Notes

The Mbuti people, who live in the lturi rainforest north-eastern DRC since 3500BC, are one of the few remaining hunter-gatherer cultures in the world. They have been famed for their rich and extraordinary arts of music and dancing, but until recently the barkcloth drawings and paintings made by Mbuti women have been virtually unknown in the West. Originally made from felted bark, as loincloths for ceremonies and dances, these drawings are sophisticated abstract compositions, embodying the qualities of improvisation and syncopation that are associated with the African visual and musical sensibility.¹

The fabric begins as strips of bark from a fig tree, which is then steamed and pounded into thin sheets. These are used as garments, sleeping mats and to produce the painted barkcloths known as Uzimazu or Pongo, which are worn at ceremonial events and traded.

Using a fine stick or quill, women paint rhythmical, free, oscillating patterns on the pieces of pounded bark. Dyes are derived mostly from fruits (gardenia, kange) and barks, The works on offer, are mostly worked with a mixture of gardenia juice and carbon black, the patterns employ the same rich repertory of motif and design that they apply in painting the bodies of their family and friends. These art forms appear around special social occasions such as funerals and puberty rites. Their iconography is very complex and full of meaning: individual elements such as dots, stars and lines, as well groups of elements, make reference to Mbuti cosmology and their origin and place in the universe.

-Michael Heuermann

^1. Georges Meurant and Robert Farris Thompson (1995) Mbuti Design.

Provenance

Michael Heuermann Collection.