Spirituality is one thing that is very prevalent in the Yoruba's visual culture. As I was was reading in the book and listening to the lecture's in class this week I noticed that many items showed their spirituality. Items such as, the divination bowls where the two halves of the bowl show the spiritual world and the real world or the Altar Bowl where it shows many of their spiritual beliefs all in one item. Whatever the item is it shows some type of belief they have within their culture.
The Divination bowl is one of the many items I found this week to be interesting because of the way it shows their spiritual beliefs. It's a bowl that has a lid and is divided into two halves showing the real world and spiritual world. The real world is called Aye and it is the bottom half of the bowl depicting the living and the unknowing, where as the top half of the bowl is the spiritual world called Orun. This half of the bowl shows the spirits and the gods. These bowls are commonly used to stored religious items in them and most likely to be found within a shrine.
Eshu is one of the gods that is commonly displayed on these divination bowls because he is the god that goes between the spiritual world and the real world. This makes sense because these bowls obviously show both of these worlds, so having the god that goes in between both worlds should be on these bowls.
The other item that goes along with these divination bowls and show the Yoruba's visual spirituality is the Altar bowl or what they call Olumeye. This item was to be given to the altar of an orisha. It shows many of the beliefs that the Yoruba believes in, such as the women shown on top of the divination bowl are a representation of honoring the women within the culture. The divination bowl is also depicted too. This as I explained early is a bowl to hold religious items. Then there is a women holding the divination bowl. She is depicted this way because she is to be the one who is making the offering to the certain god to take the items within the divination bowl. All these items on this sculpture is in some shape or form related back to their spiritual beliefs.
The Altar bowl and Divination bowl are obviously good examples of how the Yoruba spirituality is depicted through their art. It's shown through depicting gods or other figures that represent their beliefs. Each item and many more are obviously important in their society and the way they see their world and the spiritual world. It's obvious how important Yoruba beliefs are and how important it will be in the future.
Good choice of objects. I'd like to see more connections/relationships made in your analyses.
ReplyDeleteNice Summary. I also found the divination bowl to be interesting and how important it is spiritually to the Yoruba.
ReplyDeleteI also found the Divination bowl to be very interesting. The idea behind having the two "worlds" come together where both of the lids meet was and extremely creative idea and I think it shows a lot about the Yoruba culture. Not only is the depictions on the bowl important to their belief of their spiritual beliefs, but that they also have them as religious shrines and can store religious items in it. It goes to show that their religious beliefs are very important to them.
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