Paper short abstract:

This paper, based on field material on masquerades from the Democratic Republic of Congo, amongst others, will consider alternative cultural perceptions and sensory orders in which the properties and experiences of colour participate in a more holistic, processual aesthetic synthesis.

Paper long abstract:

While colour is a subject that many Africanist art historians have dealt with in their publications and exhibitions, the topic is still reliant on a limited number of studies and is in need of critical renewal. This paper demonstrates that Africanists can benefit more from cross-cultural explorations combined with inter-disciplinary approaches than from restrictive Euro-American methodologies. Explorations of colour that consider the visual in conjunction with other senses such as hearing, touch and smell, stand to gain important insight into non-Western cultures' range of perceptions. This broader approach needs to examine the materiality of coloring substances and the role of all their properties within a more holistic, processual and performative aesthetic synthesis.

Kifwebe masquerades of Songye and Luba peoples in the Democratic Republic of Congo are just one example showing that colour applications are not a fixed feature and may be ephemeral and subject to shifting perceptions, groupings and evocations. As an inter-ethnic institution marked by colonial and post-colonial events, colour use emerges as a significant indicator of cultural and socio-political variation in space and time. Regional contacts and exchanges, local and distant trade networks and globalizing forces have all impacted on transformations and on the colouring of secular and ritual performances of bifwebe and other creative expressions.

With the emphasis on a perennial definition of authenticity maintained by art market connoisseurship, the red, white and black triadic tradition, especially associated with Central Africa is, in fact, an ahistorical construct obscuring much more diversified, dynamic and different contextual temporalities.