ART ON VIEW
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FIG. 17 (bottom left): Gu.
Fon; Republic of Bénin. Late 19th century.
Iron. H: 32 cm. Amy and Elliot Lawrence Collection. Photo: Steven Tucker, 2016.
© Amy and Elliot Lawrence.
This fi gure of the Fon deity of iron, Gu, was brought to France around 1900,
after the French defeated and exiled the king of Dahomey, Béhanzin, in 1894.
This rare and masterful forging of Gu as a warrior holding an iron sword and
long-barreled rifl e conveys iron’s perilous potencies. Gu can be creative and
destructive, securing order and fostering chaos. He is, as Yorùbá say, “a needle
sharp at both ends.”
FIG. 18 (left): Medicine staff, Osun ematon.
Edo; Benin City, Nigeria. 18th to 19th century.
Iron. H: 168.8 cm. National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution,
inv. 96-29-1; museum purchase and gift of Dr. Werner Muensterberger. Photo:
Franko Khoury. © National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution.
The power of a priest of Osun, Edo god of sacred medicines, resides in this
staff as a weapon to protect followers and destroy enemies. The commanding
bird at the summit of this Osun ematon is surrounded by a descending array
of additional birds and animals associated with powers of transformation such
as snakes and chameleons. Also represented are miniature smithing tools and
various iron weapons and implements. Thus, the staff links an Osun specialist
with blacksmiths, hunters, and warriors—all Ògún devotees.
FIG. 19 (above): Ancestral altar, asen, attributed to Akpele
Kendo Akati (active 19th century).
Fon; Republic of Bénin. Mid 19th century.
Iron, raffi a, wood, organic materials. H: 142.5 cm.
New Orleans Museum of Art, gift of Françoise Billion Richardson, inv. 89.257.
Image courtesy of the New Orleans Museum of Art.
The Fon commission blacksmiths to produce umbrella-shaped asen staffs, kept
in shrines to celebrate ancestors and the Fon pantheon. Asen are surmounted
by circular platforms richly decorated with human fi gures, animals, plants,
and other details of everyday life. They bestow honor on ancestors as material
realizations of praise-poems and are enhanced by blacksmiths’ consummate
skill in forging the miniature fi gurative elements of these “memoryscapes.”
FIG. 16 (above): Vessel
with rainmaking wands.
Mumuye; Nigeria. Mid
20th century.
Iron, ceramic. H: 44.4 cm.
Fowler Museum at UCLA,
X2008.32.3; museum purchase,
2008. Image © courtesy Fowler
Museum at UCLA. Photo: Don
Cole, 2018.
Iron has particular potency
as offerings made to secure
seasonal rains and bring bountiful
harvests. Mumuye peoples of
Nigeria’s Middle Benue consider
individuals who are recognized
as rainmakers to be powerful
protectors of community survival.
Rainmakers’ ritual supplications
require zigzag-shaped forged iron
wands used singly or in bundles of
upward-thrusting wavy branches.
Their energetic shapes recall
fl ashes of lightning or the sudden
movement of slithering snakes,
both thought to presage rain. They
are resonant, too, with rivulets
of water on parched land or even
torrents. Rainmakers secure the
wands in the ground, where, as
visual petitions made of iron, they
marshal the earth’s life force.