Magazines - Tribal Art Winter 2011

By Vanessa Drake Moraga, is curator of the exhibition Weaving Abstraction.

Introduction
Abstract signs, ideographs, cosmograms, and symbols are deeply significant in African visual expression, yet the kind of geometric patterning at which the Kuba of the central D.R. Congo excel was long dismissed as either devoid of meaning or merely ornamental. It has even been characterized, as John Mack has noted, as “an extended exercise in design for its own sake.”1 In a paradigm shift, it is now widely acknowledged that abstract or nonrepresentational pattern languages of non-Western traditions often constitute cohesive, versatile, and complex systems of meaning that inscribe core cultural themes and knowledge. This “ethno-geometry”2 can codify verbal lore such as proverbs, aphorisms, and myths. It can also convey moral, spiritual, and philosophical precepts, and it often replicates the social order.