Africa’s Health Art

Africa’s Health Art

by Richard Chowning

 

Healing and art have a very close relationship in Africa. Art in forms of painting, carving, and drawing have illustrated and empowered African health practices for centuries on the continent. Masks, posters, murals, even caskets are the media of the art.

 

African artisans, right across the continent, often carve or weld images of their gods or ancestors. These icons represent the ultimate bond between art and healing because it is believed the the represented deity has the ability to heal. The representations of the healing gods can be grand monuments or personal power sources that are kept under ones bed.

 

Traditional masks are used among some ethnic groups to protect them from diseases. The masks do not contain any real power in them until they are blessed by a healer or diviner. Then the masks take on power to ward off spiritual and physical attacks. The images are not representations of power, the mask itself has power.

 

One of the most graphic forms of African health art are the canvas murals that herbalists in urban areas erect behind their wares. A series of extremely explicit illustrations of diarrhea, excreted worms, vomiting, hemorrhoids, constipation and many more are depicted. The illustrations not only grab the attention of passers by, they also serve as a display of the range of the healer’s remedies.

 

There are health education posters, too. African artists’ work can be seen attached to walls in waiting areas and examining rooms of clinics and hospitals. They depict anything from the stages of a round worm infestation to the the birth of a child. They are most often brightly colored and cartoonish in style.

 

Preventative healthcare, the most vital part of any healthcare system, has the greatest share of African, health art. They normally come in form of posters. Posters that announce campaigns for vaccinations or HIV/AIDs prevention can be seen on city walls, lamp posts, and trees and mud walls in villages. Some of these have become collectors items and are cared for in museums. In this same genre are silk screened T-shirts that advertise vaccination campaigns or warn against drug use.

 

Online communities and African forums often have discussions of African Art in all of its forms. Some even discuss the increasing interest in buying african art.

 

One piece of art that Africans can opt to purchase is a casket. Caskets, fall into the category of after-life care art. Carpenters all over Africa construct caskets. A few are very accomplished artists, who use caskets as their media. In West Africa these casket artists design and construct burial vessels that look like airplanes, cars, radios or even fish. It is too bad that these objects are buried, they are great pieces of art that are not made everywhere in the world. It could be said that African health art finds in place in this world and the world beyond.

About the Author

Richard Chowning lived in Africa for 25 years (16 in Kenya and 9 in Benin).  He continues to travel to Africa on business and pleasure.  He manages and writes for a half dozen African oriented websites.

What are the top schools in Africa for the arts and writing?

I am studying abroad, and I want to see someplace very cultured, closeby to a rainforest, wildlife, and bustling city-dwellers

in south africa the best place to study at with the surroundings you mentioned,i would recommend CAPE TOWN at STELLONBOSCH UNIVERSITY.