Principles of traditional African art in Yoruba thorn wood carvings: conversations with Titi Adepitan.(Interview)

Publication: Research in African Literatures

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Excerpts from interviews by Sarah Krose, Monday, 24 July-Friday, 28 July 2000, The Museum of Anthropology, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Sarah Krose: How do the thorn carvings fit in with more contemporary Nigerian art in terms of, well, contemporary Nigerian art, tourist art? What place do they have in the spectrum?

Titi Adepitan: They don't quite represent the very core of Yoruba art, because they are tourist art, as you observed. For one thing, the Yoruba imagination is a rigorously religious one and works like these can only be defined in terms of what serious artists would do for recreation, you know, more or less like creating a lighter side to their more serious engagements. And the figures actually illustrate this. They depict people in various poses, various attitudes, at various chores, you know, that capture the everyday, the humdrum. But I don't think they really do speak for the (pause) soul of the Yoruba approach to art in a fundamental sense.... They look a lot to me like just marginal art, but not marginal in the sense of cheap or low or debased. Marginal in a sense that is very, very unique, to the Yoruba conception of art in general. You'll find it in music, in writing, in every kind of creativity. The serious artist who does serious work, and has time once in a while to create things on the lighter side. I mean, it's very central to the Yoruba reception of creativity.

Could you comment on the state.... These were carved around early 1970s, 1972 is when they were collected. Could you comment on the state of Yoruba society around that time, maybe what the artist was, at least in a political sense, perhaps.

By 1972, Yoruba society couldn't really be described in purely homogeneous terms. You want to keep in mind that Yorubaland has been the center of the Nigerian nation for almost a century now, from 1914 actually. That is the date of the amalgamation of the different provinces into the country of Nigeria. And what that means is, people come from various parts of the country to flourish in Lagos. Politics, commerce, education, all kinds of things invariably took their shape and definition in Lagos. Lagos is not quite the heartland of Yorubaland in terms of culture and things like this. Lagos is too cosmopolitan, too "generic," too ... almost fake. For statements on culture you need to go to places like Ilesa or Osogbo, Abeokuta. Abeokuta for instance is very noted for tie-dyed fabrics, batiks; to Ibadan, the city of Nigeria's first university. And clearly by 1972, all of these things had taken shape. It's not quite correct as I read somewhere just now, to suggest that culture, society was at a very pristine stage, where people are drumming, people are dancing--they "dance automatically"--as somebody said (laugh). I read that and I was amused. The only thing is that many of the carvers themselves must have been, you know, country folk, and so they tended to recreate visions of the countryside from their own imagination that was itself limited by the quality of their exposure or non-exposure. I think that is very, very important. If a student of art, a carver or an artist who had a Western training in these things were to do something like this, you would find nuances of interpretation, you know, deriving directly from their own contact with other realities from across the world, I suppose.

Is there a symbolism associated with the tortoise?

Oh yeah, the Tortoise is the archetypal Yoruba trickster figure in the same sense as the Raven in First Nations folklore, or the spider in West Indian folklore. The tortoise is the archetypal figure of the trickster.

In what context?

In a myriad of contexts. The Tortoise is the animal who is wisest in the animal kingdom. The smartest, the cleverest, the most devious, the most mischievous, the most self-destructive, the one who gets punished for his own machinations and so on and so forth. And several stories are built; virtually every single trickster story is about the tortoise. He is clever. We have tons of such stories.

The wisdom, at least as the Tortoise stands in North American literature, the wisdom of the Tortoise is associated with its age.

Precisely the same in Yoruba culture. The wrinkles on his neck attest to that, you know, longevity. He's wise; he bides his time. He can't walk very fast but if he must take part in a race with a swift-footed animal like, let's say, the cheetah, the Tortoise will plant members of his family at every milestone, and say, "Oh, let's start." And the cheetah will take off, and get to point "A," find the tortoise there ahead of him and continue to run, get to point "B" and find the tortoise ahead of him. And he'll run himself to death. He'll drop dead at some point and there will be a Tortoise to take the credit (laugh).

Many of the figures on the table right now appear to be figures with musical instruments, and I was wondering if you could pick out a few and talk about what they're doing and maybe comment on the atmosphere in general.

