This seminar attempts to explore the ways and means through which Bambui youths in the western Grassfields bargain their relations to the local community, through acquisition of objects with foreign aesthetics that are nevertheless faithful to the ancestral values of the kingdom. Through the example of iconographic motifs depicted on some drinking horns and how these horns are exchanged between Bambui youths, the paper show how drinking horns embody the desire of these youths to assert their identity as sons of Bambui, and more importantly to make Bambui voice heard in the wider community.
Art Histories Seminar
Tue 11 Mar 2014 | 15:00–17:00
Tue 11 Mar 2014 | 15:00–17:00
Contemporary Drinking Horns in the Cameroon Grassfields and Beyond
Mathias Alubafi (University of Witwatersrand/ Art Histories Fellow 2013/14), Till Förster (Moderation)
Ethnologisches Museum, Takustraße 40, 14195 Berlin
The paper also discusses the use of drinking horns by Bambui youths who are for the most part voiceless in issues of tradition as a means to challenge the dominant institution of traditional elites that generally excludes youths from certain categories of objects and motifs. The paper will show how by choosing to appropriate foreign iconographic aesthetics such as the facial image of Bruce Lee, as traditional elites do with those of the royal animals, youths have imposed over time new and foreign aesthetic practices in Bambui and Grassfields artistic practices. More importantly, the actions of Bambui youths have reversed the traditional Grassfields notion of hierarchy that normally gives priority to traditional elites over youths.
Mathias Alubafi PhD, University of Reading, 2009.
