NATURE…
“…DEATH, resting inside of life, part of the eternal cycle of nature devouring itself, feeding off both its own fecundity and its own rot. So then the eater becomes the eaten….
Art can directly swallow up the things of the real world. It feeds on the real world, and also feeds on itself. Thus art joins nature's metabolism of fertility and devouring and death. But it offers a strange redemption to all of this preserving, the process of the generation and decay behind the false mirror of its own surface…”
Barbara Cortright – James Davis/From the Shadow World, ARTSPACE, FALL 1988
The Sanga region is geographically located in Mali, West Africa, above and below the Bandiagara Cliffs in the Séno Plain. It is the home of the Dogon people and also the location of this work. Often when artists respond to external stimuli the corresponding internal vision reflects various components of the stimuli. Whether the physical manifestations record facts or flights of fancy, they are in direct relation to the responding vision.
The Dogon people of Mali are perhaps the most studied cultural group on the African continent. Member of an upper caste group, they work in the village as blacksmiths, wood and leather craftsmen. The hogon is their supreme religious and political leader and usually, the oldest male member of the village. The Dogon ontology myths are both complex and rich. In their symbolic interpretation of the universe, all persons are described as both male and female in body and psyche.
For the Dogon, the creation of the world is a long myth. Amma (a male) mated with Earth (a female) and a cosmic egg was hatched to release sprits called Nommo. They descended from the sky at the beginning of time and created mankind. The egg contained twins who were to become perfect androgynous beings, but one of the twins prematurely broke out of the egg and, as a result, human were henceforth compelled to live with the imperfection of two sexes. Males and females come together in sexual union in imitation of the perfection of that original creation.
As a part of their ancestral worship and re-creation of the origins of the world, the Dogon perform a ritual called dama that involves the wearing of a wooden Kanaga mask. On the masks are cruciform adornments representing the Komondo, a mythical bird. In the ritual the vertical shafts are touched to the ground, symbolizing terra reaffirmation.
I have been interested in the Dogon for a long time. My introduction came from an artist’s group active in St. Louis in the late sixties and seventies, called BAG (Black Artist Group). Oliver Jackson was one of the visual artists, and some of the musicians became known as the World Saxophone Quartet. Jackson has used Nommo symbols in many of his paintings and Julius Hemphill recorded an LP titled Dogon AD. Their primary supporter, Donald Suggs, was an African art dealer and collector. He perhaps was responsible for introducing the group to more meaningful understandings of traditional African objects and spiritual connections.
By using symbols from the village – house plans, altars, domestic life and rituals, I formed a loose connection with the Dogon and constructed by own universe. I made my first pieces in 1983. In more recent material, I have begun to work on numerous visual equivalents of four pairs and eight pairs of opposites in dark and light that I use as symbols of the Nommo. Mixed media becomes the perfect vehicle as this work is derived from African usage, and value is added when the outside objects are included – viscous pigment is suggestive of caked blood and curd of libations built up over time – much like ritual sacred objects. The process orientation of the work is a place for spiritual connections.
John E. Rozelle