Music in general in Yoruba culture is a form of dialogue, a mode of discourse, a form of communication. The musician--he doesn't compose, he doesn't perform in isolation. Incidentally, one of my favorite poems is one by Nicolas Guillen. He was a Cuban poet. He has a poem called "The Muse" in which he tries to appraise the status of the performer--the poet particularly. In olden times, Guillen writes, the poet performed before an orchestra and a public, but now the poet likes to shut himself up in his study, in his cubicle, and grinds out thoughts that he expects his readers and audience to decode. Clearly you have here entertainment in a traditional sense. Several of the pieces illustrate what goes on between say, two performers or between a performer and a celebrant, a performer and a dancer, sometimes between a male performer and a female performer. We've already talked about this--the man trying to show his dexterity (points). Here is a drummer, another drummer--this is a different kind of drum (Af403). Here you have a male talking drummer engaging a female performer, I think, manipulating the maraca. So these are two performers and the woman is enjoying it because it's not just about handling her maraca, it's also about dancing (Af402). There you have two other performers. There's a female performer, I think there is a child behind her, but I can't see clearly from here. Is it a child?

Yes.

A-ha. It's a child. Gestures like this go all the way back to what we said earlier about the woman who is into so many roles in society--the mother, the entertainer, the performer, the musician, the poet sometimes. Now, I'm not quite sure whether they're intended to represent the same atmosphere. They may simply have been represented on the same platform. They may not really interact in the same way you might say for this.

Is there anything else that you might want to comment about these?

Not much except that we might also consider building something of a statement for what all of this adds up to. What are the artists, the carvers who operate this medium--what are they up to? What aspects of society, of reality are they trying to depict? Could we say more than they dare claim for themselves? Could we impute claims to them that are not even pertinent to the very medium itself?. I mean, I think such issues are really very important.

I think it's interesting too, like I mentioned before, that the artist did these specifically for the collectors, so I'm not sure whether they said, "We want you to make carvings of this or that" or whether he felt that he could only talk about certain themes with them.

In any case, the medium is so context-specific. A platform, a figure, a single moment frozen like a picture frame in time and space. It's not really the medium for the involved metaphor of the master artist who is straining after effect, or you know....

It's interesting how the facial features on the carvings don't seem to change.

It's because of the medium. The face has to be realized in miniature. What's the size of the head in many of these objects in proportion to the body? It's almost infinitesimal, so that the prominent landmarks on the face can only be represented by tiny lines and dots, tiny slits for eyes, pinches for nostrils, another slit for the mouth. But clearly this woman is represented more amply around the chest area. I mean she's topless and she has a loincloth around her waist. I would say that from the neck down there is a lot more attention to proportion than with the head. It could very well be that the head, you know from what I've seen so far with these carvings, the head is just stylization--it's not really made to convey expression of whatever kind--distress, joy, anger, whatever. Of course it has its bumps, noses, eyes, mouth, ears, but basically they're bland. You're not going to get the interpretation we are attempting from these faces.

The expressions seem to be conveyed more through the actions than the features.

Yeah, I would call these carvings done more along the lines of what in literature we would call gestic. Gestic symbols, from gesture. I mean, she is dancing, she is crying, you don't see tears flowing down her face. She has her hands thrown back, so the motif is gestic, you know. You decipher what they are supposed to be doing from the gestures they are permitted.

Now this figure here (Af386), we have a seated man with a beard and what appears to be two gourds and a--I think those are cups of some kind.

The gentleman is an old man. The beard on him is a stock representation of age, not really of hairiness. Actually, there is a proverb about grey hair being for the very old, the beard being for the elderly, and the moustache for the, you know, uppity young man (laugh). The beard is just to show that he is not very old, but he is an elder, and he's sitting against a background that I am very familiar with. He's drinking palm-wine. The containers are gourds, as you correctly observed. Even the cups are from the same material, it's just that they are smaller gourds and they've been sectioned right across so they can hold a much smaller quantity of wine. And as is the practice, particularly in the villages, the larger gourds merely serve to hold as much as possible, depending on the crowd, the number of people. Your exact portion is actually served out in the smaller versions of the same gourds, the same way that you might say that you could have your beer served in a pitcher here. And it's then rationed out in cups. I mean, you don't go straight for the tank for your own fill, you get what you can handle. The smaller gourd is in his left hand; the cup from the same material is in his right hand.

Now you were talking about the beard being a sign of his status as an elder.

Not of status. I'll give you the proverb just in case. The Yoruba proverb about facial hair is Eewu l'ogbo, irun'gbon l'agba, mamu ni t'afojudi. Eewu l'ogbo: "White hair is old age." Irun'gbon l'agba: "the beard is for ..." how should I say? The beard is for ... not adulthood, because that is like common currency, because once you are past eighteen you are an adult. Irun'gbon l'agba simply means that it's only elders who have that to show.

A mature man.

Yeah, for maturity. Thank you. Mamu--actually, the word Mamu does not quite mean "moustache." The proper name for moustache is irun'mu, that is "hair...

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