The following information relates to the exhibition Face of the Gods, conceived by Robert Farris Thompson, professor of Afro-American Art at Yale University and curator of The Museum of African Art in New York City, where this traveling show originated. The exhibition links the visual grammar of altar traditions of West African (Yoruba) and Central African (Kongo) civilizations with those of Yoruba and Kongo descendants in Haiti, Cuba, Brazil, Puerto Rico and in Black and Latino North America. Face of the Gods can be seen up to February 19 at University Art Museum, Berkeley and March 19-May 4 at The Museum of Fine Arts, Alabama.
Altars everywhere are sites of ritual communication with the supernatural. They mark the boundary between heaven and earth, the living and the dead, the ordinary and the world of the spirit. Elevated or grounded, simple or elaborate, communal or personal, altars focus the faithful in worship. They provide an arena for offerings and requests they act to channel positive and negative forces. The Yoruba term for altar, “face of the gods,” and the Kongo concept of altar as a “crossroads” or border between worlds, are the operative metaphors used throughout the exhibition.
Using the altar as a vehicle for historical reconstruction, the exhibition explores how, despite the destruction and disruption caused by the slave trade and the imposition of Christianity and foreign culture, African people and their descendants in the Americas maintained the essential elements of African religious traditions through improvisations and adaptations to local context.
Face of the Gods presents approximately 18 altars made up of more than one hundred examples of African and African American works of art. Some of the altars are reconstructions, based on field photos, using loan objects from altar artists, national and international museums, and private collectors. Altars have also been installed with the assistance of distinguished artists/traditional leaders like José Bedia of Cuba, Balbino de Paula from Brazil, Felipe García Villamil of Cuba (now in the Bronx), K. Kia Bunseki Fu-Kiau of Zaire, John Mason, Yoruba priest from Brooklyn, Amira Lepore and her son, Anadeau, Umbanda specialist from New York City, Alberto Morgan, Yoruba specialist from New Jersey and C. Daniel Dawson, special curator consultant.
Prelude: Kongo syncretism Face of the Gods begins outside the museum where Palo Mayombe ground-drawing, or firmas, have been applied to the pavement. Palo (stick in Spanish) is a Kongo-based religion in Cuba; Mayombe, a location in Western Zaire. These signs are considered the signatures of spiritual entities associated with the Palo religion. Drawn on chalk or sometimes gunpowder, they are used to attract and incorporate those powers for protection and health.
A procession of multicolored, sequined flags dedicated to the Haitian deities of sevi lwa, commonly known as Voudou, lead the visitor. This national religion is composed of many strands: from Dahomey came the worship of a pantheon of gods and goddesses (called lwa) under one supreme Creator; from Kongo and Angola beliefs in the transcendental powers of the dead and in the effectiveness of minkisi (charms used for the healing and social harmony); from Yorubaland a pantheon of deities (orisha). In Haiti these flags are paraded at the beginning of ceremonies to herald the coming of a god or goddess. They are flags of mediation between our mundane world and the world of the lwa and represent a Creole variation on the Kongo theme of the ritual dancing of the cloth.
Yoruba Gods and their Emblems The Yoruba, one of Sub-Saharan Africa’s most populous groups, sixteen million strong, live in the Republic of Nigeria. They are heirs to an ancient culture exceptional for its urban density, refinement and complexity. When forced migration took Yoruba peoples to the plantations of Cuba, Brazil and Haiti, they recombined their deities into a new pantheon and incorporated Catholic saints whose powers and histories seemed parallel. For example, some representations of the Virgin Mary were equated with the sweet and gentle aspect of Oshun, the goddess of love. In Cuba, Shango, the Yoruba thunder god, was frequently associated with martyred Saint Barbara, because her assassins were struck dead by lightning. The icons associated with the deities were also translated into American equivalents — the ritual swords of Ogun, the Yoruba god of iron, became identified with St. Peter’s iron key to heaven. While outwardly conforming to the religious practices of the Catholics surrounding them, the Yoruba in Cuba and Brazil maintained a system of thought that creatively reorganized their traditional religions to survive in a new environment.
The first altar is of Afro-Brazilian Yoruba tradition and dedicated to Obatala/Oxala, a saint among saints, sweet, pure and merciful, whose color white stands for honesty and truth. To denote unblemished honesty, this throne altar uses transparent white fabric draped and tied in an enormous bow, staffs of white metals, tin and silver, a beaded crown, cement columns studded with silver painted stones, scepters and swords. Crosses and candles denote syncretic borrowing of Catholic saints and symbols: Obatala is most often compared to Jesus. On an adjacent wall is a Nigerian Yoruba crown covered with white beads.
