Tim Gibbon and Yard Show with Bottle Tree. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF TIM GIBBON Exhibition of Student Artwork On View at Cleveland's Here Here Gallery by Betty Gabrielli
		DECEMBER 10, 2001--Families and ancestors seen through the lens of the Yoruba culture of West Africa inform an exhibition of art installations by eight Oberlin College students now on view at Cleveland's Here Here Gallery. Translations of Ashé: Transforming Space--Art as a Ritual is the title of the show, which opened Friday with a reception featuring interpretative performances by the student artists. The exhibition will continue through January 25 at the Cleveland venue. The innovative works were developed in the College's first-semester colloquia "Ritual and Performance of the Yoruba and their New World Descendants," taught by Adenike Sharpley, an artist-in-residence with the African American Studies Department. The colloquia focuses on religious phenomena, performance, and the artistic agency of the Yoruba people. Members combine dance movement and artistic representations "to represent their own construct of a ritual," says Sharpley, who directs Dance Diaspora, the College's touring student dance company. A variety of materials are used in Translations of Ashé to honor and remember students' family members and forbearers--everything from a giant refrigerator and red footprints to giant swaths of cloth and "age-defying" lotion. In Yard Show with Bottle Tree, Cleveland Heights native Timothy Gibbons explores his heritage and how it relates to and can be expressed through southern African-American traditions dating back to the Bantu, Kongo and other West African cultures. Gibbons, a sophomore majoring in ethnomusicology, says the installation is a way for him to "remember and give thanks to my own personal roots." Juniors Rachel Hass and Alana Kenmore say their installation She Is "stems from our journeys as children of single mothers and our desire to thank and honor them for their sacrifices, love and light. Through Orisha, Ochun and Yemanjá [Yoruba deities] we wish to bring forth the nurturing sweetness they bestowed upon us … ." In New World, a construct of large sheets of paper, red paint and altar-like settings, sophomore Rachel Schaffran addresses "conflicts between my heart and my ancestry through a synthesis of Yoruba beliefs and my own." Elegba--The Crossroads and the African American Experience--honors four women in the life of senior Dominique Atchison with arrangements of red and black cloth attached to the four sides of a gallery pillar. In her project, sophomore Amanda Gill says she is "using my newfound knowledge of the West African Yoruban and Kongo roots in the New World to create a ritual honoring my mother and seeking a cure from the gods for her illness. In my ritual I am honoring my mom, Teri, in the presence of the Yoruban orisha Oshun, the goddess of rivers and lakes, with whom she shares many undeniable characteristics. My mother is ill with rheumatoid arthritis, a disease that has no 'cure' in the Western doctors' books of medicine. Therefore I am seeking from the god of medicine, Babalu Aye, another cure. I am making a yellow doll-like figurine of my mother, in the simulation of Oshun, with beads and gold transforming her into a queen. With the body of my mother in my hands, I will work the spirit through dance and transmit it into her." The exhibition also includes works by junior Imani Miller and first-year student Allison Maxwell. The Yoruba people are natives of southwest Nigeria and Benin, and number about 20 million. Unusual in Africa for their tendency to form urban communities, the Yoruba worship a variety of gods. Vestiges of their culture can also be found in Brazil and Cuba, where they were imported as slaves. Translations of Ashé is the third in a series of shows to be presented at the Euclid Avenue venue since it became an Oberlin College arts satellite last May. Here Here Gallery is open Fridays from 5:00 to 9:00 P.M. and Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 5:00 P.M. Admission is free. Rachel Schaffran and New World.
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