Description

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The 18th volume in the successful reference Visions of Africa series, Baga introduces the art and traditions of this small rice-growing community living along the coast of Guinea in West Africa. Their extraordinary sculptures, wooden masks, and statues of various sizes as well as wonderful percussion instruments, chiefs’ seats, and other skillfully carved utilitarian objects are presented in superb photographs. The relationships of these works to the culture and traditions of the Baga people—manifestation of divinities, ancestor worship, rites of passage, secret brotherhoods, and weddings, funerals, and harvesting—is brilliantly investigated by the author, who also analyzes the influence of colonization and newly introduced religions on more recent practices.
 

About the Author

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Marie Yvonne Curtis, an art historian involved in ethnographic studies, is an associate researcher in the anthropology section at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC. In 2008–11, she participated in fieldwork among the Baga with the Yale University Museum of Art.