These altars introduce Yoruba religious iconography with sculptures for the deities or orisha of the large Yoruba pantheon. Each orisha oversees a particular realm of the moral universe and has his or her own visual signature, made up of characteristic colors, icons, fabrics, symbols and foods. The first altar illustrates how these sculptures were often assembled in Africa. Based on early-20th century photographs of shrines from the Oyo region of Nigeria a traditional altar to Shango, the fourth king of the Yoruba, now immortalized as the thunder god, has been recreated. He is represented by the oshe, a double headed axe, a symbol of balance, and the fiery color red. As the regulator of rules, Shango reminds practitioners not to lose control; doubleness also relates to Shango’s children, the Ibeji or Spirit Twins. Symbols of his power – calabashes, crowns of beads, thunder rattles, as well as the Oshe Shango double-headed axe – announce his presence and message of God’s moral judgment.
With these works of art as a point of reference, the extensive visual vocabulary of the Yoruba worship in Africa is juxtaposed to that of a Yoruba-influenced Afro-Cuban altar where the enduring impact of these ancestral forms is clearly revealed. While the emblems vary and change with inventive Creole energy, they nevertheless span three continents and many centuries with remarkable consistency.
An opulent Afro-Cuba throne altar shows six orisha elevated and arranged on individual platforms and decorated with their appropriate colors. As Thompson writes, “in the richness of these shrine elaborations, Yoruba people experience a sense of heaven’s glamour.” Surrounded by canopies and thrones, multi-stranded necklaces of beads (mazos) dress these deities who appear as mysterious mounds of richly draped cloth over tureens containing sacred stones. In the creolization process, human figures were frequently abstracted of de-anthropomorphized by Africans in the Americans who may have been trying to protect their religion in the midst of a hostile environment. By rendering traditional icons as non-figurative, they became enigmatic and could not be attacked as “heathen dolls.” Recalling the crack of his thunder is a baseball bat that has been covered with beads in Shango’s red and white, red indicating the flash of his lighting and white his controlling calm and purity of character.
Symbolic assemblages: the Kongo Atlantic Altar It is estimated that approximately 40% of the millions of Africans who landed in the Americas between 1500 to 1870 were from Central Africa, culturally influenced by the Kongo civilization. Thus Kongo traditions are pervasive in the Americas. Kongo beliefs and iconography are based on sacred protective medicines, minkisi, which are used for physical and social harmony and healing. Altars are found at river banks, in forests and cemeteries, and at other borders between worlds. They are often surrounded by pottery, ideographic writing and sacred medicines. The cyclical evolution of the soul that keeps transforming and returning is crucial to understanding Kongo iconography. A dramatic and heavily coded continuation of Kongo beliefs and icons occurs in the Southern United States, where Kongo-American versions of the nkisi (singular of minkisi), or medicines of the gods, take characteristic forms.
A tree with bottles protects the household through the power of medicinal waters and a yard “dressed” to protect it from negative intrusion. The bottles of glass or plastic hang from a tree close to the home, protecting it from harmful spirits by the gleam of the glass, which attracts, captures, and disempowers evil forces like envy, jealousy and strife. The custom was recorded in Angola as early as 1776 and in the Americas as early as 1791. An African antecedent to the bottle tree is found in the plate and branch tradition of adorning graves, documented in a Kongo cemetery in 1909. Porcelain plates, pierced through the center with tree branches reappear in grave sites in the South where they celebrate the dead. Bottle trees may also appear as part of a full yard show.
A yard show by Cornelius of Tidewater, Virginia, recreated in the exhibition, is presented as an environmental Kongo-American nkisi. What might look like assemblage of junk, or meaningless clutter is actually “a complex spiritual act in plural dimension.” We see a house surrounded by bottles filled with different colored water. These “medicines” encircle the house, keep out evil “dogs,” and are viewed as spiritual protection for the home. The other elements in the carefully configured yard shows — fan blades, TV cathodes, twin dolls, tire planters, mirrors, chairs and gates — are decoded in terms of Kongo iconography symbols. They are used to protect and entertain, commemorate and enthrone, filter and repel the powers of good and evil. These assemblages, composed of objects that symbolize motion, with white vessels and unusual wood formations, are interpreted as altars or “visual prayers.” The theme is continued in the sequined bottles and “pacquets congo” used by Haitian ritual experts – in reality a Caribbean manifestation of Kongo minkisi, portable altars charged with flash and power.
