13651

African Art and Spirituality

N.N.

Kommentar

Art and material culture play important roles in African religions. From the beginning of the study of African art, this spiritual dimension of African art has been recognized, for instance in the European fascination with “fetishes”. Even though the term “fetish” has now been abandoned for its colonial connotations, the “Problem of the Fetish”, as one essay title identified it, remains. This “problem” is that, historically, Europeans thought that Africans attributed power to objects. This is an interesting “problem” for students of African art because it problematizes the distinction Europeans have always made between “objects” (without “spirit” or “agency”) and “subjects” (people who “know” and are endowed with “subjectivity”). In this seminar, we will study African arts and material culture to examine how the “agency” of African art works. The seminar sits in a wide literature that questions the distinction between objects and subjects. The second aim of this seminar is to provide a general overview of the religious arts of Africa. We will study the royal arts of the Asante, Benin and Kuba kingdoms, in which art conveyed the spiritual authority of kings. We also look at the so-called “fetishes” that have intrigued Europeans, particularly the “Nkisi” figures. Acknowledging the forced migration of African people, concepts and practices across the Atlantic, we also study the emergence of Black spiritual arts in the New World: Vodun in Haiti and Candomblé in Brazil. Acknowledging the introduction of Islam to Africa, we study the production of Muslim amulets and the vibrant visual culture of behind-glass paintings in Senegal. In terms of postcolonial arts, we look at the continuous presence of spirituality in African Modernisms. Finally, acknowledging the rise of Pentecostalism, we look at various forms of religious mediation in film and video. This will also provide an opportunity to discuss the latest theory on spiritual mediation in art. Schließen

Literaturhinweise

Diagne, Souleymane Bachir. African Art as Philosophy: Senghor, Bergson, and the Idea of Negritude. Other Press, LLC, 2023. Jethro, Duane. "Belief and Art/Art, Africa and Religion." Material Religion 20, no. 1 (2024): 108-112. Meyer, Birgit. "Picturing the invisible: visual culture and the study of religion." Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 27, no. 4-5 (2015): 333-360. Roberts, Allen F, and Mary Nooter Roberts. A Saint in the City: Sufi Arts of Urban Senegal, UCLA, 2003. Thompson, Robert Farris. Flash of the spirit: African & Afro-American art & philosophy. Vintage, 2010. Schließen