Makonde art

Makonde art can be subdivided into different styles. Traditionally, the Makonde have carved secular household objects, ritual figures and masks.[2] After the 1930s, Portuguese colonizers and other missionaries arrived at the Mueda plateau in Northern Mozambique. They showed great interest and fascination for the Makonde wood carvings and began to order different pieces, from religious to political “eminences.” The Makonde sculptors, after noticing such interest, decided to carve the new pieces, using pau-preto (ebony wood, Diospyros ebenum) and pau-rosa (Swartzia spp.) instead of the soft and not long-lasting wood they had used before. This first contact with the Western culture can be considered to be the first introduction of the classical European style into the traditional Makonde style.

traditional Lipiko mask

Since the 1930s, the so-called Modern Makonde Art has been developed in Tanzania. An essential step away from the traditional sculptures was the creation of abstract figures, representing mostly evil spirits, called Shetani in Swahili language, that play a special role in Swahili popular beliefs. This shetani style was created in the early 1950s by master carver Samaki Likankoa, whose patron Mohamed Peera, an art curator in Tanzania played an instrumental and decisive role in influencing the modern Makonde art movement. Some Makonde sculptors, of whom the best known is George Lugwani, have embraced a fully abstract style of carving without discernible figures. Since the 1970s, Modern Makonde Art has become part of the internationally recognized contemporary art of Africa. The most acknowledged such artist was George Lilanga, who started with carvings and became famous as a modern painter.

A special genre of traditional ritual Makonde art are the characteristic Mapiko masks (singular: Lipiko), which have been used in tribal dances accompanying coming-of-age rituals, since before contact was made with missionaries in the 19th century. These masks were painstakingly carved from a single block of light wood (usually 'sumaumeira brava') and may represent shetani spirits, ancestors, or living characters (real or idealized). The dancers wore them so that they could see through the mask's mouth or alternatively, fixed the mask on their heads, with the mask facing straight towards the audience, when they bent forward.

Makonde art is an integration of dated practices of woodwork met with a demand of woodcarving of the modernized world. After the introduction of road systems in the plateaus between Tanzania and Mozambique by Portuguese troops during World War I, the traditional sense of the practice began to shift to meet new social and economical demands.[3] Once a signifier of ritualistic expression made solely by men, and kept hidden from women, Western influences on Makonde art changed who created the art and for what reasons. Portuguese forced labor and taxes encouraged many Makonde people to expand the practices of traditional woodcarving. One way of this evolution was expressed through these figures. Traditionally, practical things like tools and ritualistic helmet masks were the center of creation. However, after the insertion of road systems, Europeans and missionaries began to commission Makonde people to create religious symbolic sculptures. This contributed to the distinction of Ujamaa, Shetani and Binadamu styles of Makonde art.[4]

Long before Makonde woodcarvings became of commercial interest, the purpose of this artform was in its characterization of evil spirits during rites of passage ceremonies. Most notable are male initiations into adulthood which is marked by circumcision. At the beginning of this rite, a ritualist dance, the Mapiko, is performed. Throughout this dance there are three active parts: A masked dancer representing a dead man who has come to haunt the village, the Mashapilo or an evil spirit seeking to spread malice and disrupt health and lastly the young man undergoing this transition into manhood who is to conquer these entities. Both of the masked dancers are symbolic expressions of the evil that must be faced and defeated by the boy, soon to be man. After this dance, a boy will receive his operation from the Mkukomela, or the “Hammerer", who conducts the entirety of the ritual. Once a boy is circumcised, he will spend days away from the general population with other men and boys in a shelter called a Likumbi. In conjunction with their healing, boys are taught their manly roles in society. There is a physical shift that includes learning to hunt and tend the land. There is also a social shift in which men are taught how to rejoin their community as men. Men are taught quality virtues and morals, how to regard elders and the appropriate manner for sexual relations. Once boys are healed, the Likumbi is destroyed with fire and they inherit new names. Woodcarvings are present during female initiation as well but at a different stage than that of males. A girl is too made women by ritualist dance and isolation however, woodcarvings are only present once a woman is married. Once a Makonde woman marries, she will carry around a wood craved doll to promote fertility.[10]

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  Makonde Binadamu sculpture
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  Makonde Shetani sculpture
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  Makonde Ujamaa sculpture detail
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  An abstract carving by George Lugwani in mpingo

• Makonde chess set
• Contemporary African art
• Culture of Tanzania

• Kingdon, Zachary. 2002. A Host of Devils: The History and Context of the Making of Makonde Spirit Sculpture. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-27727-2
• Korn, Jorn, Jesper Kirknaes.1974. Modern Makonde Art. London, New York, Sydney: The Hamlyn Publishing Group Limited. ISBN 9780600361718
• Mohl, Max: Masterpieces of the Makonde. 1990–97. Ebony Sculptures from East Africa, a comprehensive photo-documentation. Vol. 1-3. Heidelberg, Germany. ISBN 3925761578
• Stout, J.A.: Modern Makonde Sculpture. 1966. Kibo Art Gallery Publications, Nairobi, Kenya.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Makonde art.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Modern Makonde Art.

• African Carvings and Sculptures at Google Arts & Culture
• A basic reading list on Makonde sculpture by Smithsonian Libraries
• For more information about Makonde Art see:
  • Hamburg Mawingu Collection
  • Read about contemporary Makonde artists on AFRUM
  • Collection S. Hansen and other European Collections
• PhD thesis concerning Makonde carvers in Mozambique:
  • "Carving a Life: The Political Economy of Woodcarver Livelihoods in Cabo Delgado, Northern Mozambique"