Moko Jumbie
Steel sculpture; female figure of a stilt-walker (Moko Jumbie). Figure has articulated limbs, painted black. Wears a loincloth composed of plastic and synthetic fibres, shoulder pieces made from nylon netting and gold-sprayed metal breast ornaments. Openwork copper pipe skirt soldered together and hooked onto waist of figure. Numerous composite objects attached to figure including wooden masks and comb; metal bells, keys and toy aeroplane; plastic ornaments sprayed gold; textile decorations. Figure wears gold-sprayed leather and synthetic trainers with toes exposed. Wooden mask with attached vertical headdress made of strips of sheet metal sprayed gold with multiple small metal objects attached including keys, figures, chains, and bells. Wings secured to back of figure, sprayed black and gold. Figure has spiral copper armlet on right proper arm.
Created by Zak Ové for the British Museum's Celebrating Africa season.
The Museum commissioned these figures to coincide with London’s Notting Hill Carnival at the end of August. Moko Jumbie figures became a key feature of carnival in Trinidad in the early 1900s. Oral traditions describe the Moko Jumbie as a guardian of villages who could foresee danger and protect inhabitants from evil forces. Traditionally, Moko Jumbie figures wore long colourful skirts or trousers over their stilts and masks covering their faces. They were sometimes accompanied by dwarfs – represented in the installation in the Great Court by two ‘lost souls’, on loan to the Museum from Zak Ové – who provided a visual height contrast.
Zak Ové works with sculpture, film and photography. He uses these ‘new-world’ materials to pay tribute to both spiritual and artistic African identity. This Moko Jumbie display is part of a larger body of work that draws inspiration from the Trinidad carnival. The works are born from Ové’s documentation of and interest in the African Diaspora and African history. The artist’s intellectual and creative responses to this history are filtered through his own personal and cultural upbringing in London and Trinidad. The relationship between carnival and Africa derives from the enforced movement of peoples during the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Between around 1500 and 1900, millions of people were transported from West and Central Africa to the Caribbean and North, Central and South America.
Carnival in Trinidad began as a predominantly elite event. In the late 1700s French immigrants arrived on the island to run plantations, bringing with them enslaved Africans. The plantation owners staged elaborate masquerade balls during the carnival season. Africans also brought their own masking traditions of which the Moko Jumbie is but one. Masking for Africans in the Caribbean was a way to connect to ancestors and nature as well as ideas of ‘home’. But traditional masquerades were also used to satirically depict their masters and turn a critical eye on plantation society. After full emancipation in 1838, Africans took over the streets at carnival time, using song, dance and masquerade to re-dress the still existing social inequalities.
[British Museum]
Moko Jumbie
Steel sculpture; female figure of a stilt-walker (Moko Jumbie). Figure has articulated limbs, painted black. Wears a loincloth composed of plastic and synthetic fibres, shoulder pieces made from nylon netting and gold-sprayed metal breast ornaments. Openwork copper pipe skirt soldered together and hooked onto waist of figure. Numerous composite objects attached to figure including wooden masks and comb; metal bells, keys and toy aeroplane; plastic ornaments sprayed gold; textile decorations. Figure wears gold-sprayed leather and synthetic trainers with toes exposed. Wooden mask with attached vertical headdress made of strips of sheet metal sprayed gold with multiple small metal objects attached including keys, figures, chains, and bells. Wings secured to back of figure, sprayed black and gold. Figure has spiral copper armlet on right proper arm.
Created by Zak Ové for the British Museum's Celebrating Africa season.
The Museum commissioned these figures to coincide with London’s Notting Hill Carnival at the end of August. Moko Jumbie figures became a key feature of carnival in Trinidad in the early 1900s. Oral traditions describe the Moko Jumbie as a guardian of villages who could foresee danger and protect inhabitants from evil forces. Traditionally, Moko Jumbie figures wore long colourful skirts or trousers over their stilts and masks covering their faces. They were sometimes accompanied by dwarfs – represented in the installation in the Great Court by two ‘lost souls’, on loan to the Museum from Zak Ové – who provided a visual height contrast.
Zak Ové works with sculpture, film and photography. He uses these ‘new-world’ materials to pay tribute to both spiritual and artistic African identity. This Moko Jumbie display is part of a larger body of work that draws inspiration from the Trinidad carnival. The works are born from Ové’s documentation of and interest in the African Diaspora and African history. The artist’s intellectual and creative responses to this history are filtered through his own personal and cultural upbringing in London and Trinidad. The relationship between carnival and Africa derives from the enforced movement of peoples during the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Between around 1500 and 1900, millions of people were transported from West and Central Africa to the Caribbean and North, Central and South America.
Carnival in Trinidad began as a predominantly elite event. In the late 1700s French immigrants arrived on the island to run plantations, bringing with them enslaved Africans. The plantation owners staged elaborate masquerade balls during the carnival season. Africans also brought their own masking traditions of which the Moko Jumbie is but one. Masking for Africans in the Caribbean was a way to connect to ancestors and nature as well as ideas of ‘home’. But traditional masquerades were also used to satirically depict their masters and turn a critical eye on plantation society. After full emancipation in 1838, Africans took over the streets at carnival time, using song, dance and masquerade to re-dress the still existing social inequalities.
[British Museum]