Representations of the head in Central and West Africa

Sánchez-Ubiría Collection

Metamorphosis of Being: Representations of the Head in Central and West Africa The exhibition displays a selection of approximately 300 objects from the Sánchez Ubiria collection. This selection, curated by Belgian anthropologist François Neyt, focuses on the symbolic, social, political, and religious value that has been, and continues to be, attributed to the representation of the head in various sub-Saharan African cultures. Many of these objects, particularly masks, amplify sacred and social meanings through rituals, songs, dances, and festivals. Sculpted heads become sites of relationships and exchanges, a passage between the visible and the invisible. These scepters, fetishes, combs, headdresses, masks, and statues reveal the multifaceted histories of these cultures, some of which have vanished. These African artifacts challenge the West's narcissistic obsession with appropriating the unknown and with "self-representation."

The earliest terracotta figurines produced south of the Sahara, beginning in the 6th century BC within what is now known as the Nok culture, mark the chronological starting point of this exhibition. From here, objects from Sokoto (6th century BC–4th century AD) and Katsina (5th century BC–7th century AD) in Nigeria; sculptures from Djenne, Segou, and Bankoni (12th–17th centuries AD) in Mali; and funerary bells from the Bura culture in Niger (15th century) illustrate the pre-colonial period, which concludes with the various Ashanti styles of the 18th and 19th centuries. Two exceptional heads from the Kingdom of Ife (Nigeria, 11th–16th centuries) are particularly noteworthy in this section. From the colonial period, the collections of objects from the Bambara, Dogon, Baulé, Lobi, Yoruba, Igbo, Bamun, Ekoi, Pende, Bakongo, and Lwa-Lwa communities, among others, stand out. In this way, the exhibition allows visitors to contemplate a historical sequence spanning almost 3000 years.

Through the included documentation—also from the Sánchez Ubiria collection and selected by Sergio Rubira—and the exhibition's installation, the exhibition traces how these objects were collected and displayed during the first two-thirds of the 20th century in parts of the West. The documentation reveals how these objects, removed from their place of origin, their context, their community, when included in museums and exhibitions in Europe and the United States, have revealed far more about those who collected and exhibited them than about those who produced them, thus reflecting prevailing mindsets. Thus, the exhibition alludes to ethnographic museums, which fascinated the historical avant-gardes, and in which these objects functioned as specimens, one being equal to all, and metonymies of a particular culture, now also trapped in a display case, to the first exhibitions made in Africa: one, still dependent on the Western gaze, curated by Fran McEwen at the Museum of Art of Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, in 1962 and another, directly linked to the Pan-Africanist movement, held at the Musée Dynamique in Dakar during the first Festival of Black Arts in 1966 at the initiative of Léopold Sédar Senghor.

Useful information

Due to the fragility of the pieces, it is not permitted to enter the exhibition hall with bulky items.
Backpacks must be worn on the front.  
Umbrellas and baby strollers must be left at the entrance of the room.
No food or drinks allowed.

Image credit: 'Head', Ife culture (Nigeria), Terracotta. 16 x 10 x 11 cm. 12th to 16th centuries AD (TL analysis.)