Magazines - Tribal Art Summer 2011

By Françoise Barrier, publisher of Tribal Art magazine.

Introduction
The intimate obscurity of the exhibition galleries at the Musée Dapper in Paris are propitious for spiritual wandering. With its current installation, it is once again rich with enticing masterpieces of tribal art, among them artistic canons that stand as symbols of the permeability of artistic, social, and cultural frontiers. Exhibited side by side and often face to face, these objects are not always what you expect them to be. More than stating a definition, the exhibition Angola: Figures de Pouvoir (Angola: Figures of Authority) poses questions: What is Angola and how can Angolan culture be defined? Is it through the heroic figure of the mythical hunter Chibinda Ilunga, brandishing his weapons and other attributes of authority in his oversized hands as an incarnation of power par excellence? Or is it better understood through the region’s relationship with Portuguese traders, the Western world, and colonialism, the central importance of which is clearly expressed through the ubiquitous inclusion of foreign materials in its art, such as the upholstery tacks that are prevalent in the sculpture of the Tshokwe, Ovimbundu, Songo, and Lwena, or the glass that bolsters the vision of Kongo and Vili figures? No, according to this exhibition, any kind of Angolan homogeneity seems all but impossible to define with any clarity. Its diversity of cultures and their artistic expressions ranges as wide as its frontiers, with the two Congo republics to the north, Zambia to the east, and Namibia to the south, all providing wildly varied areas of contact and influence.