African Dwellings and Black Art.

Agreed, African scultural pieces look sinister. To laymen like me, they bear little resemblance to the natural elements they are intended to portray. Most of us would concur that African wood carvings for instance are fitting only in the dwelling places of traditional medicine men or practitioners of African Traditional Religion. Maybe it is our loyalty to Christianity or Islam, but these art works tend to conjure one strong concept in our minds- voodoo. Should one bring home a festival mask, a headress or a figurine, other persons around may be hard put to conceal their dislike for the piece, which they fear might come alive in the dead of night and carry out unimaginable ills, the way dolls do in American horror movies.
       We only have to look beyond the over-large heads, the seemingly misshapen mouths, the unnaturally big eyes to see that African sculptures possess such sweetly intoxicating beauty. They are dedications to beauty, fertility, graciousness and goodness. The big size of a head for instance in most African cultures, being disproportionate in comparism with the rest of the body of a sculpture, represents the importance of the head in determining one's destiny.
       So you might want to add some African wood carvings to the furnishings of your home, and trust me, you will be very safe in doing that, not counting the aesthetic beauty these pieces dispense or their uniqueness. African cities are not lacking of talented and skilled artists. Let us patronize our own then, and be more truely African in doing that.