The cultured body.

In October 2002 the University of Iowa hosted an international conference that demonstrated the rich potential of the body and its adornments as springboards for research into political, historical, economic, religious, and, of course, aesthetic practices. "The Cultured Body: African Fashion and Body Arts" focused on a variety of themes, including the global reach of African forms of adornment and the body as a tool for political power and resistance as well as a source of inspiration for contemporary African studio arts. The discussions ranged widely, placing the body at the center of a constellation of subjects and artistic expressions that were focused on but not limited to the African continent.

Generous funding from several sources at the university enabled us as organizers (Victoria Rovine, University of Iowa Museum of Art; Sarah Adams, University of Iowa School of Art and Art History) to bring together a large group of scholars--nineteen in all--for two-and-a-half very full days of panels and lively discussion. (1) Equally important, as we will describe, we organized a corollary conference, held on the last day, that showcased innovative research in a variety of disciplines by six University of Iowa graduate students.

The proceedings of the "The Cultured Body" reflect the state of African art history, which, like any vigorous field of academic endeavor, is constantly shifting--admitting new realms of inquiry, submitting old subjects to new methods of analysis, and seeking analytical tools from neighboring as well as distant areas of study. Ideally, conferences provide a forum for original research presented in new combinations, revealing changing currents of analysis. One also hopes that the resulting discussions will shape these currents into a sustainable direction that informs research beyond the immediate subjects at hand.

We conceived of "The Cultured Body" as a way to facilitate productive encounters between different art historical methodologies, between art history and other disciplines, and between Africanists and non-Africanists. In spring 2001 we began discussing possible topics for a conference in the on-going series of African-art gatherings sponsored by PASALA (Project for the Advanced Study of Art and Life in Africa). We soon realized that the fundamental link between our own research projects is an interest in the body (Adams on uli body and mural painting, and more recently on contemporary studio artists who use the body as a source of aesthetic and spiritual inspiration; Rovine on textiles, garments, jewelry, and other body arts). A symposium on this subject would, offer an opportunity to build on this common concern.

Presentations addressed topics as varied as contemporary haute couture design, the centuries-old trans-Saharan trade in gold jewelry, and body politics in South Africa as expressed through beaded jewelry and mantles as well as studio artists' production. We also sought to present a subject that would have broad appeal to nonspecialists, drawing in members of the larger public. A diversity of voices, we hoped, would propel the conference into uncharted territory. We were not disappointed.

As students of two pioneers in the field, Roy Sieber and Robert Farris Thompson, we came to this subject through our mentors' groundbreaking research. (2) In his landmark book and exhibition African Art in Motion (1974), Thompson first asserted the body's central place in studies of African art. He continues to draw attention to the body as powerful aesthetic statement through his studies of the performative aspects of African arts--masquerade, dance, and gesture. Roy Sieber's 1972 exhibition and catalogue African Textiles and Decorative Arts is recognized as the first serious art historical presentation of this subject. More recently, his Hair in African Art and Culture (2000, with Frank Herreman) provided an unprecedented survey of an ephemeral art form. Dr. Sieber died in 2001, and in recognition of his impact on nearly all the participants in the conference, we dedicated "The Cultured Body" to his memory.

During breakfast with us in Iowa City several months before he passed away, Dr. Sieber described his theory of fieldwork. Many a student, in the midst of panicked efforts to identify a topic for doctoral research, has heard it: a graduate student dropped from an airplane anywhere on the African continent should be able to find a topic and conduct research sufficient to write a dissertation. Sieber would likely have been intrigued by the fact that none of the papers presented at "The Cultured Body" could have been researched in this manner. For most of the presenters, a single site served as a mere starting point, the crossroads through which global forces transit and interact with local cultures. In fact, a graduate student parachuting into an African town or village would soon have to travel to neighboring towns, to distant regions, and perhaps to Europe, India, or North America in order to conduct research. Additionally, as more African scholars enter the field, parachutes are no longer always necessary-many students of African art begin their research at home.

Our call for papers sought presentations on African body arts broadly defined. Only after the roster was complete did we recognize the conference's striking subtext: in their topics, the vast majority of papers traveled outside Africa in order to elucidate African forms and practices. The responses suggested other revealing information about the field. With just one exception (Enid Schildkrout on Mangbetu cranial modification), all the proposals were about ephemeral adornments. Proposals on "irreversible modifications"--scarification, tattooing, and other means of literally shaping the body--were nearly absent. We can only speculate as to the reasons for this omission, which may include a reluctance to address practices that play into negative stereotypes about Africa, or the difficulties inherent in studying practices that are in some places becoming rare or are concealed under clothing.

