Out of Africa
“Art is a social document of the worldview of a particular community," says Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi, the Hood Museum’s new curator of African art. Nzewi’s first exhibition at Dartmouth, The Art of Weapons, highlights the traditional contexts in which these objects were created in Africa as well as the history of Western colonial powers during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The exhibition—on display through December 20 at the Hood—features 70 weapons and ritual objects collected throughout sub-Saharan Africa, including this musele, a ceremonial knife origi- nally used by the Kota and Fang cultures of Gabon in central Africa.
Rite of passag e This musele was likely used during circumci- sion rituals—not for actual cutting, Nzewi notes, but as a potent ceremonial object that also offered symbolic protection against “antisocial
iRon men “The blacksmith inhabits a liminal space between the land of the living and the meta- physical realm,” says Nzewi. “Blacksmiths were feared in several societies because they controlled the four elements: water, air, land and fire. They were diviners as well as healers. They were also there to ward off evil before it got into the heart of society.”
co lo n i a l co l l ec to R s Nzewi designed the exhibit in part to shift the focus from the objects to the role that collecting played in the Western colonization of Africa. Missionar- ies, military officers, big game hunters and anthropologists gath- ered many of the items now on display in the Hood. “Ethnography and Christianity were the twin handmaidens of colonialism,” says Nzewi.
a biRD in tHe HanD The shape of the blade closely re- sembles the head and beak of the hornbill, a bird traditionally associated with wis- dom and endurance in African folklore.
f u l ly fo R g e D The musele features an iron blade and a wooden handle wrapped in copper wire. The blacksmith who created this object, Nzewi explains, would have collected iron ore—readily available in Central Africa—and then used an earthen mound furnace for smelting and forging. “The blacksmith actu- ally takes the process from A to Z,” says Nzewi.
o R i g i n sto Ry In the late 19th century a young missionary named William Banner- man traveled to Africa with his new bride. Bannerman received the musele as a gift during his stay in Gabon, along with an assortment of traditional weapons. His grandson inherited these objects and kept them in a private collection in Rutland, Vermont, until donat- ing them to the Hood Museum in 2013.
