Naked Fish
Steel, paint. 1997
Collection of the artist
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Women are never supposed to know the human identity of a masquerader, lest the boundaries so carefully
constructed between humans and
spirits, men and women, be broken.
As an artist, working in metal -- a
medium usually forbidden to women in Africa -- Sokari Douglas Camp
suggests in "Naked Fish" that women may understand more than they reveal.
"I concentrated on the string vest and how nipples are
surrounded by string. The man doesn't have hands but cloth flapping, ready to do a movement like the tail of a fish. He has a basket on his head -- this is a tool that would be used to store fish or it would be used as a fish trap in the delta. The feathers and sculptured fish add to the movement. This is a style that is used by masquerade dancers.
-- Sokari Douglas Camp
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© 1998 American Museum of Natural History.
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