Gallery Schoffel-Valluet and Gallery Samy Kinge are joining forces to presentDialogue des mondes : Victor Brauner et les arts primitifs (Dialogue of Worlds: Victor Brauner and Primitive Art), a double exhibition presenting twenty works on paper by Romanian avant-garde painter Victor Brauner and some thirty tribal objects from Africa, Oceania, and North America.Dialogue des mondes explores the ways in which tribal art opened the minds of the artists of Brauner's time to a "new territory of dream," and that the attraction of Brauner for these "primitive" art forms held as much, if not more, fascination for their magical powers as for their aesthetic qualities.
The Bauls are mystic minstrels living in rural Bangladesh and West Bengal, India. The Baul movement, at its peak in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, has now regained popularity among the rural population of Bangladesh. Their music and way of life have influenced a large segment of Bengali culture, and particularly the compositions of Nobel Prize laureate Rabindranath Tagore. Bauls live either near a village or travel from place to place and earn their living from singing to the accompaniment of the ektara, the lute dotara, a simple one-stringed instrument, and a drum called dubki. Bauls belong to an unorthodox devotional tradition, influenced by Hinduism, Buddhism, Bengali, Vasinavism and Sufi Islam, yet distinctly different from them. Bauls neither identify with any organized religion nor with the caste system, special deities, temples or sacred places. Their emphasis lies on the importance of a person’s physical body as the place where God resides. Bauls are admired for this freedom from convention as well as their music and poetry. Baul poetry, music, song and dance are devoted to finding humankind’s relationship to God, and to achieving spiritual liberation. Their devotional songs can be traced back to the fifteenth century when they first appeared in Bengali literature. Baul music represents a particular type of folk song, carrying influences of Hindu bhakti movements as well as the shuphi, a form of Sufi song. Songs are also used by the spiritual leader to instruct disciples in Baul philosophy, and are transmitted orally. The language of the songs is continuously modernized thus endowing it with contemporary relevance. The preservation of the Baul songs and the general context in which they are performed depend mainly on the social and economic situation of their practitioners, the Bauls, who have always been a relatively marginalized group. Moreover, their situation has worsened in recent decades due to the general impoverishment of rural Bangladesh. Inscribed in 2008 on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (originally proclaimed in 2005)
Ghost Forest is a major art installation consisting of 10 primary rainforest tree stumps which were brought to Europe from a commercially logged forest in Western Africa by the artist Angela Palmer (www.angelaspalmer.com). The work is intended to highlight the alarming depletion of the world's natural resources, and in particular the continued rate of deforestation. Today, a tropical forest the size of a football pitch is destroyed every four seconds, impacting on climate, biodiversity and the livelihoods of indigenous people. The trees in Ghost Forest - most of which fell naturally in storms - are intended to represent rainforest trees worldwide; the absence of their trunks is presented as a metaphor for the removal of the world's lungs caused through the loss of our forests. The tree stumps were exhibited as a “ghost forest” in Trafalgar Square in London last November, and then in Copenhagen in December during the UN's Climate Change Conference. From 9th July 2010 to 31st July 2011, Ghost Forest will be exhibited for a year on the lawn of Oxford University's Museum of Natural History and the Pitt Rivers Museum. The exhibition will coincide with the Museum of Natural History's 150th anniversary this year, and the UN's International Year of Biodiversity. In 2011 it is the UN's International Year of Forests. In the last 50 years, Ghana has lost 90 per cent of its primary rainforest; the World Bank estimates that 60 per cent of that was through illegal logging. However, in the last decade Ghana has been making strenuous efforts to control and manage its surviving rainforests. Last year Ghana became the first country to enter into a VPA (Voluntary Partnership Agreement) with the EU. Under this agreement all timber exported to the EU must be legally harvested. In return, the EU provides Ghana with funding for the collection of timber taxes and the enforcement of legal compliance in the timber industry. This follows what appears to be a fairly consistent attempt over the years to halt deforestation: in 1994, the government in Ghana banned the export of raw logs, encouraged reforestation in degraded areas and put 15 per cent of land under protection. It is generally recognised however that illegal logging remains widespread, and it is hoped and expected (even by hard-line environmentalists) that the new EU initiative will slow illicit export of timber. In addition, Ghana was selected by the World Bank to receive funds to conserve its rainforests under the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility – a precursor to REDD (Reducing Emissions from Reforestation and Degradation) which is aimed at rewarding countries with carbon credits from the West in return for preserving their forest cover. This will be high on the agenda in Copenhagen at the UN Climate Change Conference. The stumps in Ghost Forest will come with the help of the logging company John Bitar from a fully licensed concession in Western Ghana. The company has a published policy on both Sustainable Forestry and Social Responsibility. It operates a forest certification programme and a Chain of Custody tracking system. Ghassan Bitar, who runs the company, works in collaboration with WWF, Ghana’s Wildlife Wood Project, the EU and the Zoological Society of London and various conservation and community programmes. Ghassan was instrumental in designing the agreement for Ghana’s VPA with the EU, and this year he began one of the world’s largest private reforestation programmes, which involves planting 25 million trees on degraded land over the next five years.
