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Art and Power in the Central African Savanna |
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Art and Power in the Central African SavannaJul 25, 2008 For more information, please contact: The Cleveland Museum of Art Organizes
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| Cleveland
Museum of Art - Africa (official site) 11150 East Blvd |
Premiering at the Menil Collection in Houston from September 26, 2008 to January 4, 2009,
Art and Power will then travel to the CMA (March 1 through June 7, 2009) and the de Young Museum in San Francisco (June 27 – October 11, 2009). |
The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) presents Art and Power in the
Central African Savanna, an original exhibition that explores the political and religious power of 60
sculptures created by artists of four Central African cultures: the Luba, Songye, Chokwe, and Luluwa.
Carved primarily from wood, these power figures act as containers for magical organic ingredients and serve purposes both religious and political. According to traditional beliefs, the figures mediate between the human and spirit world to ensure a healthy birth, successful hunt, or triumph over an enemy. The exhibition explores the aesthetic complexity and the mysterious potency of these diverse objects.
“Art and Power demonstrates how certain works traditionally perceived by Western scholars as
religious in nature also embody references to the political sphere—and vice-versa,” said Constantine Petridis,
the CMA curator of African art who conceived and organized the exhibition. “This exhibition attempts to
introduce a sense of history and time into the discussion of African art, by linking developments in artistic
styles with corresponding changes in Luba, Songye, Chokwe and Luluwa political organizations and
structures.
Many of the featured objects combine “power” in both a religious and a political sense, countering the
usual divisions made by scholars of African art between “sacred” art, framed by beliefs in the supernatural, and
“secular” art, connected with the exercise of leadership. Indeed, this exhibition contains power figures that
signal rank, wealth and status while simultaneously possessing the power to cure, protect, or harm. Although
the four artistic traditions explored in Art and Power have each been the subject of in-depth monographic
studies, this is the first exhibition to focus on the shared concepts and ideas between four visually distinct
cultures.
In addition, Art and Power examines the artistic traditions of the heart of Africa within the context of
historical change, thus countering the commonly held perception of African art as an art without history.
Petridis suggests that among the four cultures a special form of power figure—characterized by large size,
refined finish, and detailed rendering of anatomy and decoration — developed at a time of political and social
reforms that resulted in a higher degree of centralization, a more complex political and social structure, and the
emergence of an elite of high-ranking titleholders.
The exhibition contains masterworks on-loan from public and private collections in the United States
and Belgium, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and American Museum of Natural History in New
York, the Felix Collection in Brussels, and the Ethnographic Museum in Antwerp.
Highlights of the exhibition include:
Male
Figure
Figure
Said to Represent the Culture Hero Chibinda Ilunga
“By offering a new perspective on works of astonishing variety, this exhibition represents the
Cleveland Museum of Art’s commitment to scholarship,” said Timothy Rub, CMA director. “Art and Power
provides museum visitors across the country the opportunity to view complex examples of African art at a time
when our own collection of African art is not on public view.”
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