IMA exhibit offers peek at life with Africa's Yoruba

The largest and most inclusive display from the ancient spiritual home of Africa's Yoruba people ever to tour the West will go on view at the Indianapolis Museum of Art on Friday.

"Dynasty and Divinity: Ife Art in Ancient Nigeria" has just three other stops on its U.S. tour -- Houston, Richmond, Va., and in a still-to-open New York City museum.

That museum, the Museum of African Art, organized the display of 104 items with the Fundacion Botin of Santander, Spain, collaborating with the Nigerian National Commission for Museums and Monuments.

"It's the first time the entire group has been outside Nigeria," said Elizabeth Morton, IMA adjunct curator and professor of art history at Wabash College.

The bulk of the exhibition consists of copper-alloy, terra-cotta and stone sculptures from the 9th to 15th centuries. Some were found in outdoor shrines that were active into the 20th century, others unearthed in archaeological digs. A few that had been removed by Western collectors were returned to Nigeria for study and preservation.

Ife (pronounced "EE-fay") is where the Yoruba believe the world and humankind were created. Descendants of the creator-god became the sacred rulers ("Ooni") of Ife, a monarchical line that continues to this day. Ife, though no longer autonomous, is the spiritual center for 29 million Yoruba living in Nigeria; countless African-Americans are descended from Yoruba.

"They were one of the most urbanized African peoples," Morton said. "They lived by trade more than farming."

The primary trading route for the inland city-state was the Niger River. Goods -- glass beads were Ife's chief export -- were conveyed mostly north across the Sahara, she said. Kola nuts and palm oil also moved out from Ife; cotton, gold and salt came to it in return.

Vividly detailed portrait heads of the Ooni are among the exhibition's most valuable objects. Ife imported copper and used it only in royal contexts, the curator said. The sculptors enjoyed high status because their work was linked to Ife's spiritual heritage.

"The Yoruba always believed that the spirit resided in the head," Morton said. "The seat of the soul was the head." This belief is more supported by modern science than the European tradition of focusing on the heart, she noted. Ooni crowns themselves were believed to be alive.

Also in the show are detailed figures and portrait heads of high-status figures outside the royal line, done in terra cotta (brown-red, usually unglazed earthenware).

The exhibition also contains sculptures of animals and some human figures depicting such ills and deformities as elephantiasis.

One room focuses on objects from Ife's neighbors, some of which predate Ife civilization.

"This exhibition has everything," Morton said. "Aesthetics, human figures done with striking realism and, of course, history."

source: www.indystar.com