LOS ANGELES, CA.- The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) presents Ritual Expressions: African Adornment from the Permanent Collection. Bodily adornments, such as ritual textiles, clothing, and headwear, are created by the many cultures throughout the African continent. A testament to the meticulous craftsmanship of its creators, these pieces display vivid colors, mesmerizing patterns, and symbolic motifs that often signify prestige and power. Ritual Expressions is a focused presentation that brings together more than 30 examples of a rich diversity of textiles, clothing, and headwear representing more than 20 cultures from Africa, all drawn from LACMA’s permanent collection.
The exhibition explores how adornments are constructed to express societal conventions, and reveals their critical role in establishing and transmitting the wearer’s identity and rank. For example, a striking 28-foot-long raffia palmfiber textile is wrapped around the body to transform into a dimensional ceremonial skirt, enlarging the wearer’s figure while indicating status and wealth within the community. Dramatic headdresses sculpted with diverse natural materials, such as gourds, raffia palms, bast fibers, and cotton, are embellished with distinctive elements, such as pigments, feathers, fur, shells, or glass beads. A person’s individuality, intelligence, and spirit are acknowledged by crowning the head with structures imbued with cultural traditions, which encircle and rise above the head, magnifying the subject’s stature and status. African adornments such as these are testaments to the meticulous craftsmanship of their creators, physically and symbolically linking the present with past legacies.
LACMA has developed and presented a number of exhibitions of African Art, including Shaping Power: Luba Masterworks from the Royal Museum for Central Africa (2013), African Cosmos (2014), and The Inner Eye: Vision and Transcendence in African Arts (2017), all curated by the late Dr. Mary (Polly) Nooter Roberts, consulting curator of African Art. Many of these exhibitions featured significant works from the permanent collection. Additionally, LACMA will be working with artists and creative leaders in West Africa on future collaborations and programs that will augment the museum’s exhibition programming.
Ritual Expressions is curated by Sharon S. Takeda, Senior Curator and Department Head of Costume and Textiles.
