A TALE OF TWO HEADS

A Tale of Two Heads

The Ife Head - The British Museum

Anyone conversant with African Art and in particular, Nigerian Art would be acquainted with the Ife sculptures. According to the description on the British Museum website, these artefacts, cast in the lost wax technique (cire perdue), were discovered in 1938, at Wunmonije Compound in Ife, Nigeria. The discovery of the artefacts was by accident during house building works and included seventeen brass and copper heads and the upper half of a brass figure making eighteen artefacts in total. Notably among them is the Ife head, which currently sits at the British Museum in London. Mr Bate, an editor of the Nigerian Daily Times, purchased the head in Ife. Subsequently, Sir (later Lord) Kenneth Clark, Director of the National Gallery purchased the artefact for the British Museum in 1939 acting on behalf of the National Art Collections Fund. The Ife head features an elaborate beaded headdress, which could represent a crown, suggesting that the artefact was associated with an Ooni, a ruler of the Ife Kingdom. Yoruba folklore asserts that life and civilisation began in Ife. Hence, the legendary homeland of the Yoruba-speaking peoples is Ife, with the Ooni as its revered sacred ruler, the descendant of the original creator gods. Ife is located in Osun State in modern South West of Nigeria. The artefacts (which date back to the 15th to 17th century) thus hold cultural significance for the Yoruba’s and Nigerians as a whole as it represents a time before Britain or Europe had any impact on African culture.

Golden Heads - Damien Hirst  (Instagram)

Fast-forward to May 2017 at Venice Biennale, where Damien Hirst, a well-known Artist is exhibiting his collection, Treasures From the Wreck of the Unbelievable. Among the artworks in the collection is a sculpted head titled Golden Heads (female) with the rest of the description in small print and it is so similar to the Ife head artefact, that if they were human, they could pass for twins or at the very least siblings. Nigerian Artist and fellow exhibitor, Victor Ehikhamenor, who promptly took to his Instagram page to express his concerns, pointed out the similarity in both works. He stated that people seeing Hirst’s Golden Heads statue for the first time would not think Ife or Nigeria and their kids will grow up to attribute this work to Damien Hirst. He was of the opinion that if the work was not properly credited, over time, the original work would be left in the background while Hirst’s work would be seen as an original regardless of his small print caption and would be the reference by which similar works would be judged.  

Although a spokesperson stated that Hirst referenced the Ife Head in the text accompanying the work and in the guide to the exhibition and that the Ife Head is integral to the concept of the work, people were still outraged at Hirst’s blatant copying of the Ife heads.

It is important then, to ask ourselves whether improper or insufficient crediting connotes appropriation in the same way that improper or insufficient referencing is plagiarism. What exactly is appropriation? The Oxford living dictionary defines the verb appropriate as “to take (something) for one’s own use typically without the owner’s permission.” It goes further to describe appropriation as “the deliberate reworking of images and styles from earlier, well-known works of art. However, the word appropriation presently refers to the adoption of minorities’ cultural expressions by the Western world. In an article for The Atlantic titled What Does “Cultural Appropriation” Actually Mean, Jonathan Blanks, a researcher at the Cato Institute's Project on Criminal Justice explained that cultural appropriation occurs “when aspects of a culture––or perceived aspects of a culture––are adopted, co-opted, bastardized, or lampooned ……….”. In the same article, the author Conor Friedersdorf noted that not all instances of cultural appropriation warrant an uproar from the affected culture, and differentiated between cultural appropriation for the sake of engaging in another person’s culture and cultural appropriation with a demeaning undertone.

Culture is contagious and there would be certain aspects of another culture that one may wish to identify with or emulate and this is okay as long as it does not trivialize the culture or impose a double standard where there is permitted derision of the owners of the culture/ cultural indigenes, while appropriators are celebrated. In the harsh yet apt words of Bell Hooks, cultural appropriation is wrong when ‘‘Ethnicity becomes spice, seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream white culture.’’

While the cultural appropriation debate may seem like an attack on white people who like black culture, a better description would be an attack on a mentality that ignores the struggles of black people, while taking on parts of their identities that it wants for itself. However, because the line separating these two forms of appropriation is thin, it is impossible to end cultural appropriation. Furthermore, the cultures being taken advantage of usually have a lower bargaining power as they are either developing countries or marginalized cultures such as African Americans, Indians, Native Americans, Aborigines, Africans etc. and this makes them an easy target.

As one of the richest living artists in the world, Damien Hirst should have been aware that failure to credit an existing artefact of cultural importance such as the Ife Head properly would spark accusations of cultural appropriation, as his status within the Art community could make such an oversight feel especially exploitative. Although there are some benefits to the use of African traditional art by foreigners when properly credited, such as the creation of derivative works, and exposure of African Art to a wider audience, the appropriation of African art simply emphasizes the unjust power imbalance between Africa and the rest of the world.

References

·      To find out more about the Ife head check out the British Museum

For more insight into Cultural Appropriation, see What Does “Cultural Appropriation” Actually Mean, and Is Cultural Appropriation Is Cultural Appropriation Always Wrong.

·     For other articles on Damien Hirst’s and the Ife Head see CNN’s article as well as that of the New York Times