The Stool of Queen Asantuah During research for Ghost Forest, artist Angela Palmer found, through an extraordinary coincidence, an Ashanti stool belonging to the tribe’s famous warrior queen. It came up by chance in her local auction house. It transpires the stool has a deep, spiritual meaning to the Ashanti, whose homeland is where the artist sourced the trees for the Ghost Forest project. The stool is also made, of course, from the timber of a rainforest tree. Below is an extract from an article Angela Palmer wrote for the Financial Times. Anxious for a break from my usual reading matter on climate change, I fell upon a catalogue from a local auction house, my eye caught by Lot 406: “A historically interesting Ashanti stool”, bearing a silver plaque on its seat engraved with the words: “Taken from the compound of Queen Asantuah at Ojesu, W Africa, by HBW Russell CMG. 30th of August 1900.” On the flight to Accra, I’d been mugging up on Ghana’s history and had just been reading about the Ashanti, for whom the stool is the “symbol of the soul of the nation”; the “symbolic source of all kingly power and authority”. The most sacred is the Golden Stool – the Ashanti throne. By tradition, no Ashanti king or queen is allowed to sit on the Golden Stool and it must be held aloft – it should never touch the ground. At the time HBW Russell “took” one of Queen Asantuah’s stools, he was private secretary to Major James Willcocks, commanding officer of the British Ashanti Field Force. In March 1900, Sir Frederick Hodgson, the colonial British governor, went to Kumasi, seat of the Ashanti nation, and demanded the surrender of the Golden Stool in the name of the Queen of England. “Where is the Golden Stool?” he asked the Ashanti chiefs, “Why am I not sitting on the Golden Stool at this moment? … Why did you not take the opportunity of my coming to Kumasi to bring the Golden Stool, to give it to me to sit upon?” When the Ashanti refused, Hodgson dispatched his officers to terrorise villagers into disclosing its hiding place. On one occasion, British troops brutally beat children who refused to reveal where their fathers were. An incensed Queen Asantuah mobilised her troops to lay siege to the British mission in Kumasi. After several months the cordon was broken when the British dispatched extra relief troops from the south and the Ashanti were quashed. Tribal land was confiscated and plundered, the queen captured and exiled to the Seychelles, where she died. But the British troops never found the stool and today it is under high security in the Ashanti palace in Kumasi.
The European rowan (Sorbus aucuparia) has long been associated with magic and protection against enchantment and evil beings in Europe. This tradition allegedly goes back at least to Greek mythology. We are told that Hebe, the goddess of youth, in a moment of carelessness lost her magical chalice to the demons. Having thus been deprived of their source of rejuvenating ambrosia, the gods decided to send an eagle to recuperate the cup. In the fight that stood between eagle and demons, some of the eagle's feathers fell to the earth together with a few drops of blood. There they became rowan trees. The feathers took the shape of leaves; the drops of blood that of the rowan's red berries. In Norse mythology, the first woman (Embla) is said to have been made from rowan tree. The rowan also figures in the Æsir story of Thor's journey to the Underworld, in which Thor, after having fallen into a rapid river, is rescued by a rowan tree that bends over and helps him back onto the shore. Some of the rowan tree's magic and protective qualities may stem from the fact that there is a small five-pointed star, or pentagram, opposite the stalk of each berry; pentagrams have long been considered symbols of protection. The berries' red colour is also claimed to be the best protective colour against enchantment. Linguists say that the name 'rowan' might derive from the Old Norse raun or rogn, which could have its roots in the proto-Germanic *raudnian, 'getting red'. However, druids would use both the berries and the bark of the rowan tree for dyeing the garments that they wore at lunar ceremonies black. The density of rowan wood is supposed to make it a suitable material for walking sticks, magician's staves, and druid's staffs. In addition, the branches can be used for metal divination, in dowsing rods, and to make rune staves. Leaves and branches that are tied about a cow's head secure a good milk supply, and cattle and other animals are protected from harm by the hanging of springs of rowan tree above the doors to their sheds. Pieces of rowan tree kept inside houses may guard against lightning, whereas pieces placed on top of graves will prevent the dead from haunting. Rowan tree is also carried on board vessels by sailors and fishermen as good-luck charms, especially when hoping to avoid storms. Another common use of rowan tree is as protection against witches and witchcraft. The numerous associations tied to rowan tree is reflected in the many popular names that have been given to it, for instance Witch Wood, Witchbane, Witchen tree, Rune tree, Whispering tree, Whitten tree, Rawn tree, and Mountain Ash (even though it is not an ash). On the British Isles, the rowan tree features in several recurring themes of protection. One of them is the protection of a household by a rowan tree growing nearby. Even in the twentieth century, people on Ireland and in the Scottish Highlands were being warned against removing or