tent post, unrecorded Tuareg artist

The Tuareg, the southernmost Amazigh (Berber) people, have historically been seminomadic pastoralists who live in the Saharan and Sahelian regions of Northwestern Africa (southern Algeria, western Libya, eastern Mali, northern Niger, and northeastern Burkina Faso). Today they are also settled agriculturists and city dwellers. The Tuareg achieved independence from French colonial rule in the 1950s and 1960s after two decades of resistance, using their mastery of the desert to support national independence movements. In addition, some groups fought for Tuareg independence from autonomous nation-states. Well-established caravan routes throughout Northwest Africa facilitated the spread of Islam from the seventh century. Tuareg worldviews incorporated and shaped Islam, which became integral to the conceptual content of Tuareg art objects. The tent, also known as ehen, was historically an essential part of material life. It was given to a woman on her wedding day by her family, along with other domestic items. The tent’s assembly formed an important part of a wedding ceremony. The elaborately decorated tent poles, such as those displayed here, were both functional and conceptual: They held up the tent wall mats and served to hang leather bags and clothing while also demarcating important spatial boundaries. First, the long, minimally ornamented tent post to your right would have separated the domestic space of the tent from the outside realm of uncontrolled spirits. Second, the elaborately carved posts to the left of the door would have divided the tent’s inner space into gendered areas with different degrees of privacy. Tuareg society, while matrilineal, is highly stratified into socioeconomic classes and endogamous groups, meaning that artistic production was historically held within families whose special status was tied to their ability to manipulate materials. The members of the artisan group, the Inaaden, may have carved these wooden tent poles and decorated them with geometric patterns. In addition, the production and use of art objects was highly gendered. The carving of tent poles was most likely done by men, while women sewed the tent cover from goat skin as a communal female activity. Geometric patterns on the pole and the division of domestic space may reflect Tuareg cosmology and its intersections with wider Islamic practices. Written by Nazanin Amiri. Within the highly stratified and nomadic Tuareg society, artists historically formed an endogamous class, meaning that members of this class married exclusively within it. Known as the Inaden, these families of ritual specialists controlled the technologies and esoteric knowledge of artistic production. As mediators between human and spirit realms, the Inaden occupied a powerful, if feared, position of ambiguity in Tuareg society. Defined gender roles further divided artistic production into female and male activities. For example, male Inaden produced silver jewelry, metal tools, weapons, and most wooden objects; whereas, female Tinaden created intricate leather works and some wooden objects. This male/female binary complemented another important oppositional relationship: the inhabited domestic space of a the tent, versus “wild” space. Carved wooden tent posts created spatial divisions according to gender and beliefs in an uncontrolled spirit world.