African Kanga (African Art post 10/10)

The Kanga is a colourful drape that has been made through ages from African cultures, this is worn by women and sometimes in special occasions by men in East Africa. This is a piece of woven fabric about 1 metre X 1.5 metre which is done in a printing method, this generally comes with a border through the four sides and a different design in the middle of the fabric which is generally colourful all the way.

This fabric has been a tradition for a long time, where this type of dress is worn by women along the Eastern and central part of Africa, yet it is a big tradition in East Africa but popular in the centre.

    

Now days, due to media sharing everything around the world, Christine Mhando who is a fashion designer based in London decided to make a series of elegant clothing based on the Kanga where one can see such elegance with difference in style yet in affordable prices.
Christine Mhando named her design company Chichia London

    


African Kanga revolutionizes the fashion industry. 2013. African Kanga revolutionizes the fashion industry. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.discoveringafricanetwork.com/africankanga.html.

Body Modifications (African Art post 9/10)

Piercings
body piercings are performed by puncturing or cutting parts in the body, creating a hole which one can make any size that he wants, but in African cultures piercings have even a symbol where it shows how wealthy a person is, this is done by the wealthier you are the bigger they stretch.
Once a man marries a woman, the woman get pierced where it show that the wife is now financially secured with her husband.
As one knows, piercings can be done in every place in the body, like on the lips, nose, and ears and on other body parts. They are even done for the culture as they show religious purposes in their lives and even done to show one’s beauty or to make them more attractive

 

Piercing Stretching (Flesh tunnels)
This is another form of body piercing, but they do not look like traditional piercings as they are stretched thoroughly where it becomes a big opening where one inserts a plug in the hole and because of the plate/plug’s weight it stretches by its self through the year. Their plugs/plates are even hand made as they use clay, stone, wood and bone and sometimes even metal.
Yet this tradition is being lost in some tribes, where today women can even decide for themselves if they want to wear such plates or not, some women wear them as they are some kind of body adornment as even their sizes are important for their own status as in their own thoughts, women who wear such plates are considered as more beautiful than the ones that they don’t.

  

Teeth Filing

Teeth filing is another type of body modifications, where one will re-shape his teeth or even will have a tooth removal. Dental modifications are as well as other modifications, as they are done for beauty, cultures and social status. Teeth filing is done in some tribes to show one’s puberty and such things just like they do when they scarification on a person.
When they remove teeth, they do them by the help of a stick which will be placed on a tooth and they hit the stick with a hard rock, this is done so when one will stretch his lips, the plug/plate will be more comfortable in one’s mouth. 

  

Cranial Deformation
When one is still young, his head will be softer than a matured person’s head, so by the help of clips they’ll put pressure on the head and the skull will deform past time, the shapes can vary from one to another as one can deform the shape to an elongated head to heart shapes. This is not a safe thing to do as one can be brain damaged and so on if too much pressure is applied to the skull. As this is not safe today they are not practising this modification any more in a lot of tribes, yet still done in a couple of tribes in Africa. 

   

African Body Modification (aka Beauty) - YouTube. 2013. African Body Modification (aka Beauty) - YouTube. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwOXCmjTsvs.

Scarification & Cicatrisation (African Art post 8/10)

There are a lot of different stuff in African cultures, and one of the main things is SCARIFICATION, along with their hairstyles and so on.

Scarification is done on the human body, not on other objects like their art in pottery, but as one can notice the patters and shapes/forms are related to each other. This is a cultural activity which a lot of tribes perform this act in Africa, this is done when the artist does cuts on the body with a sharp tool, where as a tool one uses a knife, stone, coconut shell or a stone where this tool is generally used to control the shapes of the scars as they are sometimes different in every body part.

  

                                            Scarification tools

Cicatrisation is a different type of scarification, it is done where a wound is made through the skin with a sharp object and then they’ll apply certain juices from an caustic pland and permanent blisters will form, yet they’ll even perform some kind of tattooing where some of them will rub the wound with gunpowder or charcoal found from the ground and when they’ll heal they’ll be marked forever. The cut marks, will be called KELOIDS once they’’ be healed.

Performing Cicatrisation

This is a painful and a long process, where it’s a permanent mark that’s why its called a modification, yet they’ll still do it as it sends messages or gives identity of the tribe where their meanings are generally about politics, religious or social things. Just like in West Africa, they’ll do them for identity of the groups or family or even individuality yet if not about the ones I mentioned, they’ll do them for expressing beauty. They even perform body scarification on women, where they represent stages of one’s life just like puberty and marriage.

  

Stages of life scarification 

On men, when they make facial scarification, they’ll do them so one will be attractive as one can touch and to look at and women sometime will do them aswell to show their strong resistance to childbirth.

In other countries like Nigeria, woman with scared faces will show their demand to sex, where woman will show that they are willing for a lot of children, this is because they’ll say that one will have more erotic sensations when they’re touched by men as scars will stay sensitive for many years till they’ll heal completely

Yet, one should know that multiple scarifications are for decorations in different social parts. As today this is changing in Africa as a lot of tribes are NOT using scars patterns anymore and can only be seen on the elderly.

      

Facial scarifications

Scarification and Cicatrisation among African cultures - RAND AFRICAN ART. 2013. Scarification and Cicatrisation among African cultures - RAND AFRICAN ART. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.randafricanart.com/Scarification_and_Cicatrisation_among_African_cultures.html

African Influences In Modern Art (African Art post 7/10)

It all started during the early 1990, when African art became a big influence to modern art and that’s what happened when In France, as a group of artist who formed a starting point in the development of modern art.