In another indication of a shift in the field, we received several proposals on studio artists who engage the body in their work. Considering the ground broken by several prominent exhibitions and publications on contemporary African art (including the much discussed "Short Century"), we were struck but not surprised by these papers' approach: they bypassed the formerly obligatory basic introduction to the artist accompanied by declarations of the existence of important African studio artists, and moved instead to a detailed examination of one aspect of their subject's oeuvres. In a similar vein, we received numerous proposals on topics related to fashion design--contemporary art in another medium. "The Cultured Body" incorporated these and other thematic foci, thus examining the body and its adornments from many angles.

The disciplinary diversity of the participants, who included art historians, historians, and anthropologists, matched the wide range of subjects. Within the large contingent of art historians, the conference included those who examined African body arts from the fields of contemporary art, Diaspora arts, and popular-culture studies, as well as connoisseurship and formal analysis. Presenters approached the theme from several distinct positions, creating multilayered biographies of African body adornments. The discussants did much to extend the broad scope of the proceedings even further. Faculty from several departments and programs at the University of Iowa--among them Anthropology, Women's Studies, History, and Sculpture--read and responded to the presentations on each of the five panels. None of the discussants were Africanists; their responses were drawn from research on Latin American, Amazonian, and Native American cultures.

The conference's keynote address also served to open the exhibition "The Cultured Body: African Body Adornments" (through April 2003). Joanne Eicher introduced the subject, touching on fashion, textiles, body modifications, and the adaptations of African forms to non-African contexts. The panels that followed during the next three days reflected and magnified these issues. Although limited space precludes a discussion of all the papers, we will briefly describe the panels and one or two papers on each. As we divided the proceedings into thematic categories, we found that the panels spoke to one another in surprising and evocative ways.

The panel "Reexamining the Traditional" looked at revivals and re-adaptations of adornments that are defined as "traditional" within various cultures. Karen Milbourne focused on a single body--that of Barotse king Lewanika--and examined the many ways in which body and attire signal geopolitical positioning. In her discussion of dress and ethnic identity among a variety of Ethiopian groups, Peri Klemm described how Oromo spirit mediums use adornment and body modification to attract and repel spirits. The second panel, "Inside/Outside Africa: Travels of People and Adornments," addressed the transnational movements by which objects and styles are dispersed and transformed. Both Kristyne Loughran and Victoria Rovine examined the burgeoning field of African fashion design, paying particular attention to designers whose work references indigenous forms and to Western designers influenced by those forms. Leslie Rabine provided a focused study of the Sotiba textile company, whose designers use "traditional" motifs to produce "authentic" forms for both African and non-African markets. Friday's third panel, "Contemporary Studio Arts and the Body," dealt with body imagery in the work of three artists. Chika Okeke's paper explored "The Rainbow Series," a collection of photomontages by South African artist Candice Breitz. Okeke's comparison of Breitz's work to German artist Hannah Hoch's 1925-26 collages, the Ethnographic Museum Series, yielded a new reading of Breitz's work, one deeply rooted in the images themselves. Gary van Wyk's paper on Bemi Searle and Sarah Adams's on Ibrahim el Salahi traced body imagery and body themes in the current oeuvres of those artists.

On the second day, the conference began with a panel on clothing and textiles, "Fashion and Invention: Weaving Tradition." Suzanne Gott's paper focused on the distinctly local--women as fashion trendsetters in Kumasi, Ghana. Joanna Grabski examined the globalized world of fashion emerging from Dakar's streets and ateliers. The final panel of the main conference, "Beads, Hair, Jewelry, and Identity," added significant historical depth to the proceedings. Labelle Prussin's work on jewelry as a commodity in the trans-Saharan trade reminded us all that globalization has long been at work in Africa. Daniel Mato's examination of Akan coiffures extended the study of hairstyles back in time through terracotta memorial figures, documenting the changes and consistencies in these styles.

Held on the third day, the graduate conference, which included students from many departments at the University of Iowa, addressed the body more generally, not just in Africa. Interest in studio artists continued here with Kimberly Cleveland's analysis of critical responses to Brazilian artist Mario Cravo Neto's work. Sarah Clunis's paper traced body imagery in Trinidadian artist Susan Dayal's photographs and sculptures. Clunis's and Cleveland's focus on diaspora artists created a strong link to the global undercurrents of the larger conference. Almut Haboeck discussed the Viennese Actionists' 1968 performance piece Art and Revolution as a visceral expression of the body politic and Foucault's notion of biopower. Kellie Beers looked at reactions to and interpretations of white women with dreadlocks, while Gitti Salami examined ibal-ibali and eblami, women's body arts in southeastern Nigeria.

Though they addressed the subject from a variety of directions, all of the conference's presentations called into question the separation of artistic practices into binary categories such as traditional / modern, authentic / inauthentic, and art / craft. In addition, several participants documented how the boundaries between "African" and "Western" are being challenged by the movements of people, objects, and styles. Only by traversing disciplines and regions of study can we begin to apprehend the many ways in which Africans have used body adornment as a means of communicating ideas, exercising power, expressing identities, and adapting to change. Such a global perspective also enables us see how non-Africans have used African images and forms to construct identities--their own as well as others'.

