Archive for April, 2005
The Bongo and Belanda art of southern Sudan: terrific sculptures finally being seen
The newspaper of the University of Illinois alerted us to an African art show displaying pieces from the collection of one of the university’s most distinguished alumni, Richard Faletti. When we searched out Mr. Faletti on the web, we were introduced to the funerary sculpture of the Bongo and Belanda, a little known art form from southern Sudan, a region inhabited by people who have been evicted from their homelands by their British colonizers, then fell victim to Arab slave trade and then to a vicious civil war and yet further enslavement by the Arab government in Khartoum. Their art reinforces the conviction that these Sudanese are at a high level when it comes to their cultural tradition, a fact which can only confirm that they operate at an equally high plain in many other endeavors as well. That Arab Sudanese see them as nothing more than slaves is very much a travesty. Read the rest of this entry »