Ancient Treasures of African Women
I went in through the doors of the treasury of Wisdom, and I drew for myself the waters of understanding. I went into the blaze of the flame of the Sun, and it lighted me with its splendor, and I made of it a shield for myself, and I saved myself by confidence in it; and not only myself, but all those who travel in the footsteps of Wisdom; and not myself only, but all the people of my country, the Kingdom of Ethiopia; and not only those, but the nations around it...
The greatness they denied, but that you always knew existed:
magnificent images of ancestors, shamans, priestesses, queens, and goddesses, from Egypt to Chad and Nigeria to Zimbabwe. Masterpieces of Saharan and South African rock art; pre-pharaonic Kemetic ceramic paintings, petroglyphs, murals, and figurines; Meroitic sculptures of Sudan; the ceramic sculptures of Nok, and ancestral mothers' monuments in south Ethiopia. Don't miss these rarely-seen masterpieces of ancient African art.
Treasures of African Women II
There has to be a Part Two, because there is just too much richness for one show, or even seven! The stone sculptures of Esie and the splendid bronzes of Benin. Yoruba, Hausa, Ashanti, Wolof queens; priestesses and women's rites; ancestral mothers of Mali, Congo and Tanzania. Female artists in velvet, leather, weaving, adire, mudcloth, calabash art -- and muralists from Burkina Faso to Botswana. Women builders, lyre-players, rain-shrine oracles, and modern women who resist injustice, patriarchal violence, and stand for their rights on multiple fronts.
Robes, ornaments, hairstyles, headwraps, and body art of women among the Nuba, Fulani, ¡Xhosa, Afar, Igbo, Amazighen (Tuareg and Berbers), Ethiopians, Somalis, Tunisians, Mangbetu, Himba, Tutsi, Senegalese, BaKuba, Zulu, Dinka, and more. Created at the request of African-Diasporic women.
© 2010 Max Dashu
