Tuesday, April 16, 2013

LIFE DEATH AND TRANSFORMATION IN THE AMERICAS




































This exhibit was especially interesting to me because of the creative use of the resources available to the natives. Because many of these tribes were isolated from the rest of the world for thousands of years, they developed their own unique culture and customs which is manifested in their intriguing art.

The Mayan statue.








Their dolls were especially interesting because they were so well constructed. The vivid colors reflected a rich history and culture.








They considered the human body in their art quite well, incorporating the skeleton often.

This is a model that an explorer made of a traditional “big house” used in a native village in Canada. The concept of the door they used was thought provoking and really creative. Instead of a flap or door as we are used to, they used a small hole in a wall in order to force people to crawl in and out of it, mimicking the birth into another realm.






This is a costume they wore during certain rituals and ceremonies. They are almost doll like because of the exaggeration of the head and the body.




The tribes were focused on how they were brought into this world and how they will live after. They used the world as a physical setting in which they reenacted the gods’ actions and this to me is so original and different because the land was their stage. While today, actors pretend they are other personalities, characters, heroes, villains, the tribes of the past used this to educate and to keep their history alive. In the West, it is a form of entertainment – to the native, it was an important ritual. 

No comments:

Post a Comment