These constructions of identities through the body and its adornments often carry powerful political and economic implications. Many of the presentations that addressed the colonial period touched on the use of bodies by both colonizer and colonized to negotiate their positions. Other papers demonstrated that in contemporary Western contexts, allusions to Africa through adornments and images such as those found in colonial-era postcards and contemporary fashion photography still carry the weight of colonization and its aftermath. The African body has for centuries been an object of much fascination to Western observers, who framed it to fuel many misconceptions about the continent's peoples and cultures. The colonialist image of the "naked savage" long poisoned the relationship between African and Western peoples; the forced or coerced abandonment of indigenous attire in favor of Western dress was for much of the past two centuries a symbol of the "civilizing" process. Throughout Africa today, deliberate revivals of "traditional" forms serve as symbols of political and cultural movements, often coexisting with Western styles that have been modified to suit local tastes.

The subject of African body arts is particularly resonant in a university environment, where tattooing and body piercing have become popular. The Modern Primitives movement in the United States transformed the aesthetics and meanings of body art. Its advocates used the non-Western body arts they saw in books and in their travels as sources of inspiration for their own body projects. We might ask, then, if contemporary Western forms such as tattooing and body piercing have roots in non-Western cultural forms or whether they are wholly new creations that reflect Africa in the Western imagination. Can we flame them as mere attempts to assert a sense of "authenticity" through association with African and other cultures? What are the implications of these appropriations? We hope that, formally or informally, these and other issues were discussed among conference attendees, many of whom likely wear such body modifications.

Participants told us that it is increasingly common for Africanists to teach courses on body arts (as do Joanne Eicher, Enid Schildkrout, Peri Klemm, and Sarah Adams) or to address the body at length within the context of more broadly defined survey courses (Sylvester Ogbechie, Carol Boram-Hays, Joanna Grabski). These courses are not necessarily limited to Africa. We feel that this trend in the classroom closely mirrors conference participants' general interest in the body and their overwhelmingly global approaches in their own research.

Finally, we wish to note two other experiences from "The Cultured Body," both of which emerge directly out of the globalization that so many presentations addressed. One was a reminder of the negative reverberations that international networks may create. One invitee to the conference, Alfred Anangwe, an independent scholar based in Nairobi, was, in the final weeks of planning, unable to obtain a visa to come to the United States. Though scholars from a number of African countries have for many years encountered similar problems, we saw this unfortunate event as heralding what will likely be a long period of difficulty assembling international conferences because of political tensions in the post-9/11 era. Clearly, globalization can create permeable borders or impenetrable barriers.

On the positive side, we plan to extend the life of "The Cultured Body" by using the globalizing technologies of the Internet. The conference Web site (3) allowed us to increase nonparticipant awareness of the event, and as a result we had attendees from all over the United States and from Morocco and the United Kingdom. Because so many people at the close of the proceedings expressed interest in maintaining a dialogue with the participants, we are currently working with the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, whose designer created the Web site, to transform it into a permanent Web community focused on Africa and the body. It will create an important forum for continuing some of the conversations that grew out of "The Cultured Body."

We would like to thank conference participants and attendees, many of whom have passed along much-appreciated positive feedback. Perhaps the most flattering comment was from Christine Mullen Kreamer, who exclaimed as she stepped onto the shuttle bus on the last day of the conference, "It was like a vacation!"

(1.) "The Cultured Body" was part of a continuing series of conferences sponsored by the Project for the Advanced Study of Art and Life in Africa (PASALA). This year's conference was also supported by the Obermann Humanities Center and International Programs at the University of Iowa. Additional support was provided by the University of Iowa Museum of Art, the Global Studies Program, the Department of French and Italian, the Anthropology Department, the Women's Studies Department, and the African Studies Program. We would also like to acknowledge the Support of Christopher Roy, Professor of Art History and Associate Dean for International Programs.

(2.) Rovine also studied with Patrick McNaughton, whose focus on the body through masking influenced her work on textiles as garments.

(3.) "The Cultured Body" Web site is: http://www.uiowa.edu/ -obermann/humsym/AfricaFashion.html.

SARAH ADAMS is an assistant professor in the School of Art ,History and Obermann Center Scholar at the University of Iowa. Her research has focused on uli painting in Southeastern Nigeria.

VICTORIA ROVINE is curate of African art at the University of Iowa Museum of Art. Her work on textiles includes research in Mali on the cotemporary use of bogolan, or more mudcloth , and more recently a focus on fashion design. She is also the e of Bogolon: e Culture through Cloth in Contemporary Mali (Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001) and a consulting editor of African Arts.