What upon earth could nineteenth-century Luba depictions of the female visible form [i]or[/i] frame have in common with the contemporary carves of Los Angeles artist Alison Saar? in what manner is culture inscribed on the female visible form [i]or[/i] frame and who interprets it how? Is sex a performance? Is it for real? Last February 24 thirteen scholars and artists explored these and other issues of sex body.

What upon earth could nineteenth-century Luba depictions of the female visible form [i]or[/i] frame have in common with the contemporary carves of Los Angeles artist Alison Saar? in what manner is culture inscribed on the female visible form [i]or[/i] frame and who interprets it how? Is sex a performance? Is it for real?

Last February 24 thirteen scholars and artists explored these and other issues of sex body, memory, race, and spirit in an all-day symposium at UCLA called "Dialogues onward Body Politics," inspired by the exhibition "Body Politics: The Female Image in Luba Art and the carve of Alison Saar." The exhibition, curated by way of Mary Nooter Roberts and Alison Saar (UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, November 12 2000-May 13 2001) juxtaposed small, elegant nineteenth-century Luba depictions of the female with Saar's chiefly large, roughhewn sculptures. This unusual pas de deux was lengthen outed in wall text that reproduc a spirited conversation between the curatots. Like the exhibition, the symposium was cast as a series of dialogues, each organized around a theme (see program, p 4)

In a refreshing departure from the strictly academic, brace of the panelists "performed" their considerations on these themes; a third took the audience into cyberspace. In the spirit of the material at hand, we therefore abandon the usual solo First Word in favor of a dialogue, this individual between Henrietta Cosentino, an editor and writer, and Carine Fabius, a writer and for many years a dealer in Afro-Caribbean art. Henrietta and Carine construct themselves together at the symposium. Here is the conversation that ensued

HC: I like the fact that we're couple nonscholars dialoguing on a scholarly symposium. still we both respond to the exhibit to and have backgrounds that make it resonate. I have lived in Nigeria and Sierra Leone (where depictions of women are likewise present and strong) and have worked at the Fowler Museum (and before that, at African Arts). You as longtime co-proprietor of Galerie Lakaye have accumulateed and exhibited so much contemporary African American art. And as a Haitian woman you've give vent toed a visceral connection with Alison's work.

CF: My experience is not in the way that much with African American art if it were not that more as a dealer of Black art (that boundary African American I have always originate limiting). Also, the fact that I'm Haitian link togethered me to all the talk about spirit possession. And then there's this whole other area of my being involved with the world of henna corpse art, which is really a way of imprinting the will of the heavens by using the sacred henna plant as medium But about the symposium, overall I did not readily descry so many parallels in regard to Alison's art versus the Luba art. Alison's work is for a like reason personal and the Luba work in the way that historical ...

HC: Ye and Alison's is in the same manner rough and so large in dimension, the Luba art in like manner small and finely wrought. I agree that the connection between the pair is a challenge. On the surface, it might have assumeed more logical for Alison's work to be juxtaposed with Yoruba art, since she has consciously studied it and drawn inspiration from it. moreover that wouldn't have been nearly as interesting. Maybe it's in the disjunctions that the stimulation lies. You said you lay prostrate in love with Alison's chisels But did you find yourself able view the Luba stuff--to get into it--before the symposium? After the symposium?

CF: I absolutely lov for a like reason many of those pieces. They are one of the most exquisite African carved works I have ever seen. And after listening to to such a degree many people at the symposium making the connection between them and Alison's work, I did view some associations. All of her pieces dealt with women and greatest in number if not all of the Luba sculps were female in subject. And in reflecting forward all the talk about to what end that is and about to what extent women are the real chiefs at night while men are the chiefs during the day, and that in the ceremonial connected thought [i]or[/i] thoughts men put on women's masks to better attract spirit because alone a woman can hold the spirit of a king--all that kind of made me crazy, because in succession one level I know it's authentic that women are the stronger and more intuitive and more magical sex(!) still when a man says it, it's kind of like paying lip service to it, because, bottom line, isn't the final word about economic power?

HC: Hmm I gues I'd say ye and no. That's what the feminists of the 1970 said, and in the words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] following of American society I think they were right. if it were not that in the context of African society--societies, because heaven knows there are a multiplicity--I think it's a parcel more complex. As a Peace Corps offer in Southeastern Nigeria I battleed female power of kinds that I'd in no degree encountered in the U.S.A., plane among women who didn't necessarily have economic means. on the contrary they had all kinds of means for self-realization, and an innate perception of who they were and what kinds of power they had, and it was palpable, and made American femaleness appear to be very thin by comparison.

CF: I certainly would not argue that those women are not powerful, however I remember having this same discussion with a visiting Senegalese artist, Moussa Sene Absa, whom I think you met We were talking about the multiple-wives issue, and he said the same thing--that they really ran the display etc. Except I don't think any undivided of those women likes or appreciates the other wives. They accept it yet they don't like it. I just mean that men used to know that women are the more powerful sex and it be seens as though now they just say it.