The Inner Eye: Vision and Transcendence in African Arts

“THE INNER EYE:
VISION AND TRANSCENDENCE IN AFRICAN ARTS”
curated by mary nooter roberts
los angeles county museum of art
resnick pavilion, february 26—july 9, 2017

Oro, the essence of communication, takes place in the eyes.

(Yoruba axiom cited in Abiodun 1994:77)

The Inner Eye: Vision and Transcendence in African Arts” features a cross-cultural constellation of sculptures—many of them iconic in the corpus of African art—and eye-catching textiles. The exhibition explores how works of art and the visual regimes through which they have been created and performed enable transitions from one stage of life to the next and from one state of being to another. Themes address diverse ways of seeing: “Envisioning Origins” to “Maternal Gaze,” “Insight and Education” to “Beholding Spirit,” “Patterning Perception” to “Visionary Performance,” and “Vigilant Sentinels” to “Seeing Beyond.” These groupings will encourage viewers to notice how works were made to look upon, gaze within, and see beyond in myriad ways that signal transitions of identity, experience, and perception. The exhibition’s figures and masks, initiation objects and royal emblems, reliquary guardians and commemorative posts from west, central, and eastern Africa and spanning from the thirteenth to the twentieth centuries ce, have guided humans to spirit realms, to the afterlife, and to the highest levels of esoteric wisdom.

“The Inner Eye” draws attention to African individuals, such as rulers, mothers, and healers, as well as spirit beings who exhibit heightened senses of awareness, while acknowledging artists and performers as visionaries who bring works to life. A number of artists are identifiable master hands, and in some cases sculptures are shown in clusters to appreciate the remarkable ingenuity that each artist brings to a single genre. Ultimately, in their own settings and, one can hope, museum spaces as well, these objects empower people to transcend human limitations and boundaries and envision their own potentialities and possibilities (Fig. 1).

Most works of art encourage viewers to gaze upon them in all their multidimensionality. In fact, museum experience is predicated upon looking. When we see art in most Western museum settings, the assumption is that objects are meant to be scrutinized and beheld, and in a sense consumed by visitors’ eyes and caressed by their gaze. Yet, looking is a culturally determined activity of visuality with its own expectations, limitations, capabilities, and epiphanies varying from one community to another.¹ In many cases, staring at works is not the intended experience for which they were produced and used in original settings. Looking directly at something or into its eyes (if an object has them) may be discouraged, and in many contexts, direct eye contact is regarded as impolite, inappropriate, and perhaps even perilous.

As Rowland Abiodun discusses in a seminal article on Yoruba art and aesthetics, “because ase [vital force] is believed to emanate from oju [eyes/face], children and young people are forbidden to look straight into their parents’ or elders’ faces. It is even more dangerous to stare at the face of an oba [king], which is usually veiled” (1994:77). Somewhat similarly, Susan Vogel holds that

in Baule visual practice, the act of looking at a work of art, or at spiritually significant objects, is for the most part privileged and potentially dangerous. Even an inadvertent glimpse of a forbidden object can make a person sick, can expose them to huge fines or sacrifices, or can even be fatal. The power and danger of looking lie in a belief that objects are potent … [and so] there is an explicit etiquette of the gaze. Younger people do not look directly at their elders—it is disrespectful (1998:110).

1.

Ngi mask Gabon, Fang peoples, 1850 Wood, kaolin and fiber; 62.2 cm x 29.5 cm x 20.3 cm Private collection

Abiodun, Vogel, and a number of other scholars of African art histories (see Nooter 1993) have expounded upon the intricacies of culturally specific notions of seeing, then, and have elucidated the paradox that while works may be made by artists with skill and inspired brilliance, they...