Browse Items (49 total)

Suite 19/20 Exhuming Moses T. Huck 2000

In the Cross River Region of Nigeria, the rivalry between masking associations gave artists incentives to generate new art forms and styles. Each association lavished great expense on masquerade paraphernalia in a bid to display the most impressive…

Suite 19/20 Mad Dash for Cash T. Huck 2000

This figure represents "Mami Wata," the pidgin English term for "Mother of Water," a water spirit who has enjoyed a wide following in Central Africa, West Africa, and regions of the African Diaspora. It was carved by an Ibibio artist living in…

Suite 19/20 Catwalk: Here They Come! T. Huck 2000

This folio tells the story from the Adi Parva, the first book of the Mahabharata, of the eagle Garuda, who became the vahana (animal mount) for the god Vishnu. Garuda's mother Vinata and her co-wife Kadru had engaged in a wager that Vinata lost,…

The Rajasthani text at the top of this painting directs us to begin at the bottom right, where Guha, chief of the Nishadas, a forest tribe, reports his earlier encounter with Rama to Bharata, outside of his royal tent. The other scenes depict Guha’s…

Bocio are power objects (bo) that represent deceased human beings (chio). A bocio is not a spirit, but a kind of decoy meant to trick death by acting as a substitute for a real person. Formerly, the Fon people of Dahomey (now Benin) placed bocio…

Suite 19/20 Bed of Bones T. Huck 2000