Inscribing Meaning: Writing and Graphic Systems in African Art

NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AFRICAN ART MAY 9-AUGUST 26, 2007

FOWLER MUSEUM AT UCLA OCTOBER 14, 2007-FEBRUARY 17, 2008

This exhibition was developed by the National Museum of African Art in association with the Fowler Museum at UCLA. It is accompanied by a major volume of the same title (5 Continents, 2007), edited by Christine Mullah Kreamer, Mary Nooter Roberts, Elizabeth Homey, and Allyson Purpura. (1)

Inscribing Meaning: Writing and Graphic Systems in African Art" explores the relationships between African art and the communicative powers of language, graphic systems, and the written word. For thousands of years, African artists have incorporated writing and graphic symbols into their art with great ingenuity and creativity. The exhibition and book seek to increase understanding and awareness of Africa's legacies of writing and inscription and their prominent place in artistic and expressive culture past and present.

Scripts communicate in many ways--through their appearance, their placement, and the very act of writing. Objects dating from ancient times to the contemporary moment illustrate how African artists have used both the diverse forms of letters, words, and symbols and their meanings to create beautiful, empowered works of art (Figs. 1-3). The scripts encountered in this exhibition reveal the complexity of African artistic practices through which the visual force and versatility of language, in its broadest sense, are realized. Scripts are used for the beauty, plasticity, and rhythm of their forms, and also as vehicles to assert identity, contest authority, or embody the divine.

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"Inscribing Meaning" recognizes Africa's long engagement with written and graphic systems as part of the broader global history of writing and literacy. It draws on a body of literature--art historical, anthropological, and philosophical--that explores the history of writing in world traditions (Drucker 1995, 1998; Martin 1994), the relationships between oral and written communication (Goody 1987, Fabian 1996), and notions of alternative literacies in non-Western societies (Prussin 1986, Boone and Mignolo 1994, Dalby 1995, Battestini 1997, Gundaker 1998). While these studies provide important grounding for definitions of writing and script, they also underscore how non-Western approaches have been marginalized in Western histories of writing. Indeed, it has only been in the past few decades that scholars have begun to address Africa's important place in that history and to consider graphic and mnemonic systems that emphasize alternative forms of knowledge and communication and expand ideas of literacy in Africa and its Diasporas. (2)

The arts of Africa reveal the continent's contributions to the history of writing and inscription systems worldwide. We recognize that a comprehensive review of Africa's writing and graphic systems and their complex histories is beyond the scope of this exhibition and accompanying book. They are not intended as a survey, nor do they venture into a detailed history of inscription in the Black Atlantic Diaspora (a subject deserving of an exhibition and volume unto itself). Rather, we have chosen particular inscription systems by virtue of their prominence in African visual arts and also because they have been explored by contemporary African artists, a number of whom are featured in the exhibition. We have organized material within cross-cutting themes to explore intersections in such a rich and complex topic. Indeed, "Inscribing Meaning" highlights ways that writing and graphic systems are employed to interrogate--often simultaneously-identity and the body, power and authority, religious concepts and practices, the organization of space, and aesthetic strategies. It also considers the ineffable qualities of African inscriptions as they inspire and inform artistic creativity.

WAYS OF KNOWING

"Inscribing Meaning" features works of art from a range of periods, regions, and media, testifying to the rich diversity of scripts and forms of graphic communication. These include everyday and ritual objects, leadership arts, religious paintings and manuscripts, protective talismans, popular arts and contemporary paintings, sculptures, prints and photography. Such image-texts, to use W.J.T. Mitchell's (1994) phrase referring to the imbrication of image and text and the conjoining of the visual and the verbal, challenge conventional understandings of the written word as something static and applied only to paper. They demonstrate the dynamic ways that artists from many African cultures have creatively used script, or the idea of script, in their works of art.

Scripts are systems of interrelated symbols used to encode and transmit meaning. In Africa, these scripts take a variety of forms. Some are phonetic alphabets, in which letters or characters represent the sounds of a language, while others are ideographic, comprising abstract symbols that convey concepts, ideas, or things. All of these scripts possess a dramatic, visual power that has inspired artists to deploy them in myriad ways and contexts. Whether inscribed on ritual or everyday objects, textiles, the human body, or in books, these African scripts are more than technologies of communication. They constitute versatile, aesthetically potent ways of knowing and affecting the world (Fig. 4).