Communicating With the Gods

The word “Yoruban” is an expansive term that refers to a language, an indigenous religious practice, a cultural identity and an art tradition. The belief system that drives all these forms of expression, however, is encapsulated in a single Yoruban saying: “The world is a marketplace, the other world is home.”

The Yoruban other world is a realm at once treacherous and divine that is populated by a complex family of deities, and all Yoruban art and religious practice is designed to facilitate communication with these deities.

For specifics as to precisely how that is done, see “Beads, Body and Soul: Art and Light in the Yoruba Universe,” an exhibition opening next Sunday at UCLA’s Fowler Museum of Cultural History. A survey of beading practices of the past century among the Yoruba in Nigeria, the Caribbean and the Americas, the show includes 150 beaded objects that open a window onto a reality vastly different from the one most of us occupy here in Los Angeles.

Assembled by African art scholars Henry John Drewal and John Mason, the body of work pivots on Yoruban color theory, which is seen as a key means of communication with Yoruban deities, known collectively as orisas. Any Yoruban bead worker knows the meaning of funfun, the “cool” colors of white, silver and gray, which represent wisdom; pupa, the “hot” colors--red, yellow, orange--evoking passion and impulsiveness; and dudu, black and the dark colors, which signify restraint and mystery.

“Beaded pieces are exclusively the province of priestly and royal ranks, so you wouldn’t find one of these pieces in a typical Nigerian home, nor could you go into a store and buy one,” explains Doran H. Ross, director of the Fowler. “This work is almost all made on commission, and the only exceptions are the pieces created and artificially aged for sale on the international art market.

“As soon as any traditional African art form becomes popular with collectors, items are manufactured purely for sales. However, this is not a debased tradition, because bead workers regard items made for the Western market as completely separate from those made for use within Yoruban culture.

“These traditions were seen as threatening to various colonial presences in Africa and attempts were made to suppress traditional chieftaincy,” he adds. “And, needless to say, when Christianity and Islam came to Africa, it had an impact on the orisa worshipers. But once you have a large family of deities, adding a few more isn’t difficult, and Christian and Islamic iconography were often simply integrated with indigenous traditions. In other words, beading practices survived.”

Yoruban culture dates back to 800 to 1,000, when numerous complex city-states were established in southwestern Nigeria by indigenous tribes. The collapse of key kingdoms in the Yoruban Empire, which began in the late 18th century, coincided with the rise of the Euro-American slave trade. Thus, millions of Yorubans were sold into slavery and taken from Africa against their will.

“As many as two of every five slaves taken out of Africa were of Yoruban descent,” says Ross. “Forty percent went to Brazil, 40% to the Caribbean, 8% to Mexico, Europe, Peru and Ecuador, and only 4% to the U.S. Consequently, you don’t see the continuity in beading traditions in the U.S. that you see in Brazil or Cuba--it’s a matter of sheer numbers. The beadwork you see in New Orleans, for instance, has nothing to do with Yoruban culture.”

The bulk of the work in “Beads, Body and Soul” is drawn from the permanent collection of the Fowler, which opened in 1963 as the Museum of Cultural History with holdings that include 600,000 archeological objects and 100,000 objects of non-Western art. The Fowler’s central strength is its African works--it boasts one of the largest collections of Yoruban art in the world--and this study of beading traditions has been fleshed out with loans from collectors and contemporary artists included in the show.

Beading is one of many art forms practiced by Yorubans, who are also proficient woodcarvers, ceramists and brass casters. Beading is done throughout Africa, but because part of the impetus behind the activity is to distinguish yourself from your neighbors, the way it’s done from one kingdom to the next is recognizably different.

“You can’t make generalizations about this body of work,” Ross explains. “Some pieces have mostly to do with aesthetic impulses and operate in a secular realm, while others have great spiritual power. Priests, for instance, focus on a specific family of objects relating to the deities they’re primarily concerned with. On the other hand, a chief regards the crown as the most spiritually charged and aesthetically elaborate object.

