A Most Majestic Fly Whisk

 Abrus precatorius It isn't bad scholarship if you call it a commentary on the colonial-archival roots of African art history as a discipline.  I’m still working on the A Dance of Assassins readalong, but this sort of post is the real reason why I made this blog: things that would have (and maybe should have) otherwise stayed ugly half-formed pet theories have the space to grow into grosser and meatier forms than ever before! Been thinking about abrus seeds a lot in my spare time, thanks to the wonderful work of African art expert Bruno Claessens. As a brief intro for the uninitiated: Claessens is a scholar and gallerist who maintains a really cool blog that used to run under the name...uh, Bruno Claessens’ Art Blog...that's now folded into the website for his Duende Art Projects gallery. Though I'm still firmly convinced that even his far-reaching reform project for the African art wing at Christie's couldn't save the institution, which should be firebombed alon...

  Family photo! The star twins  Kasajja and Kawuugulu are in the middle of the back row, with their cousins Mpuunyi and  Nyoolaevvubuka framing them at their left and right, respectively. The royal spear Kawawa stands in the center, while the youngest and smallest ensemble members - the  Nyamitongo drums - wait near the alms basket and beer gourd . This post has several parents - the proximate cause was my stumbling across stories about the haughty royal drum Karinga while trawling Kagame's dynastic histories of the Nyiginya Kingdom for setting material, but it owes a lot to Sofinho's excellent Blades with Brains  and Vulnavia's older (but also extremely cool) post A Family of Evil Swords  over at The Lovely Dark. T he most direct inspiration was provided by the  Kawuugulu ensemble: a powerful collection of item-relatives belonging to the Little White Mushroom ( Butiko , Aboobutiko pl.) Clan of the Ganda who fight malignant spirits, ward of...

Pangolins, made     for moving quietly also, are models of exactness, on four legs; on hind feet plantigrade,   with certain postures of a man. Beneath sun and moon, man slaving   to make his life more sweet, leaves half the flowers worth having,         needing to choose wisely how to use his strength;            a paper-maker like the wasp; a tractor of foodstuffs,         like the ant; spidering a length            of web from bluffs              above a stream; in fighting, mechanicked              like the pangolin - Marianne Moore Got wiped by a twelve-hour shift and worked myself into a funk listening to Jewels of Thought   on loop -  still processing Pharaoh Sanders' death - so instead of Lupupan Magic Two, we're doing pangolins; looking at a pangolin is clinically proven to reduce...