Divine Intervention: African Art and Ritual
Throughout history, peoples everywhere have sought the intervention and protection of divine powers to understand their predicament. For innumerable African religions, it is not the Supreme Creator God to whom people generally appeal. Having formed the structures of earth and sky and the orderly human cycle of birth, life, and death at the time of creation, the Creator God withdrew, leaving the task of guiding the fortunes and misfortunes of everyday human life to lesser divinities—gods, spirits, and ancestors.
This exhibition presents African art works created for these lesser divinities. The masks, figurative sculptures, and instruments of divination here give visual form to invisible spiritual entities so that people can communicate with them for the purpose of addressing fundamental human concerns regarding physical health, psychological well-being, and social harmony. These art objects make real, maintain, and renew the imagined world of the divine for the benefit of humankind.
No attempt is made in this exhibition to include art from all the many religions of Africa, or to assume a single pan-African religion. Each artwork displayed here represents a distinct cultural perspective. “Religion” is defined as a complex system of ideas and practices that gives meaning to human existence. In Africa, such religious ideas are found not only in the worship of gods, spirits, and ancestors, but also in a wide range of cultural forms, such as healing rituals, funerary rites, divination sessions, and masquerade festivals. The religious practices associated with many of the works of art of on view are today greatly diminished, transformed as “heritage,” or syncretized with other religions, yet traditional religions continue to provide the philosophical and ethical foundation of many contemporary African societies.
The works presented in the first section of the exhibition, Art that is Divinely Inspired, consider the circumstances surrounding the creation of objects that act as bridges between the living and the spirit world. Artists and their clients seek recourse to spiritual entities through dreams, divination rites, or potent physical materials in order to create objects that will serve as effective mediums through which the spirit world can be addressed. A commonly held Western idea, based on Freudian theory, is that dreams are the means whereby the unconscious seeks to resolve psychological problems. The unconscious is the internal driving force that imposes dreams upon the dreamer. However another view of dreams, evident in some African cultures, is that they are initiated from the outside by a spirit-being wishing to communicate with a devotee. The aesthetic qualities of the resulting artwork come out of knowledge of the divine gained through dreams and divination, thereby capturing the attention of the spirit for whom they are made.
In Art for Gods, Spirits, and Ancestors a selection of icons, altars, shrine sculptures, and masks are focal points for communication between this world and the sacred otherworld. Through the act of consecration—rituals of sacrifice, prayer, or performance—the artists’ work is transformed into a vessel that can be inhabited by sacred beings. Through the artwork a relationship between human and spirit is established and sustained.
Art for Divination and Healing brings together a small sample of objects used for divinatory and healing purposes. “Divination” describes methods used to access knowledge by supernatural means in order to resolve social, physical, and psychological problems. Certain divination objects displayed here served oracular roles through which otherworldly insights are communicated to the living. Other instruments are physically manipulated to provide answers to questions posed by diviners. A number of works prescribed as an outcome of consultations with diviners are also presented. These personal objects are customized to medicate, resolve, and shield, illustrating the human need to transcend the limitations of human knowledge by reaching out to the divine for answers.
