Description:
three stylized heads in openwork carving one on top of another inside a roughly rectangular outer wood "framing"
Label Text:
Shetani is the Swahili word for a type of mischievous yet dangerous spirit. A group of expatriate Makonde artists from Mozambique, working in Dar es Salaam in the 1960s, decided to try making sculptures of these imaginary beings. In doing so, they invented an entirely new and modern sculptural style, using ribbon-like forms to make undulating, abstract figures in solid wood. The sculptures proved tremendously popular with art collectors, despite the fact that they had never been used in a traditional context. The Makonde artists prove, therefore, that African art is valued independently of traditional practices and they opened the doors for other contemporary artists on the continent to deviate from traditional subject matter and carving methods
Susan E. Kart '96, Assistant Professor of the Arts of Africa, Lehigh University (2018)
Tags:
mythology Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=SC+1975.61 |
