Co-sponsored by International Programs and The Project for the Advanced Study of Art and Life in African (PASALA).

The Cultured Body is a public conference on African body arts, including fashion, body painting, tattooing, and other forms of personal adornment. All of the invited presenters have particular interest in the role of African body arts in processes of cultural change, both in contemporary and historical contexts. In addition, the conference will bring together scholars whose work focuses on the influence of African clothing and body arts on Western arts and fashion.

View Revised Conference Schedule >>
Call for Papers - Graduate Student Conference>>

The Cultured Body will focus on the potential insights the arts of adornment provide into history, religious and spiritual beliefs, political practices, and aesthetic systems in Africa and beyond. This examination of the exchange of objects and styles, and the transformation of their meanings as they travel, has great relevance far beyond the field of African art history. Students and faculty in history, anthropology, sociology, geography, women’s studies, and numerous other disciplines will find plentiful connections to the topics presented.

The art of body adornment in Africa is important yet underaddressed in art historical research. Clothing and body adornment are a universal and highly personal form of artistic expression. They offer human beings their only opportunity to shape their presentation of self to the world. Whether created on the body itself (tattoos, scarification, body painting, coiffures) or for the body (garments, jewelry), these art forms are important and highly developed in many African cultures, often incorporating complex symbolism and regulated by sophisticated aesthetic systems.

Presenters will address a wide range of African body adornment practices, including women’s body painting in Nigeria, beadwork styles in southern Africa, and the adaptation of sacred styles of cloth to women’s fashions in Madagascar. Others will address topics less readily associated with Africa, including hip-hop fashions in South Africa and the consumption of European haute couture garments in central Africa.

Many of the papers will address how new styles offer insight into the interpretation of tradition in contemporary African contexts. Body adornments that are celebr.ated as traditional often come to represent national identities in multi-ethnic modern African nations. The elevation of local styles to national symbols may reflect complex political, economic and religious movements, with fashion and other body arts serving as a potent visual expression of both individual identities and broad cultural shifts

Other presenters will examine the appearance of African and African-style attire and adornments in Western markets, where they are adapted as broad referents to non-Western cultures. These body arts generally signify the “exotic,” their primary appeal lying in their difference from that which is familiar. Invited scholars will address the long history of African influence on western fashion. Topics will include the influence of African material at World’s Fairs in the early 20th century on US fashion and the contemporary wave of African-based “ethnic” jewelry.

For questions or more information please e-mail Sarah-Adams@uiowa.edu or Victoria-Rovine@uiowa.edu.