African Culture Face and Body Art
by Najla Kaddour
Africa is a continent rich in different cultures, traditions, languages and perceptions of beauty. With many different tribes across the continent, beauty trends and ideals vary.
Tribal make-up plays a key role in many of the various groups. The make-up, often in the form of face paint, is used for many different reasons and can signify many different things such as hunting, religious and traditional reasons, military purposes or to scare an enemy. It also functions as social markers, distinguishing boys from men, men from older men, men from women and members of the tribe from outsiders. Face painting indicates status and they convey a strong cultural meaning.
Africa has an estimated total of 3000 tribes, all of which vary incredibly in terms of language, culture and traditions.
Some of the most well-known tribes across Africa include the Zulu tribe, members of which live in South Africa, Lesotho & Zimbabwe, the Maasai, who can be found in Tanzania and Kenya, the San Bushmen, who live in Botswana, Namibia and South Africa and the Yoruba, who live in Nigeria, Benin, Ghana and Togo.
Additional tribes include the Xhosa, who reside in South Africa, the Hausa, found in Niger, Gabon, Burkina Faso and Cameroon, the Himba, who live in Angola and Namibia, the Borana Oromo, who reside in Ethiopia and Kenya, the Kalenjin of Kenya, the Chaga of Tanzania and the Fulani of Nigera, Guinea, Sudan and Senegal.
Face paint is usually made out of clay with different hues using dried plants and flowers. Each color and each symbol has a certain meaning.
Black is usually used to denote power, evil, death, and mystery while grey is commonly used to mean security, authority, maturity and stability. Purple commonly means royalty, luxury, wisdom, and passion and yellow is used for joy, energy and warmth. Red is used for danger, daring, urgency and energy and blue denotes peace, calmness, confidence and affection. Greens is usually used for life, growth, freshness and healing while white signifies hope, purity and light.
Symbols are visual keys that have meaning to people with a common heritage around a given symbol. In Africa, where record of the oldest human communities lie, there are many tribal families that use symbols to tell stories and provide information, reminders and lessons. These symbols are considered sacred, and were primarily used in ceremonial and religious contexts.
In West Africa, many symbols are used to convey messages and values within a community. The Akan and the Asante tribes of West Africa both use “Adinkra” symbols. The symbols are found frequently in the West African country of Ghana. The symbols are incorporated into face painting, fabrics, on interior wall designs and on pottery.
Tribal art differs depending on a person’s rank in society. The higher you rank, the more elaborate and complicated your face paint/make-up will be. Many start with basic tribal face paint (or tattoos) and as they rise through the ranks, more symbols are added to match with their rank and achievements.
by Christopher Agostino
The Southeast Nuba people of Sudan, Africa practiced an extraordinary tradition of bodyart, available to see primarily in two books: “Nuba Personal Art” by James C. Faris (1972) and “People of Kau” by Leni Riefensthal (1977). Although the second one contains the more accomplished photography, it is Faris’ book that yields the most information to a bodypainter. Through detailed visual analysis of their bodyart and interviews with the artists over three field sessions among the Nuba from 1966-1969, Faris decodes the visual language and, more valuably for a working body artist, explains the methodology and principles that led to such a stunning variety of designs. It is the most insightful and rigorous study of bodypainting (tribal or otherwise) that I’ve read.
The book contains sketches and charts by Faris encapsulating his analysis of Nuba bodyart patterns, with references to actual examples among the extensive photographs of painted individuals— the chart on page 47 is reproduced here. In addition to these formulas for generating bodypainting designs, he gives unique insights into otherwise impenetrable aspects of the images of the Nuba. For example, explaining that although they often use animal imagery there is no totemic connection to the animal’s powers (as there might be in Amazon or Native American bodyart). The animal imagery is chosen entirely for its value as a design element and how well it suits the forms of the body it is painted on.
Applying this analysis to one of the faces photographed by Leni Reifensthal, we can tell that this ostrich image is not chosen to give the wearer the speed of an ostrich but because the shape fits the eye socket so well. The long linear neck looks good going up the individual’s tall forehead and, by being placed precisely on the bridge of the nose, it keeps this asymmetrical design balanced. Further, Faris describes how Nuba artists manipulate the imagery to make it a pure design element by devices such as continuing the diagonal lines of the ostrich wings all the way into the hair line. He explains that if the lines continue off the face they are subjectively perceived as a design, while if they stop they are perceived more as a concrete object such as a wing. Finally, the removal of the literal interpretation of this design as “ostrich” is completed by outlining of the black design with a lighter yellow, a color which signifies that the design carries no meaning beyond its aesthetic appearance.
This is the quality that sets the Southeast Nuba apart from other traditional body arts, including the body arts of other Nuba cultures: the aesthetic value of the design and, especially, its ability to enhance the human form, transcend any meaning or ceremonial content in the design. When this art was practiced within their culture, young men in their prime would spend hours each day together, painting themselves and assisting with the painting of each other, creating unique designs daily — celebrating the human body by turning it into a work of art.
“Whatever the source of the designs used on the body, the critical factor is that the body must be emphasized, complemented, enhanced. No design or artistic treatment must detract from the presentation of the physical form itself — the chief reason, after all, for the personal art rests in the proper cultural exposure and celebration of the healthy body.” — James C. Faris
And he states that without dependence on symbolic content, “the most meaningful element is the medium on which it is … produced — the human body. This culturally proper exposure can be, perhaps as [anthropologist] Levi-Strauss has suggested, the essential expression of culturalogical man as opposed to the biological individual.” Which is to say that it is their personal art that signifies their identity as a social being.
