African 'science-art' show!

“African Cosmos: Stellar Arts,” is one of the most unusual exhibits to appear at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art. The exhibit, which opens Wednesday and features 100 objects from antiquity to the present day, is co-sponsored by South Africa’s Department of Science and Technology and centers on science and the human need to connect. In paintings, carvings, masks and mixed-media works, it examines human relations with the sun, moon, stars and celestial phenomena, and centers on themes in cultural astronomy, which notes that, for time immemorial, everything that draws breath has looked to the sky for meaning. The exhibition takes as its starting point that universal experience of looking up and being amazed and transported by the celestial firmament above us. It’s the first major exhibition that brings together art and science focused on Africa’s keen observation of the heavens.” That knowledge was used “to track movement through space, to regulate agriculture and the ritual calendar, and to inspire individuals.”

 Nabta Playa, a site near the border of Egypt and Sudan where stone circles and sun dials date back nearly 6,000 years — a thousand years before Stonehenge in Britain is one example.

There’s a connection between the depiction of sky stories, the desire to know more and to express knowledge. There is no linear flow to the exhibit; each piece is a singular artistic response to the big ideas of the cosmos and an attempt to find meaning in whatever piece of the universe the artist finds him- or herself.

African Cosmos:
Stellar Arts

The show opens 20th June, 2012 and runs through Dec. 9 at the National Museum of African Art, 950 Independence Ave. SW. Visit africa.si.ed

Source:

http://africa.si.edu/

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