TAILIEUCHUNG - Soyinka and Yoruba Sculpture: Masks of Deification and Symbolism

Among the art forms identified in the eighteenth century as central – painting, music, sculpture, architecture, literature -- sculpture has perhaps received the least focused attention from aestheticians as having its own standards of excellence, or as affording a distinctive kind of aesthetic experience. Unlike music or architecture, traditional sculpture does not pose obvious questions about common claims concerning the nature of art or of aesthetic experience (such as imitation or disinterestedness). It has often been treated, then and now, as one of the visual arts, together with painting, and thus implicitly as requiring no distinct treatment of. | Soyinka and Yoruba Sculpture Masks of Deification and Symbolism Gilbert Tarka Fai University of Maroua Cameroon Abstract The Yoruba mask is a piece of sculpture that is both artistic and functional. The carved work fulfils one or more of several functions sacred or profane personal or communal serious or satirical. As an object it has only its relatively insignificant quota of vital energy that is found according to African ontology in all matter and substance of the visible world- animal vegetable and mineral. But the Yoruba mask also has a force that extends to the world of spirits and gods. These masks also have the dual effect of transforming the wearer and the ambivalence of serving good and evil ends. This indicates that the Yoruba mask apart from its spiritual essence is a symbol of great complexity and ambiguity. It is from this great community of sculptors and from the ambivalent quality of the mask as image and symbol that some of Wole Soyinka s creative writings emerge. This paper argues that Wole Soyinka uses his native Yoruba sculpture and the mask in particular to dramatise the essential spiritual continuity of human nature through the dramatic appearance of gods and the spirits of the ancestors in the world of the living during the dance of possession. Key words Soyinka Yoruba sculpture masks symbolism. Traditional Yoruba life is dominated by religion and they are surrounded by innumerable gods and spirits with whom the lives of mortals interact. Below the deities are spirits including the spirits of the departed ancestors. Apart from the supreme deity Olodumare or Olorun who is never represented by a carving because a Yoruba would not know what he looked like other gods and spirits are represented by masks and statues which are kept in shrines where they are worshipped. Ogun Soyinka s favourite god for example is always represented with a carving of a snake eternally devouring its own tail. Soyinka was drawn in particular to this god s ambivalent .

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