Doubly Blessed: The Ibeji Twins of Nigeria
CompletedJan 12, 2005 – Feb 27, 2005
Explores the fascinating Yoruba tradition of ibeji, which celebrates twins and the special powers they are believed to possess. Featuring approximately 90 ibeji sculptures, this exhibition presents the rich and diverse forms and expressions that Yoruba artists have achieved over the past two centuries. This show not only underscores the artistic values and aesthetic traditions of the Yoruba peoples but also addresses issues of family, religion and ritual, as well as the cycle of life and the continuity of cultural practice.
Curated by George Chemeche, author of Ibeji: The Cult of Yoruba Twins, and organized by the Museum for African Art in New York.
Accompanying symposium Twinning/Splitting: Dualities in Africa and the Diaspora included the following lectures:
o Yoruba Twins: From Dangerous to Beneficial and Back
Elisha P. Renne, Professor of Anthropology, University of Michigan
o The Other Side(s) of Twinship: Views from Across the Niger
Misty Bastian, Professor of Anthropology, Franklin & Marshall College
o The Ends of Worlds are with Twinning: Sculpture, Architecture and Disruption biafran style
Ikem Okoye, Professor of Art History, University of Delaware
o Asymetries in Yorube Twin Language
Olanike Orie, Professor of Anthropology, Tulane Universitu
o Rethinking Personhood: the Case of Being Twins
Alma Gottleib, Professor of Anthropology, University of Illinois
o The Ambivalence of Twinship: Single Twins, Double Twins, and the Civil Discourse of Dis-ease
Susan Diduk, Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, Denison University
o From Yorubaland to Disneyland: Traveling with the Twins from Africa to the New World
Marilyn Houlberg, Professor of Art History, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
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