Africa, The Sainsbury African Galleries
We visited an exciting exhibition called Africa, The Sainsbury African Galleries which is at British Museum. These galleries display the artefacts from the whole African continent and from many historical periods. The galleries also provide some important works by the foremost artists from Africa today.
According to our theory lecture which is related to this exhibition, we know that early contacts between Europe, Africa and Asia were based on trade in 1600. At that period they started the cultural exchanges. Collections in museums are about historic artefacts, natural history and CURIOTIES from exotic cultures.
After 1850, England and other European countries began to colonize the other coutries, even other continents like Africa. For instance, a quarrel cause of unfair trade between Britain and Benin led to a Briain invasion. The Royal palace was destroyed and treasures were taken back to Europe and bought by museums.
From 1870, the Europe museus began to display African artefacts to emphasize their PRIMITIVE. Many European artists use African art and elements as their inspiration. In this exhibition we saw many exotic art works. Among them, a piece of work called Mans Cloak impressed me. That is a mans cloth made of recycled metal foil bottle-neck wrappers and copper wire. The artist made this cloak using traditional handcraft skills(narrow-strip woven silk) and very modern ways.
No comments:
Post a Comment