damaging a rowan tree growing in their garden. A local informant in Advie, on the River Spey, furthermore claimed that adders tend to avoid rowan trees. In the Highlands, branches of rowan tree were burnt before people's houses, so as to keep witches away. On May-day, huge fires were lit in a Druidical festival known as the Beltane festival (Beltane, 'fires of Bel'), since this was a day when witches were known to be particularly active. In the northeast of Scotland, these fires were lit on May 2nd, Old Style, and were there known as bone-fires. According to John Ramsay, laird of Ochertyre, near Stirling, and the patron of Burns, the people of Strathspey would make a hoop of rowan tree on May-day and force sheep and lambs to pass through it, both in the morning and in the evening, so as to protect them against witchcraft. Cattle were also vulnerable to spells if left unprotected, which could result in, amongst other things, their milk being enchanted or stolen. In Strathdon, pieces of rowan tree were put in every cattle-byre on May 2nd ('Reed Day'), but not until after sunset, and only done so in secret by a so-called goodman. The pieces of rowan tree that were hung above stable doors, on the other hand, were intended to prevent witches from entering the stables and taking the horses out for a midnight ride. Conversely, on Ireland, a branch of rowan tree was put over the door on May Eve to protect people, animals, and crop from fairies, not from witches. On the Isle of Man, equal-armed crosses made from rowan twigs were hung over the lintel on May Eve as protection against witchcraft. Such crosses had to be made without the use of a knife, and could sometimes also be fastened on cattle or worn by people for personal protection. From Scotland to Cornwall, similar crosses were bound with red thread and carried around in people's pockets, or they could be sewn into the lining of coats.
In one of my recent ETHNIKKA african expeditions, I came across an infusion beverage that, cold, allowed us to resist the tropical heat. It was red, it was soft, and it was delicious. In West Africa (Senegal, Guinea Bissau, Mali, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Benin, Togo and Niger) it’s known with the name of bissap. I thought it was a local beverage limited only to this area, so I was stunned when on my last ETHNIKKA travel to Mexico, I found that the much acclaimed and drunk Agua de Jamaica tasted similar and was prepared in the same manner using the same ingredients. Investigating further in the internet I saw that roselle, with which the two beverages are produced, could be one of the most extended crops in the world. In Australia is known as rosella, on the Indian subcontinent as meshta, tengamora in Assam, gongura in Telugu, lalchatni or kutrum in Mithila, mathipuli in Kerala, chin baung in Burma, กระเจี๊ยบ (krajeab) in Thailand, dah or dah bleni in other parts of Mali, wonjo in the Gambia, zobo in western Nigeria -the Yorubas in Nigeria call the white variety Isapa (pronounced Ishapa)-, zoborodo in Northern Nigeria, chaye-torosh in Iran, كركديه (karkadé) in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan, omutete in Namibia, sorrel in the Caribbean and in Latin America, flor de Jamaica in Mexico, saril in Panama, rosela in Indonesia, asam paya or asam susur in Malaysia, 洛神花 (Luo Shen Hua) in China, and in Zambia, is known by the name of lumanda by the cibemba, katolo by the kikaonde and wusi by the chilunda.
The roselle (Hibiscus sabdariffa) is a species of Hibiscus native to African tropics. It is an annual or perennial herb or woody-based subshrub, growing to 2–2.5 m tall. The leaves are deeply three- to five-lobed, 8–15 cm long, arranged alternately on the stems. The flowers are 8–10 cm in diameter, white to pale yellow with a dark red spot at the base of each petal, and have a stout fleshy calyx at the base, 1–2 cm wide, enlarging to 3–3.5 cm, fleshy and bright red as the fruit matures (it takes about six months to mature).
The plant is considered to have antihypertensive properties. Primarily, the plant is cultivated for the production for bast fibre from the stem of the plant. The fibre may be used as a substitute for jute in making burlap. Hibiscus, specifically Roselle, has been used in folk medicine as a diuretic, mild laxative, and treatment for cardiac and nerve diseases and cancer.
RECIPE: Agua de Jamaica, sorrel or bissap
In the Caribbean (Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago), sorrel drink is made from sepals of the roselle. In Malaysia, roselle calyces are harvested fresh to produce pro-health drink due to high contents of vitamin C and anthocyanins. In Mexico, 'agua de Flor de Jamaica' (water flavoured with roselle) frequently called "agua de Jamaica" is most often homemade. Also, since many untrained consumers mistake the calyces of the plant to be dried flowers, it is widely, but erroneously, believed that the drink is made from the flowers of the non-existent "Jamaica plant". It is prepared by boiling dried calyces of Hibiscus in water for 8 to 10 minutes (or until the water turns red), then adding sugar. It is usually served chilled. In Jamaica ginger and rum is usually added at Christmas time, and in Trinidad & Tobago the ginger is substituted for cinnamon and cloves for added flavour.
In Mali, Senegal, The Gambia, Burkina Faso and Benin calyces are used to prepare cold, sweet drinks popular in social events, often mixed with mint leaves, dissolved menthol candy, and/or various fruit flavours.
