Untitled I
Artist: Damian Boniface K. Msagula
(Tanzania, 1939 – 2005)
190 x 100 cm (approx.)
Paint on jute
Year unknown
Cashew harvest season celebration, on jute with pigments of the cashew nut. You can almost hear the music (click on the second audio track above to hear the sound).
This is a beautiful example of Msagula’s style and storytelling coming together, on one canvas he tells a whole history of his birth area, an animation on one canvas.
Full of symbols, Msagula portrays the players in the scene with simple accents. Look at the figure on the left. His face (nose), beard and clothes is diversified from the other people portrayed, who is he?
A trader? The masked person has the face of an owl in between his stilts, what does that mean? In between the people parrying we see faces all looking towards the left, who or what are they looking at?
PS: In this painting we see that the round leaves in his other paintings are from the cashew nut tree, but we still don’t know what the pointy leaves are. What do you think?