Artists like Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso along with their friends in the School of Paris, they started to emend and gave a new style to the human figure, where they blended African sculpture’s styles together with post-impressionism.

This style gave them a new scenery in their art, as they were impressed with their vivid colours and flatness, together with the Cubic shapes which have helped them to form modernism.They have recognised that African art is spiritual in their aspect of art and as they didn't know anything about these African arts. Yet they have still managed to push their own efforts and have moved a big gap from naturalism.

  

African Sculpture            New style - Cubism (Wifredo Lam)

African art gave the first starting point to Fauvism, this was the first movement of new concepts which was born in France in early 20^th Century. The Fauvists were the first group of artists to bread the Impressionism rules as well as older styles and traditional methods.
Their spontaneous subjects about nature were generally expressed in undisguised, bold brush strokes with vibrant and high pitched colours (i.e. light rainbow colours) which they applied straight from the tube, directly on the canvas. 

    

Andre Derain                                Maurice de Vlaminck                Henri matisse

Cubism was one of the most highly impressed arts from African art, where it even started in early 20^th century; Pablo Picasso created this art form together with Georges Braque in Paris. Louis Vauxcelles who was a French critic, have gave the name CUBISM after looking at his own landscapes that he drew as he got its name from the geometric cubes that they were making use of in their new style.

These distorts on Cubism was adapted from non-western arts, as one can see that the distortion in Picasso’s paintings were adapted from African art, where Picasso have seen his first African art pieces when he visited a museum called ‘Palais du Trocadero’ in Pairs. 

     

Georges Braque                       Picasso                 Diego Rivera

African Influences in Modern Art | Thematic Essay | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 2013. African Influences in Modern Art | Thematic Essay | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/aima/hd_aima.htm.

Fauvism | Thematic Essay | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 2013. Fauvism | Thematic Essay | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/fauv/hd_fauv.htm.

Cubism | Thematic Essay | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 2013. Cubism | Thematic Essay | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/cube/hd_cube.htm.

African Traditional Masks (African Art post 6/10)

In African traditions, ceremonial and ritual masks are a trademark features in their culture as it’s an art form from Sub-African countries. Yet, masks widely vary in forms and shape in different cultures especially the ritual masks but usually they have a spiritual and religious association and are used in dances when they’re doing a ritual or a social/religious event whereas the artist has a special status to create masks, even those who wear them in ceremonies.

   

African ritual masks

Generally the mask maker is inherited from father to son, where one even inherits the symbols and meanings of such masks.
Masks are the most artistic subjects that have mostly influenced European art and as I have mentioned before in other blog posts they were the start to cubism and other central and southern American countries have inspired deeply from the masks that they do masked carnival parades.

In Gabon an African place, masks are used in magic ceremonies which is the most traditional culture, and they believe that the person who wears the ritual masks, his human identity is lost and yet its turned into a represented spirit by the mask. As this thing happens, the mask-wearer becomes the medium of the tribe and therefore is allowed to communicate between spirits and community where generally they communicate with the dead.

Gabon mask

These masks are one big part in their tradition where they are used in weddings, rites, funerals and other important stuff for the tribe where masked dances ceremonies are held on those days.

  

During rituals and ceremonies 

African masks from different countries

info - Traditional African masks - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 2013.Traditional African masks - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. [ONLINE] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_traditional_masks. 

Few images - African masks. 2013. African masks. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.vub.ac.be/BIBLIO/nieuwenhuysen/african-art/african-art-collection-masks.htm. 

Contemporary African Art (African Art post 5/10)

African art is characterized by a great diversity, whereas they make the use of forms and materials. Artists are still influenced by ancient forms of African art yet they make uses of new media and techniques with different touches and forms from around the world.

Today, new contemporary African art are being more visual around the world, yet the same goes to art from around the world to Africa after everything is being globalised, and media shares what’s on in the modern world, along with opportunities to travel became more constant in many African countries. Artists generally base on their heritage with a twist in modernism, yet in such as paintings they use the modern look where abstract and cubism is their main point, in the use of media, it have opened its way that everything can be used to create an art form whereas not only sculptures and paintings. 

      

Contemporary African Art. 2013. Contemporary African Art. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.contemporary-african-art.com/contemporary-african-art.html#sthash.hftyLjsO.dpbs.

+ my own opinion on contemporary african art

Traditional African Art (African Art post 4/10)

Traditional art are the most popular that describes the studied forms of the typical African art.
Generally, wooden masks were made which symbolise human or animal and sometimes even creatures that are mythical which were commonly found in West Africa. These mask’s originality were used in ceremonies such as celebrations, wars and harvesting crops where they used to be worn by a dancer which used to be chosen or entitled to.

  

During the ceremonies  dancers used to go in deep trance where he/she will communicate with ancestors during the state of mind. These masks used to be multi position worn, where these people used to wear them as helmets (covering the head), as a crest or even resting with the head. African masks used to represent spirits, where they believes that the one who wears the mask is possessed by the ancestor’s soul.

 

They're generally are made out of wood, and usually decorated by ivory, plant’s fibre, pigments, animal’s hair and stones, whereas sometimes even semi-precious stones were attached.

They even used to produce statues, generally made out of ivory and decorated with metal, nails and even shells. As part of their culture, they also had decorative clothing which is another big part of African art in their culture.
Just like different cultures, in Ghana they have the strip woven Kente cloth which is colourful African textile, and another technique is the boldly patterned mudcloth.

Traditional Clothing

  

Kente Cloth                                         Mud Cloth

African art - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 2013. African art - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. [ONLINE] Available at:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_art#Traditional_art.