I am immediately riveted by a case with four decorated skulls, called simply ‘ancestors’. One has been given a new face of smooth clay and eyes made of round, whorled shells, so that they look wide open with shock. “I’m dead?” Another still has its teeth, and has been worked with a collage of seeds. But the one I find most touching is the plainest, a small skull which has been painted in simple ochre and red, and polished to a sheen. Its empty eye sockets are dark and deep.
Looking at this old person, I think I'd like to have my ancestors somewhere, in a place where they'd be safe and I could visit them. I’d like to take the dead faces of my grandmothers into my hands and stroke their temples and croon to them. I’d like to light a little fire for them in the winter and sit with them by it. Looking at these skulls, so lovingly preserved and honoured by decoration, I wonder at the way we simply consign our loved ones to fire or earth and have done.
Wandering on, I come to a group of huge wooden posts with heads carved in them. They're open in the middle, and can be played as drums. Their purpose was to guard the sites reserved for ritual dancing, as well as to provide the music for ceremonies. Lit from above, the looming faces, with their protruding triangular jaws and bulging brows, look bewildered and angry. I get a sense of some energy that's not quite heat, not quite vibration. It seems to me they're anxious and unhappy to be so far from the place they were made for, so divorced from their purpose in this world. Instinctively I stoop to touch the floor in front of them to pay hommage, I wish I had a little honey and sesame to leave for them, even though that's West African and these come from Polynesia and who knows what sacrifices they require. I'm sure they'd be grateful though, for something.
The final part of the exhibition is a section on repair in Africa, entitled ‘Wounded Objects'. The notices explain that in Africa, things are repaired rather than thrown away. Partly because resources are scarce, and partly because when something breaks, it is taken to reflect a rupture not only in the object itself, but in the community. So mending it also represents repairing the community. Furthermore, the wound is considered part of the life of the object, so there’s no intention of hiding it, or of re-making the object as new. Many of the repairs are beautiful, for example the small patches of intricately engraved metal that patch calabashes and pots. Or the copper staples applied diagonally, in lines. Or the precise stitches placed across neat lines of holes drilled by hand along the two sides of a break in a calabash.
Looking at leather thongs and nails repairing a large carved wooden object that seems to be two linked bowls with lids, I reflect that in a culture where things are made by hand, with hand tools, over days and weeks of careful, inspired, intricate movements, you would indeed hesitate to ditch something just because it was cracked. You couldn't just throw it away and buy a new one. Every piece here is unique. Every piece is a labour, if not of love, then at least of intimate respect. And it would cost a corresponding amount, increasing your respect for it. Of course you would repair it; there would be no question.
And this respect for the absolute, instrinsic value of a thing, as well as the relative poverty (at least when riches are measured in cash) of the area, means that ordinary things are also repaired. A large colour photo shows a woman in Mali repairing both calabashes and plastic buckets, with neat stitches of blue plastic thread. Another shows a man repairing someone's broken rubber flip flop, using a roll of nylon string.
This idea of the repair being an honorable part of the object, and of the repairer deliberately not trying to hide the fact that the thing has been broken and subsequently pieced carefully back together, is fascinating to me. At times I have felt so broken myself, so worried that I’ll never be quite the same again. And now here’s a whole roomful of objects which are just fine with being openly broken. The repairs are like scars, writing the story of the life of the object on its skin, as it were. Many are even decorative, making the object more beautiful than it was before—though that’s not necessary either. Many of these are sacred objects, objects of power, and they don't need to be beautiful. They don't need to seduce in order to be respected. The energy radiates out of them. 'The repair restores their power', states the notice.
Interestingly, when I ask for the catalogue in the bookshop later, I’m told it has sold out. Evidently I’m not the only one who’s struck by the notion of rupture and repair.
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