Flag altars to the ancestors: Two of the largest, most majestic altars in the exhibition are flag altars from the rain forest of Suriname, South America. Created by African maroon societies composed of self-liberated former slaves, and free Africans, these altars mix fragments of the art and architecture from the Mande, Akan and Fon/Ewe West African traditions, constantly reinvigorated by new arrivals, and by contact with the Amerindian population. Political and cultural resistance and independence are asserted by these distinctive maroon altars of the Mande diaspora.
The Ndjuka altar is a 12 foot tall T-cross with layers of white sheeting suspended from its elevation. This altar is dedicated to the ancestors and elders. The worship here is performed on behalf of the whole community. The single largest item in the exhibition, the Samara altar, also from Suriname, is a stately, evocative assembly of seven T-crosses bearing along swaths of draped and tied cloth. These flag altars are placed within an enclosure, decorated with palm fronds, white sand, and a place for offerings.
In Africa, the Mande made forked branch and clay pillar altars, which mimed the verticality of trees in their basic upholding gesture, supporting a vessel of medicine. The tree becomes a “spiritual ideogram,” and the flag altar is an African American form of tree or tree-surrogate altar.
The circling of the soul and Kongo medicines of God: Links are made between Afro-Cuban art and altars and their antecedent Kongo minkisi, portable sacred medicines of god, often called healing charms. In Africa, minkisi are kept in containers as diverse as shells, packets, ceramic vessel, wooden images, statuettes and cloth bundles. The most compelling Kongo minkisi are nail covered figures used for oathtaking and healing. In addition to their fierce attitude and covering of protruding blades and nails, these figures also contain powerful ingredients in the head and stomach cavities.
Placed in isolated rooms, corners, or crossroads, adorned with feathers, stones, sticks, beads, earth and iron reflecting a symbolic language of meaning, the altars in this gallery illustrate the symbols of Kongo religion in Cuba. The Guanabacoa nkisi, named for a cemetery across the harbor from Havana, is a simple altar made of a mound of earth, a small cross, a seashell and erect and bent sticks, eloquently positioned. Two Sarabanda nkisi are present in this exhibit – some scholars say that one of them represents the Creole spirit of a powerful black man who worked on the railways in the last century.
Modeled on his personal altar, Cuban José Bedia creates a symbolic environment in a corner (which represents a crossroads) for the Lucero of Guanabacoa. The Kongo cycle-of-the-soul is represented by a wall painting: one side black and containing the symbols of night (moon, stars and comets); the other side blue, with a radiant sun, for the beginning and renewal of life. On the ground in the center of the altar and created out of a large seashell is Lucero del Mundo, this one also known as the Lucero de Guanabacoa. It is a guardiero, which means squire, assistant and guardian in the symbolic language of Kongo religion of Cuba. Lucero is mounted in concrete and surrounded by sticks and feathers that bring power. On the left is a statue of Francisco, a Kongo guide, and on the right is a statue of La Comisión India, and Indian guide. There is also a mbele (machete) and a large lungoa (hooked stick) symbolizing important aspects of Palo Monte.
Felipe García Villamil, originally from Matanzas, Cuba, is a direct descendant of Yoruba and Kongo priests. He is a distinguished mayombero (priest), master musician and ritual artist. García Villamil prepared an altar for the Sarabanda in the Matanzas style. Located in his closet, like other Kongo altars secreted in enclosures, it is full of powerful medicines. There, two straw hats hang in readiness for the use by the spirit, with a mirror-stoppered cow horn of clairvoyance (vititi mensu), musical instruments used in sacred ritual, and elaborate beaded artwork. A red flag with protective signs hangs on the wall behind the nkisi to protect the altar, its owner and his family from harm.
The basic Kongo cosmogram is a cross within a circle, dikenga, that is a symbolic chart of the voyage of the soul. As a miniature of the sun, the soul is thought to have four moments — birth, efflorescence, fading and the return in the dawn of a coming day. Triangles, diamonds, spirals, or crisscrosses denote this cyclical movement. The soul, which is thought by the Bakongo to reside in the forehead, is often represented in diamond form and can be seen on many African masks. The exhibition includes such masks — 19th century Punu, Teke (Tsaaye), and Chokwe masks, and a 20th century Vili mask ringed with feathers. In addition, a fully feathered Mardi gras “Wild Man” costume from New Orleans, reminiscent of Kongo feather masks and headdresses worn by healers, is a living example of the creolized Kongo traditions found in the United States.
