9 / Portraits
| Artist / Origin |
Akan artist, Twifo region, Hemang city, Ghana
Region: Africa
|
|---|---|
| Date |
17th century
Period: 1400 CE - 1800 CE
|
| Material |
Terracotta, roots, quartz fragments
Medium: Sculpture
|
| Dimensions | H: approx. 8 in. (20.24 cm.) |
| Location | The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY |
| Credit | Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection |
expert perspective
| Christa ClarkeSenior Curator of Arts of Africa and the Americas, Newark Museum |
expert perspective
Christa Clarke
Senior Curator of Arts of Africa and the Americas, Newark Museum
“backIn Ghana there is an important historical tradition of making terracotta heads to both represent a deceased ancestor and to serve as a point of communication with that ancestor's spirit when they’ve departed. And these are typically made by female artists who are actually summoned to the death of an individual to get a sense of their likeness, what they look like, distinguishing features. But interestingly when these are created, they’re not portraits in the sense of a Western portrait—they don’t really have this realistic representation of particular facial features. What the artist has done is conveyed specifics of the individual through hair style, through scarification marks, and what we might consider external distinguishing features that serve as a marker of individuality in this culture, the Akan culture. And these terracotta heads are then placed in sites that serve as a shrine or a memorial to the deceased, where they continue to serve essentially as a focal point of devotion in honor of the ancestor and as a way to make connection with that particular individual after life.”