Closes October 14, 2019
Last weekend to view Striking Iron: The Art of African Blacksmiths
Join fellow art enthusiasts for one more look and a curator-led tour of the critically acclaimed exhibition Striking Iron: The Art of African Blacksmiths before it closes on October 14. You don’t want to miss this exciting exhibition!
Each diverse work of art comes from the permanent collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art. Beginning in 2012, the museum launched the Women’s Initiative Fund to increase the profile of Africa’s women in the arts through exhibitions, publications, acquisitions, and strategic partnerships globally. This exhibition is one result, as is the overall increase from 11 to 22 percent of the number of women artists in the museum’s permanent collection.
To recommend other valuable resources advocating for Africa’s women in the arts, to make a contribution to this initiative, or to share your own story using the social media hashtags @IAMnmafa and #IAMnmafa.
For Ghada Amer, The Blue Bra Girls is a tribute to all the women who have risked standing up for what they believe in. As she has said, “I had an idea for a sculpture in which women would look defiantly at the public. I thought it was important that they should all have their eyes open and be looking at the viewer. I also wanted the women standing, instead of lying down. Then the ‘blue bra girl’ incident took place and so I called the piece after that, as an homage to all those women who stand up for themselves and fight.”
I Am . . . Contemporary Women Artists of Africa is made possible by the Women’s Initiative, which is generously supported by Edward P. Bass and Sasha Camacho, Nancy McElroy Folger, Miyoung Lee, Paul Neely, the Sakana Foundation, Patty Stonesifer and Michael Kinsley, and Ronda Stryker and William D. Johnston. Additional support for textile conservation provided by the Coby Foundation.
I wanted us in Africa to look at what is our own
“Charlotte brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to this position, and her professional service and track record has demonstrated a strong commitment to advancing Africa’s arts and creative industries,” said Gus Casely-Hayford, director of the museum. “She is an excellent choice for this leadership role to expand the museum’s programs, audiences and global partnerships.”
Before joining the National Museum of African Art, Ashamu worked across Africa for two of the largest global development organizations. From 2014 to 2017, she served in the Office of the President and in the Resource Mobilization and Partnerships Department at the African Development Bank Group (AfDB) where she led the expansion of partnerships with philanthropists and private foundations around the world. From 2007 to 2014, Ashamu served as an advisory services officer at the International Finance Corp., the private sector arm of the World Bank Group, where she spearheaded new programs and partnerships to help small and medium enterprises in Africa start, finance and grow their businesses. Ashamu spent the earlier part of her career as an international trade specialist at the Whitaker Group and Abt Associates in Washington, D.C. In 2017, she founded Dabira to support the creative industries in Africa. Dabira produces a regional trade fair that showcases emerging artists, designers and creative brands from all over the African continent.
Raised in Nigeria and the United States, Ashamu earned a bachelor’s degree from Wellesley College, a master’s degree in economic development and policy from Columbia University and a certificate from the Paris Fashion Institute. She is a recipient of the Mo Ibrahim Leadership Fellowship.
The National Museum of African Art is the only museum in the world dedicated solely to the collection, conservation, study and exhibition of Africa’s arts across time and media. The museum’s collection of over 12,000 artworks represents the diversity of the African continent and includes a variety of media—from sculpture and painting, to photography, pottery, jewelry, textile, video and sound art. The museum is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. (closed Dec. 25). Admission is free. The museum is located at 950 Independence Ave. S.W., near the Smithsonian Metrorail station on the Blue, Orange and Silver lines. For more information, call (202) 633-4600 or visit the National Museum of African Art’s website. For general Smithsonian information, call (202) 633-1000. Follow the museum on Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook
Note to Editors: For media requests, contact Eddie Burke at (202) 633-4660 or burkee@si.edu.
We are the past, but we are also the present because we are all close to the entire world. We tweet, we message, we are present on social networks, we go to the village for religious ceremonies as well as to the Venice Biennale or FESPACO.
—Anta Germaine Gaye, artist and professor, Dakar
Senegal, as it has for centuries, remains in dialogue with the world. As cultural innovators, Senegalese women and the goldsmiths who adorn them absorb and transform global fashion trends, expressing their own complex identities while contributing to the realm of international fashion. Their styles and designs embrace change, yet remain resolutely local and grounded in history and tradition—a tradition and practice that involves constant innovation.
With the ever-increasing speed of communications in the contemporary global city, economic, cultural, and political competition have increased. Women have, in their world of changing possibilities, fought within and against these parameters to access, harness, and control the various fabrics of a globalized cityscape through jewelry and dress. In “performing” themselves, they perform—and shape—the city and the world.
