Body talk - First Word - Transcript

African Arts, Summer, 2001 by Henrietta Cosentino, Carine Fabius

What on earth could nineteenth-century Luba depictions of the female body have in common with the contemporary sculptures of Los Angeles artist Alison Saar? How is culture inscribed on the female body and who interprets it how? Is gender a performance? Is it for real?

Last February 24 thirteen scholars and artists explored these and other issues of gender, body, memory, race, and spirit in an all-day symposium at UCLA called "Dialogues on Body Politics," inspired by the exhibition "Body Politics: The Female Image in Luba Art and the Sculpture of Alison Saar." The exhibition, curated by Mary Nooter Roberts and Alison Saar (UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, November 12, 2000-May 13, 2001), juxtaposed small, elegant nineteenth-century Luba depictions of the female with Saar's mostly large, roughhewn sculptures. This unusual pas de deux was extended in wall text that reproduced a spirited conversation between the curatots. Like the exhibition, the symposium was cast as a series of dialogues, each organized around a theme (see program, p. 4).

In a refreshing departure from the strictly academic, two of the panelists "performed" their thoughts on these themes; a third took the audience into cyberspace. In the spirit of the material at hand, we therefore abandon the usual solo First Word in favor of a dialogue, this one between Henrietta Cosentino, an editor and writer, and Carine Fabius, a writer and for many years a dealer in Afro-Caribbean art. Henrietta and Carine found themselves together at the symposium. Here is the conversation that ensued.

HC: I love the fact that we're two nonscholars dialoguing on a scholarly symposium. But we both respond to the show and have backgrounds that make it resonate. I have lived in Nigeria and Sierra Leone (where depictions of women are so present and strong) and have worked at the Fowler Museum (and before that, at African Arts). You as longtime co-proprietor of Galerie Lakaye have collected and exhibited so much contemporary African American art. And as a Haitian woman you've expressed a visceral connection with Alison's work.

CF: My experience is not so much with African American art but more as a dealer of Black art (that term African American I have always found limiting). Also, the fact that I'm Haitian connected me to all the talk about spirit possession. And then there's this whole other area of my being involved with the world of henna body art, which is really a way of imprinting the will of the gods by using the sacred henna plant as medium ... But about the symposium, overall I did not readily see so many parallels in regard to Alison's art versus the Luba art. Alison's work is so personal and the Luba work so historical ...

HC: Yes, and Alison's is so rough and so large in dimension, the Luba art so small and finely wrought. I agree that the connection between the two is a challenge. On the surface, it might have seemed more logical for Alison's work to be juxtaposed with Yoruba art, since she has consciously studied it and drawn inspiration from it. But that wouldn't have been nearly as interesting. Maybe it's in the disjunctions that the stimulation lies. You said you fell in love with Alison's sculptures. But did you find yourself able see the Luba stuff--to get into it--before the symposium? After the symposium?

CF: I absolutely loved so many of those pieces. They are some of the most exquisite African sculptures I have ever seen. And after listening to so many people at the symposium making the connection between them and Alison's work, I did see some associations. All of her pieces dealt with women, and most if not all of the Luba sculptures were female in subject. And in reflecting on all the talk about why that is and about how women are the real chiefs at night while men are the chiefs during the day, and that in the ceremonial context men put on women's masks to better attract spirit because only a woman can hold the spirit of a king--all that kind of made me crazy, because on one level I know it's true, that women are the stronger and more intuitive and more magical sex(!), but when a man says it, it's kind of like paying lip service to it, because, bottom line, isn't the final word about economic power?

HC: Hmm. I guess I'd say yes and no. That's what the feminists of the 1970s said, and in the context of American society I think they were right. But in the context of African society--societies, because heaven knows there are a multiplicity--I think it's a lot more complex. As a Peace Corps volunteer in Southeastern Nigeria I encountered female power of kinds that I'd never encountered in the U.S.A., even among women who didn't necessarily have economic means. But they had all kinds of means for self-realization, and an innate sense of who they were and what kinds of power they had, and it was palpable, and made American femaleness seem very thin by comparison.

CF: I certainly would not argue that those women are not powerful, but I remember having this same discussion with a visiting Senegalese artist, Moussa Sene Absa, whom I think you met. We were talking about the multiple-wives issue, and he said the same thing--that they really ran the show, etc. Except I don't think any one of those women likes or appreciates the other wives. They accept it but they don't like it. I just mean that men used to know that women are the more powerful sex, and it seems as though now they just say it.