“The crowns are spectacular, and I think many people will see them as a high point of the exhibition,” adds Ross of the 20 crowns on view. “They’re often decorated with images of elephants--which is an important royal symbol--birds, chameleons, dragonflies and floral patterns, and frequently have beaded veils that cover the chiefs’ face. In a sense, the crown is a mask, but it doesn’t completely conceal the chief’s face; rather, it suggests a separation between the royal persona and his subjects.

“The masks can be quite extreme. We’re showing a wooden mask from Northern Yoruba that dates back to the ‘20s and weighs 45 pounds, and we’re also showing five lavish cloth ensemble / masks from a tradition called egungun that completely cover the wearer and are devoted to honoring ancestors. The Yorubans can also be quite whimsical and mischievous, as can be seen in an exquisite white crown designed in the manner of a powdered, British barrister’s wig.”

Yoruban deities have distinct personalities. Eshu, for instance, is a trickster deity, and Sango is the god of thunder and upheaval (a double ax form always indicates that Sango is being invoked). Yemoja is concerned with things of the water, and Ross explains that a fan on view, embellished with imagery related to Yemoja, “is intended to keep you cool spiritually, more than physically.”

Among the most curious works on view are pieces relating to ibeji. The Yorubas--who have among the highest incidence of twins in the world--regard twins as sacred, and when one dies, the parents are obliged to commission a memorial sculpture which they then feed, sing to, and dress in beaded garments. Among the ibeji garments on view is a beaded vest decorated with cowrie shells, which were once used as currency in Africa and are considered a bead. (The dictionary defines a bead as anything with a hole in it that can be strung; African beading incorporates stones, seed pods and shells, in addition to glass beads.)

“There are several cases of multiple works that were clearly made by the same bead worker, but it’s hard to say how many artists were involved in the making of the works from Nigeria, because most of these works were collected before people were paying proper attention to that kind of information,” Ross points out. “When people began looking at African art in earnest in the ‘60s, the Yoruba were among the first groups to be studied--because of the complexity of their kingship traditions and the depth of their history, they’ve always had a deep involvement with visual art.”

Collectors of Yoruban art, who are largely centered in the U.S. and Europe--tend to think that the older the piece the better, and some of the earliest Yoruban works excavated at the ancient city of Ife have sold for upward of a million dollars.

“I would argue, however, that there are Yoruban artists working today that are every bit as good,” Ross points out. “Two artists in the show--Jose Rodriquez, who’s currently based in Okinawa, and New York artist Manual Vega--are practicing Yoruban priests, and they do exquisite work, which is prominently featured in the show.” (Yoruban priesthood requires years of training with a recognized teacher and the mastery of a body of religious and medicinal knowledge; many priests are also healers who work with medicinal herbs.)

‘This is a very humanistic religion, rich with inventiveness and humor, but it’s often misunderstood. For instance, the Yoruba practice divination, but they’re not ‘fortune tellers.’ ” Yoruban divination, in fact, has much in common with the I Ching. A divination board is tapped to call Ifa, the god of divination, to the divining session. A beaded divining chain is then thrown on the board twice, thus determining a verse to be recited to the person who’s brought his problem to the diviner.

“The Yoruba also have sacred languages, but they have nothing to do with ‘speaking in tongues,’ and though spirit possession is part of Yoruban religious experience, it’s not ‘black magic,’ ” Ross firmly concludes. “Terms like that are indicative of outsiders imposing their ideas on an extraordinary culture that most people, unfortunately, know little about.”

“BEADS, BODY AND SOUL: ART AND LIGHT IN THE YORUBA UNIVERSE,” Fowler Museum, UCLA (just west of Royce Hall), Westwood. Dates: Opens next Sunday. Regular schedule: Wednesdays to Sundays, noon to 5 p.m.; Thursdays, noon to 8 p.m. Ends July 19. Prices: adults, $5; senior citizens, $3. Thursdays and Sundays are free. Phone: (310) 825-4361.