Jewelry knows no borders. Throughout the last century, cross-cultural exchange of style has been evident in popular Senegalese jewelry. Shared techniques from Europe, the Middle East, and Africa alike have met and blended with indigenous Sahelian aesthetics for centuries.
Islam has been practiced in Senegal since at least the fourth century, and Islamic half-moons and stars are still employed in bracelets and rings. The popularized butterfly design, which manifests in almost all types of Senegalese jewelry, is borrowed primarily from French styles. The filigreed domes and tiny flowers seen in myriad works may be inspired by earlier Jewish forms, which penetrated North Africa as early as the 15th century, if not well before. These same forms, however, may reference the domes of Islamic mosques, or be purely decorative. The works here demonstrate some of the historic forms that have influenced the unique, transnational style that characterizes Senegalese jewelry.
Dakar, the capital of Senegal, is a major fashion center in West Africa. Contemporary urban designers in Senegal use fashion to help navigate and define what is traditional, international, and chic. Gold jewelry is part of the larger fashion scene. It is important to note that sañse, as a concept, is different from, and far more complicated, than fashion (mode), though they inform one another. In today’s context, fashion can be thought of as more commercialized and commodified, whereas sañse is more dense and culturally entangled, involving ethical choices as well as aesthetic.
By probing notions of international fashion and localized practices of sañse, Oumou Sy’s contemporary ensemble challenge long-standing conventional ideas that pit “tradition” against “modernity.” Such dichotomies overlook the many diverse and overlapping influences evident in the dynamics of African style. “Traditional” clothing has always been a changing art form.
In today’s Senegal . . . gold jewellery, luxury cloth and regal conduct are still the ideals of beauty. . . . . Beauty is seen as a kind of goodness.
—Hudita Nura Mustafa, anthropologist
The Art of African Fashion (1998), pg. 36
Women play a significant role in designing and commissioning ensembles. Men typically create pieces to order. Designing jewelry operates within a patronage system in which relationships between the male goldsmiths and their largely female clientele are developed over time and through countless conversations and negotiations. A woman’s need to produce a lasting personal impression while drawing on a collective history is at the core of this system.
Women tap into local history and shape Senegalese fashion, politics, and culture according to their own priorities and interests. A woman’s self-representation is also crucial to her financial and social success. Such achievement is built through her connection to other women, to families, and to her husband, as well as her jewelry and the way in which she comports herself. If she is dressed well and wearing expensive or fashionable jewelry, people will understand that she is cared for and well-connected. She is demonstrating sañse—on the cutting edge of fashion and etiquette.
Beauty in Senegal is typically demonstrated through good manners, reserved behavior, generosity, cleanliness, attention to detail, careful delineation of one’s hairdo, and finely wrought jewelry that is both aesthetically recognizable and demonstrates a woman’s individuality. Through her complex, astonishing, and creative appearance, a Senegalese woman can participate in long-standing local campaigns for prestige and respectability to claim a place in a global city like Dakar.
Sañse, pronounced “sahn-say,” is a Wolof concept derived from the French term changer—to change or transform—referring to the many times a woman changes outfits at an important event. Beyond its basic definition of “dressing up,” sañse also alludes to the presentation of an extraordinary public self—an extreme performance of elegance and sophistication that typically includes the embroidered boubous, gold jewelry, elaborate coiffures, and headscarves representative of a woman’s finest ceremonial garb. Head to toe, everything must be perfect and complete—down to the flapping of leather sandals and tinkling of gold bracelets.
Underneath this physical appearance are layers of localized implicit knowledge and networks of gift giving. Through their ensembles, some Senegalese women powerfully manipulate fashion for sociopolitical and economic ends in the changing and fractured urban centers of Senegal.
Women in urban Senegal have been visiting photography studios to stylize and portray themselves in the most elegant of fashions, poses, and jewelry since at least the 1910s and 1920s. In imaging themselves and displaying their photos, they demonstrate their chic modernity, their civilisé, their sañse. They also commemorate important events, such as weddings, religious affairs, and naming ceremonies.
In today’s global social media environment, styles and fashions are shared instantly, and the tastes of discerning connoisseurs adapt swiftly and deftly to the trends, as women adorn, pose, snap, post, comment, and influence one another.
And yet in these portraits, women are not just documenting themselves and their lives, they are also amplifying their visibility to demonstrate their potential for a positive, successful future. By presenting themselves as wealthy, cosmopolitan, and successful, they convince others to invest in them through an extensive informal economy of fundraising collectives (called tontines or natt), microcredit, and gift giving. Photographs are performances of reputation, social class, and urban belonging. They are not just about beauty—they are also strategies for dealing with the economic anxiety and global volatility of modern city life with style.
