue region.
6
PHOTO: G:\Press\FEATURES group\PHOTOS\NigerianArt-HorizontalCapMask.jpg
Alt tag: Horizontal wood mask fusing human and animal traits (Barbier-Mueller Museum, Geneva)
Credit: © Barbier-Mueller Museum, Geneva
Caption:
The Kuteb and Yukuben peoples speak languages related to the southern Jukun and live south of them in the Middle Benue town of Takum.
Their horizontal fusion masks, which combine human and animal traits, share the tripartite form of the others exhibited in Central Nigeria Unmasked but their greater sculptural elaboration lends them a noteworthy local flavor. Upswept bovine horns and wide snouts render them animal-like, and the striations on the crests — which may refer to hair plaits — provide a human reference.
Horizontal cap mask
Yukuben peoples (most likely)
Early to mid-20th century
Hardwood, grayish-brown patina, abrus seeds, fiber
Barbier-Mueller Collection, Geneva, 1015-22
L2010.42.1
Photograph © Barbier-Mueller Museum, Geneva
7
PHOTO: G:\Press\FEATURES group\PHOTO\NigerianArt-WoodStatues.jpg
Alt tag: Five elongated wood sculptures, displayed on pedestals of varying heights (State Dept. / Jane Chun)
Credit: State Dept./Jane Chun
Caption:
Figurative sculptures associated with the Mumuye peoples of the Middle Benue region were used in rituals to protect crops from drought and disease as well as to promote successful harvests. Sometimes the figures also were used as oracles or to reinforce the status of important elders.
These sculptures tend to be bold, elongated and angular. Female figures are indicated by large perforated earlobes and male figures by helmets with high crests and/or flaps. When Mumuye sculptures entered the art market in the late 1960s, their distinctive abstract form caused a sensation.
Figures
Mumuye peoples
19th-20th centuries
Wood
Photograph by Jane Chun (State Dept.)
8
PHOTO: G:\Press\FEATURES group\PHOTOS\NigerianArt-DoubleFigure.jpg
Alt: Male/female double figure, carved from wood (Travis Fullerton,Virginia Museum of Fine Arts)
Credit: Travis Fullerton, © Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
Caption:
The Chamba artist Soompa (active from the 1920s to 1940s) carved this intriguing sculpture, which reveals Soompa’s volumetric approach to the human form.
Soompa’s double figures — the torsos of a male and female sharing a single hip plinth and a pair of legs, or alternately emerging from a single forked pole — are among the most original sculptural inventions of the Middle Benue region. Soompa’s female figures have angular, flat-edged crests atop their heads, while the crests on his males are rounded with serrated edges. The double-figure sculptures, said to represent a married couple, were found among the apparatus of several different ritual associations.
Sompa (active 1920s-1940s)
Chamba peoples
1920s–1940s
Male/female double figure
Wood
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, 2005.77; gift of Robert and Nancy Nooter
L2010.71.2
Photograph Travis Fullerton © Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
9
PHOTO: G:\Press\FEATURES group\PHOTOS\NigerianArt-VerticalMask.jpg
Alt tag: Vertical mask, carved from wood, with figurative elements on top (Don Tuttle, 2010)
Credit: Photograph by Don Tuttle, 2010
Caption:
The vertical masks associated with the Wurkun and Bikwin peoples living north of the Benue River in the Muri Mountains are the most idiosyncratic. These Middle Benue masks were hidden in caves to preserve their secrecy.
The sole eyewitness account of a Wurkun vertical mask like this one comes from an American missionary, C.W. Guinter, who saw as many as 16 masqueraders wearing wood masks in one memorial rite in 1925. This example could have been worn with the performer’s face turned sideways. It seems to have been carved to “read” differently from the front and the side views, which may have had something to do with how it “walked” and was seen in performance.
Vertical mask
Wurkun/Bikwin peoples
Before early 20th century
Wood, palm oil, pigments
Robert T. Wall family
L2010.83.2
Photograph by Don Tuttle, 2010
10
PHOTO: G:\Press\FEATURES group\PHOTOS\NigerianArt-CeramicVessel.jpg
Alt tag: Ceramic vessel with open-mouthed head sprouting from one side (Musée du quai Branly / Thierry Ollivier / Michel Urtado / Scala, Florence)
Credit: © Musée du quai Branly/Photo: Thierry Ollivier/Michel Urtado/Scala, Florence
Caption:
The predominance of sculptural ceramic vessels at the center of Upper Benue religious practices represents a marked departure from the wood figures and masks typical of the other two Benue Valley subregions. The highly decorated and anthropomorphized vessels, made primarily by women artists, instead exploit the expressive capacities of clay. Such vessels served ritual functions.
This one was used by pregnant women to protect the fetus or to cure illnesses associated with pregnancy. It features a “blind spout” in the form of an open-mouthed head emerging at a diagonal from the vessel’s side.
Vessel to protect a pregnant woman and her fetus (jina bitibiyu)
Cham-Mwana peoples
Late 20th century
Ceramic
Musée du quai Branly, Paris, 73.1998.12.6
L2010.40.14
© Musée du quai Branly/Photo: Thierry Ollivier/Michel Urtado/Scala, Florence
11
PHOTO: G:\Press\FEATURES group\PHOTOS\NigerianArt-SpiritVessel.jpg
Alt tag: Ceramic vessel with twisted beard, resembling spiny protrusions, along curved spout (Don Cole, 2010 / Fowler Museum at UCLA)
Credit: Photograph by Don Cole, 2010. © Fowler Museum at UCLA
Caption:
Ceramic vessels created by artists of the Upper Benue region of central Nigeria served ritual purposes, including healing the sick, safeguarding hunters and warriors, and activating the presence of various ancestral and protective spirits.
There are striking convergences in the styles and functions of ceramic sculpture found among neighboring peoples, revealing the extent of their historical communication and exchange. The elegant twisted beard on this particular vessel is unusual and may be an innovation of the artist, Musa Rabkabaw, who created it.
(See also: Treasures from Nigeria Reveal Rich Artistic Heritage.)
Musa Rabkabaw (active 1950s–1970s)
Spirit vessel (Ngwarkandangra)
‘Bəna peoples, Riji village
Circa 1955
Ceramic
Fowler Museum at UCLA; gift of Arnold Rubin
Collected by Arnold Rubin, 1970
X86.4693
Photograph by Don Cole, 2010. © Fowler Museum at UCLA