African American Factual Art

Adam Ashforth’s Madumo, a Man Bewitched presents a personal ethnographic account of witchcraft, religion, and culture among the Soweto people in South Africa. In the book, Ashforth recounts his adventures with his Sowetan friend, Madumo, who, after a series of misfortunes, believes he has been cursed by witchcraft and is in search of a cure. Madumo seeks the aid of both a traditional healer (inyanga) and the Zion Christian Church (ZCC), formed form the syncretism of African and evangelical beliefs. Madumo’s quest for healing presents the reader with an intimate glimpse into the psychological and sociological factors that influence religion in Soweto. From Ashforth’s account, us westerners can begin to understand the nature and causation of

Museums add new context for artworks, since historical items were not made to be in modern museums. A Pair of Sensing Angels by Circle of Bernaert Orley are two ‘one by three foot’ oil painting on wood from 1535-1540 that depicts two angels. When looking at “A Pair of Censing Angels” we can infer the subject, the value the painting held, and how the meaning alters in its present setting. This visual analysis will describe the artwork, analyze the formal elements used, and how the formal elements of the work and display affects the viewer.

Like in any religion the people have certain beliefs. In the african religions there is no single religion. Researchers try to identify similarities in world views and ritual processes across the african boundaries. African Religions are polytheistic; which means they believe in more than one god. They believe in one overall god, but also ancestral spirits. Most African religion’s creation story reveal the creation of humans more than

Throughout history, societies have defined and transformed themselves through their art. When looking at works of art today, a person sees not only the work of art itself, but also the world from which it came from. The same is true for this transformation mask, which reflects the works of art and beliefs of the Northwest Coast Tribes.

How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind: Rediscovering the African Seedbed of Western Christianity By Thomas C. Oden Downers Grove, Ill: Intervarsity Press, 2008, 204 pp, $ 19.00 hardcover. Thomas Oden, an accomplished scholar in systematic and historical theology, and retired professor at Drew University, has offered a compelling and positively provocative work in How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind. A work of scholarly repentance, he ably repudiates the posture of western theologians and historians (i.e. Harnack, Bauer, Schleiermacher) toward Africa’s theological legacy (pp. 57-59). His present work is the fruit of thirty years of reading the early African fathers, and in the last fourteen, he has served as the general editor of the

The evolutionary capability of Vodun to change over time from a religious capacity to a political one is one of the strong points of the religion. In fact, the infringement of white influence on Black religion was a response to the development of Vodun. New World Africans consistently evolved and changed Vodun over time by continuously incorporating different aspects of white influence, such as the centrality of the Bible and the belief in one supreme God; in

Enslaved as well as free African Americans pursued opportunities to create poetry, paintings, sculpture, and other forms of artistic self-expression. Many, of course, had to create their opportunities to create. In my paper I will compare and contrast a few artist lives and works of art. The four African Americans artist I will talk about are Robert S. Duncanson, Edward M. Bannister, Mary Edmonia Lewis, and Henry Ossawa Tanner —three free-born and one a freed slave.

History shows that both Africans and African Americans alike faced unique problems prior to and during the 1800's, particularly prior to 1865. One such problem is the issue of Diaspora and how culture and slavery has affected the choice of religion. It is the purpose of this paper to expose comparatively the extent to which individuals have been influenced by these issues. One such individual is Olaudah Equiano. By following and analyzing some of the key moments of faith in his life, this paper seeks to expose the extent to which the series of controversial dialectical incidents that happen throughout his early life, i.e., his cultural African religious traditions

It is hard to believe that I knew of Black Lives Matter (BLM), however, I never actually bother to learn what it is—I knew a succinct premise of what the movement is about, but never cared to inquire further on the subject. Nevertheless, attending events like the Brandeis’ Black Lives Matter’s Symposium allowed me to inform myself on different angles about the movement and understand it through a brief historical context and through different mediums and points of view.

This sculpture is of a women breast feeding her child. The face of the two people is elongated, as well as the breasts of the mother. This is common to all African Art because they wanted representation of what is being expressed. In this particular sculpture, a supernatural power is being called upon. The power has been asked to protect the mother and child, and to

To what has become one of the largest African ethnic groups in the western hemisphere, the Yoruba tribe must give acknowledgment to the brave deities that they have come to worship. It is said in the story that has become the upbringing of this culture that the deities whom originally lived in the sky, looked in hope to bring life to the water and marshland below. In this attempt, these deities had unknowingly constructed the foundation of morals and values that are represented by millions of Yoruba people today.

     African Minkisi have been used for hundreds of years in West Central Africa, This area where they are traditionally from was once known as the kingdom of Kongo, when Europeans started settling and trading with the BaKongo people. Kongo was a well-known state throughout much of the world by the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The BaKongo, however, had probably long used minkisi before ethnographers and anthropologists ever recorded them. Minkisi are complex items that are used to heal and to harm people, and there is no equivalent term for nkisi in any European language. A seventeenth century Dutch geographer first wrote of the nkisi, and said that,

The artist El Anatsui uses pieces of liquor bottle tops and recycled metal to create beautiful “metal tapestries”. The liquor bottle tops represent a connection between the cultures of Africa and Europe. Liquor in some way links the two histories together, especially considering that the liquor brands he uses are all Nigerian brands, a practice clearly inherited from Europe. The flexibility and malleability of the works can be interpreted to represent the fluidity of life. The “metal tapestries” can have multiple forms, folds, and configurations which really speaks to their representation of life as a variable concept instead of a static and constant concept. His works also represent the indeterminacy of human relationships, and how the inputs

The phenomenon of folkloric festivals and cultural identity in the contemporary Senegal region of the Casamance provides a unique opportunity to experience and describe customs that have dictated creative and functional experiences for over a thousand years in the western mid enclave of African continent. In seeking to understand this subject we are made aware of the changing textures of time and space and the beauty of physical universe existence, as well as the challenge of continental mapping and composite humanity. This is so because the essence of African identity can be sensed through its integration of individual and communal 'zones of experiences as well as the blending of multiple planes of

In this paper, I will discuss the implications of excluding African traditions from the global religious dialogue. First, I will give a brief overview on the deliberation. Then, I will attempt to present how this exclusion occurs or might occur, while weaving the Yoruba religious art as an example of the piece of the religious dialogue that global discourse tends to reference in unique terms and lastly I will attempt to suggest the implications of exclusing African Religions and Beliefs from Global discourse..