Senegal’s unique and long-standing history of gold- and metalsmithing is evident in the archaeological excavations of the Rao region. Located near Saint-Louis, in northwest Senegal, this site yielded one of the most technically sophisticated golden regalia of Africa—the Rao pectoral.
No other commodity drove medieval trade the way gold did. Historical accounts cite Bambouk, which was mined from as early as the 4th to at least the 19th century, as one of the earliest and most important gold-mining territories in West Africa. It was Bambouk and then Galam, both along Senegal’s “River of Gold,” that first drew Europeans to the region.
From the 15th century onwards Europeans traded along the coast of West Africa. Yet, they touched only the perimeter of the vast, centuries-old trade network that stretched from the Middle East, to North Africa and throughout much of the African continent. Goldsmithing techniques, styles, materials, and ideas—which particularly influenced jewelry—were readily shared because gold, which was made into twisted earrings or rods, was easily transported. For hundreds, if not thousands of years then, Senegalese gold jewelry has penetrated a sprawling network of style and material that overlaps and defies geographical confinement.
Senegalese blacksmiths have been working with metals since the first millennium B.C.E. and likely adopted certain gold- and silversmithing techniques after coming into contact with early North African traders by at least the 11th century. North African Imazighen, Jewish, and Islamic styles influenced Senegalese techniques and patterns long before the discovery of other West African gold mines and the arrival of Portuguese explorers in the 15th century, fusing into a West African aesthetic that later included importations from the Middle East, Europe, and India.
Yet, styles that are distinctively Senegalese also emerged, as evidenced in the ancient Rao pectoral, a famous 12th-century archaeological find that features many of the techniques still being practiced in Senegal today. Over the centuries, contact between cultures has brought about artistic and aesthetic changes as Senegalese goldsmiths experimented with new materials and technologies while modifying existing motifs.
In West Africa wearing gold, a scarce and valuable material, demonstrates power and prestige, taste and fashionability. Gold jewelry was often melted down and repurposed to keep pace with the current fashions or sold in times of economic hardship and financial need, functioning something like a mobile savings account. This means that jewelry dated before the mid-20th century is rare. Yet, we can still see the tremendous creativity that took place over just the past century.
Women of lesser means could also show off their fashion sensibility by wearing straw, plaster, or thread-wrapped jewelry. Such alternative materials and methods may predate or mimic the use of gold. In this transposition of material, an ornament once forged in costly metal is cast in more affordable mediums, demonstrating gold’s widespread popularity.
Seen throughout the continent, arts in gold can adorn or distinguish. Gold can embellish wooden sculpture or carry economic value—either in currency as coin or in trade as jewelry. Fashioned into an amulet, gold can embody spiritual devotion or act as the mouthpiece for authoritative communication.
The golden arts of Senegal are less well-known than the famed goldwork of the neighboring nations of Mali, Ghana, and Côte d’Ivoire. And yet, Senegal too is a burgeoning locale for both historic and contemporary fashion, and its gold jewelry serves as a lens into the unique, lived experience of a fast-paced, cosmopolitan West African experience and identity.
Marian Ashby Johnson’s donation to the National Museum of African Art showcases the delicate and refined work of the Wolof and Tukulor goldsmiths of Senegal. Building on extensive fieldwork and interviews starting in the mid-1960s, as well as museum and archival research in London, Chicago, Paris, and Senegal, Johnson assembled a unique collection of jewelry, accompanied by an archive of over 2,000 study images.
Together, they provide an almost encyclopedic overview of Senegalese taste and the role of gold jewelry in Senegal’s cultural, economic, and political history. Johnson’s research looks at the Bambouk goldfields of the Senegal River, documents the techniques, materials, and social class of goldsmiths (teugues), and reveals the inspirational and economic roles of women in commissioning, trading, and fashioning Senegalese jewelry. Johnson’s detailed research and generous gift provide a golden opportunity to understand the breadth and complexity of gold in Senegal.
Gold has long served as a shared global commodity and standard of value. It is one of the softest metals and is extremely resistant to corrosion. When royalty and the elite—those who could afford the purest of gold—first commissioned jewelry, the ratio of gold to alloying component was much higher than what one sees today.
Most of the jewelry in this exhibition is made from a silver or copper alloy, with small amounts of gold present. Because the gold content in these alloys is often not sufficient to achieve the desired golden hue, artists employed gold plate. Called or de Galam in Wolof or or du pays in French, this “country gold” provides maximum flexibility in color (ranging from more yellow to more orange) and accommodates smaller budgets. The most affluent and discerning customers still strive for 14-, 18-, or 22-karat gold whenever possible, though mixtures or silver covered in gold are most common.