Fusion faiths: medicines of concern Altars are often the locus of healing and moral reckoning and the four altars in this section demonstrate the explosion of forms and symbols inspired by the Yoruba art and belief in Brazil, which have fused into Umbanda, the largest black religion in Brazil.
An altar for Omolu (another name for Obaluaiye), the deity of pestilence, fever and epidemic, the bearer of moral retribution, is recreated by the Pai Balbino de Paula, one of Brazil’s most distinguished Candomble priests. Earthenware bowls contain vessels with perforated domes. Placed in the holes are wrought iron staffs of Osanyin, the god of herbal healing. Overturned vessels at the front of the altar commemorate the recent death of a follower. Used to honor the good who punishes with small pox, this Omolu altar is now also associated with scourge of AIDS. An Osanyin staff from the Nigeria, which served as the prototype for this Brazilian Yoruba variation, stands nearby.
The same Yoruba vocabulary is evident in a small, portable basket altar to Asohin, an avatar of Obaluaiye, from Puerto Rico. It contains his broom, which sweeps disease around the world, and earthenware vessel holding his stones, a dish with perforations (pestilence), spotted feathers of the Guinea hen, and the figure of St. Lazarus, the saint most often syncretized with Obaluaiye.
Umbanda, devoted to charity and mental healing, is a syncretic mix of Yoruba, Kongo, Catholic and Amerindian powers, medicines and practices. The crowning figure of Oxala/Lord Jesus, blesses all, while assembled — orixa/saints, caboclos in feather dress, pretos velhos (old blacks), plaster busts of the departed, photos and candles — are carefully arrayed. The altar is completed by cosmograms sealed in chalk circles in the floor — ideograms to call down the spirit. This ecumenical symphony finds the Catholic twin Saints, Cosimo and Damian, standing in for African twin spirits.
An ultimate altar: the Atlantic Ocean The exhibition closes with a recreation of the beach altars of Rio de Janeiro, built by thousands of practitioners on New Year’s Eve to ask for blessings for the coming year. These miniature, candle-lit, personal altars, adorned with flowers and champagne, are scooped our of the sand and dedicated to Yemoja and Oshun (Goddesses of the Ocean and of Love) and sometimes to Ibeji (Twin Spirits). First associated with Umbanda in the 20’s and 30’s, these altars dramatize the ongoing twentieth century fusion of African, Christian and Native American icons and ideology. They are a dramatic illustration of the explosion of African American cultural improvisation and aesthetic creativity that insures spiritual and moral sustenance for Africans in the Americas for centuries.
English translation of German text:
The exhibition “Face OF the Gods” shows, how the altar traditions of the West and Central African cultures are continued by the descendants of the Yoruba and the Congo – in Haiti, Cuba, Brazil and Puerto Rico, in the black and latin North America. Thus it is the first large exhibition, which deals with itself with the contemporary influence of African civilization in the different sections of Americas.
For the Yoruba the altars are the “Face of the Gods”, which are to be calmed, their altars prunken with a mass of containers, which require clock and fine feeling by their fragility. The Congo peoples of Central Africa see against it the altar as a “crossing “, ” wendemarke ” to another world. Both conceptions pull this exhibition through as guidance motives, even if the altar art, which presents it, in which for “new world” developed. It merges African, indianische and Christian icons and ideologies in different form. Their beauty and mirror-image-ritual density, its strength and meaning can measure with the altars of the large world religions, and an understanding of the basic principles of the afro American altars inspires also a feeling for the mirror-image-ritual Essenz of the Christianity, Judentums and Islam.
The exhibition “Face OF the Gods” was organized by the Museum for African Art in New York city. It supported of The national Endowment for the Humanities, The national Endowment for the type and The New York Council for the Humanities, the USA.
Robert Farris Thompson, renowned scholar and professor for African and Afro American history of art , Yale University, conceived and curated the exhibition.
NOTE:
The Museum of African Art (593 Broadway, New York, NY 10012; 212 966-1313) has available a comprehensive book also called Face of the Gods by Robert Farris Thompson which traces the iconography of the purest African altars from the forest hunter-gatherers to the complex artistic and intellectual systems of Yoruba and Kongo civilizations and through their creative reformulation in the Americas. The three hundred and thirty-six page book contains 282 color and 27 black and white plates. Cloth and paper editions are available and cost $70 and $39.50, respectively.
