PASALA - Project for the Advanced Study of Art and Life in Africa and The University of Iowa

Introduction

Allen Roberts, PhD

"Baobab" is an excellent title for a journal of working papers written by graduate students interested in African expression. Baobab trees (Adansonia digitata) make available a number of useful metaphors for understanding both the arts as they are produced and enjoyed by Africans, and the study of these same arts by non-African scholars. In particular, baobabs seem so forthright and obvious, and yet are exceedingly complex when considered in environmental and cultural contexts.

Baobabs are found throughout Africa's widespread savannas, and very frequently they are revered as places of spiritual intensity. They are"upside-down trees," for their enormously fat trunks end in a profusion of ludicrously tiny branches that remain leafless through dry seasons, and so resemble roots extending toward the sky. Sacred stories told in southem Chad present baobabs growing in heaven, their trunks connecting divine andshuman realms. Baobab trunks are also always hollow, and as branches break and the trunk is breached, shelter is provided to many species of animal, plant, and fungus that might otherwise perish from the rigors of the African sun. A baobab's cavern is often a roost for bats, and one must guess that through the course of the tree's evolution, such an intimate relationship is anything but coicidental: baobab flowers have a "fragrance" that only a bat could love; and they hang downward so that bats -- which can only fly by falling away from some perch -- can grasp their petals, feed from their nectar, and then fall away in flight. Bats are a favorite food of pythons, that often use hollow baobab trunks as for their dens and then climb to catch bats feeding on baobab flowers. In turn, pythons are considered to be manifestations of ancestral or earth spirits by many African peoples through metaphors of their own, such as their great length that suggests unending linearity, as reinforced by their "immortality" achieved through the regular shedding of skin to accommodate growth. The religious sense of baobab trees is matched by practicality, for baobab bark is stripped and woven into rope, branches are a source of wood for many endeavors, leaves are a common vegetable especially appreciated just before harvest when other foods are scarce, and the sweetish fruit are relished by children and game animals (thus attracting targets for hunters). In short, through their subtle complexities, baobabs possess immense potential, and are instrumental to a great many natural and cultural processes.

Complexity, potential, and process characterize graduate student life. The working papers assembled here provide an early glimpse of careers-in-the-making. Over the six years that a Graduate Symposium on African Art has been held at The University of Iowa, those of us "on the other side" of our doctorates have been privileged to witness the development of fine minds and fruitful research. If there are commonalities across these student presentations, they lie in the preference for intriguing topics that have not been central to stpdy of African expression, such as urban and popular arts, contemporary artists that transcend Africa to participate in global trends, ritual and secular performance, textiles and pottery as lesserknown arts, and the coursing of expression throughout the several African diasporas. Above all, these earlier student presenters, like the authors of this first issue of Baobab, demonstrate how important these perspectives, subjects, and themes are to a full understanding of African life NOW.

In this volume of Baobab, Joanna Grabski Ochsner tells us about a series of interactions between African and Western artists in Brazzaville, which -- prior to the recent civil war -- led to an outburst of creative production for both local and international art markets. Brigitte Hecker writes of Haitian arts with reference to scholars outside of the ordinary literature of African art, such as Celeste Olalquiaga, whose criticism of postmodern "flattening" of time and expression, and whose evocative presentation of "kitsch" are germain to this most fluid of expressive fields. Karen Milbourne carries us to Zambia to enjoy the rich pagentry of Lozi kings that is constantly adapted to meet needs of local and national politics while taking full advantage of opportunities for tourist attraction. Fadhili Mshana follows the career of a particular Tanzanian sculptor named Salum Ali Chuma as an example of an artist seeking to exploit the rich heritage of his own people, in order to take advantage of the burgeoning tourist trade. Eileen Moyer takes us to Tanzania, demonstrating the complexity of issues surrounding HIV/AIDS prevention programs and the images employed. Finally, Kinsey Katchka describes an innovative museum in Dakar called the "Ecopole," a project of an inventive local development agency striving to improve the quality of inner-city life.

Please join us, then, in enjoying these early fruits of what will doubtlessly be long and provocative scholarship. All of us -including those just beginning and those most entrenched -will find much to learn in the pages to follow.