Figurated Shrine Post from the Agbeni Shango Shrine

Place CreatedIbadan, Nigeria, Africa

CultureYoruba

Date1910-1937

MediumWood, pigment

Credit LineEx coll. William S. Arnett

Dimensions60 1/2 x 6 1/2 in. (153.7 x 16.5 cm)

Object number1994.004.342

Label TextThis post, along with 15 other similarly carved posts, once formed a screen and roof support in front of the Agbeni Shango Shrine in Ibadan, Nigeria. The purpose of this screen, besides literally holding up the roof of the building, was to signal the sacred nature of the space within and the identity of the orisha or god residing there. This particular post, likely commissioned by the Irugberi clan as a gift to the shrine, depicts devotees and protectors of the shrine: a female figure surmounted by a male figure holding a gun and spear. The instruments of war held by the male figure relate to Shango, putative king of the Oyo kingdom deified as the Yoruba orisha of thunder.

Photographs of the shrine taken since 1910, when it was first documented by the famous German collector and scholar Leo Frobenius, reveal that each year the carvings were washed and repainted by women in preparation for the annual Shango festival. The deep lustrous patina achieved from repeated washes of indigo offsets the more ephemeral but striking spotted decorations of the post, which first appear in photographs taken in 1961. The white spots may signal a plea to Shango for protection from smallpox.
Exhibition HistoryMCCM Permanent Collection Installation, Rotation 1, December 15, 1995 - February 1997
MCCM Permanent Collection Installation, November 19, 2007 - December 1, 2014
Published ReferencesEva Meyerowitz, "Notes on the King-God Shango and His Temple at Ibadan, Southern Nigeria," Man 47 (March - April 1946): 25, figure 2.
Geoffrey Parrinder, Religion in an African City (London: Oxford University Press, 1953), figure 3.
Tim Gordon and Michael Lancaster, "Orisha Houses in Ibadan," Ibadan (February 1961): 22-23.
Norma H. Wolff and D. Michael Warren, "The Agbeni Shango Shrine in Ibadan: A Century of Continuity," African Arts 31 (Summer 1998): 38, 40.

ProvenanceEx coll. William S. Arnett (1939-2020), Atlanta, Georgia.

Status

Not on view

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