IDNO

N.13051.GIJ

Description

Uli design on paper pinned up on a wooden board resting on a crate in a doorway. The patterns are curvilinear in design. Twelve inch ruler pinned beside paper.

Physical Condition: Slight yellowing of negative.

Place

W Africa; Nigeria; Eastern Nigeria; Bende

Cultural Affliation

Igbo [historically Ibo]

Named Person

Photographer

Jones, Gwilliam Iwan (known as G.I.)

Collector / Expedition

Date

1932 - 1939

Collection Name

Jones Collection

Source

Jones, Gwilliam Iwan (known as G.I.)

Format

Film Negative Black & White

Primary Documentation

Other Information

Publication: Same image published on John McCall’s G.I. Jones website with the following information: [Source: www.siu.edu/~anthro/mccall/jones/, AF] Also publisjed in Cole and Aniakor, Plate 66, caption reads: Uli designs drawn for G.I. Jones on shelf paper by a Bende woman in the late 1930s”, pp.42-43)

Context: Uli designs were common as body painting among the Ibo and Ibibio. The designs were curvilinear patters which were drawn on the skin of women and of children with dye obtained by the uli vine. (Jones,1984,p.33 )

Cole and Aniakor give a detailed description of uli, “Several techniques, pigments and styles are used by both men and women to dye and pattern their bodies for display. One of these is uli, cursive indigo patterns which have been recorded all over Igbo land. Uli is the women’s art par excellence and closely related to wall painting. These two graphic modes share many motifs and design principles despite the differences in surfaces embellished and pigments used. Uli is painted with a clear brownish liquid (made from the crushed seeds of several plants species) that turn dark blue when it has been on the skin for several minutes. Normally it is applied with a thin sliver of wood, mma nwuli, that enables the artist to create fine. delicate lines. The visual dynamism and sophistication of these styles stem from the conscious use of asymmetry, the tapering and swelling character of line and the syncopated rhythms created by a variety of hooked and curving patterns of different sizes and shapes. Uli artists are sensitively attuned to the appropriateness of designs for their human “canvases”. They will amplify a thin girl with bold patterns and modify corpulence with delicate ones, among other even more subtle approaches to this cosmetic art. Further, uli painters have developed a a fine sense of witty line-play on the shapes, creases, and modulations of the human body which emphasise its vitality, especially in motion. In these artistic celebrations of form and line, “play’ and “display” betray similar roots. The subtlety, sense of humour, and sheer inventiveness of many such paintings clearly manifest a deeply ingrained artistic sense widely shared among Igbo women. (Cole and Aniakor, 1984, pp. 38-46).

Bibliographical Reference: Jones, G.I., 1984. The Art of Eastern Nigeria (Cambridge University Press); Cole, H. & C. Aniakor, 1984. Igbo Arts: Community and Cosmos (Museum of Cultural History, University of California)

This catalogue record has been updated with the support of the Getty Grant Program Two. [Alicia Fentiman 11/10/2007]