sacred and secular painting: uli and yoruba orisa painting

Sacred and Secular Painting:Uli and Yoruba Orisa Painting

Uli—practiced by women in Igbo land

Orisa painting—practiced by women in Yorubaland

ancient art of decorating the walls and shrines of ancestral divinities

Materials:

Natural pigments:Red ocher, yellow ocher, white/kaolin

Egg shellsPlant juices—indigo, vines, berries and pods

Paint brushes, rags, feathers, pots, calabashes

Natural Red Pigment for ritual painting

Paint pot

Painting brushes

feather

Uli Painting

Uli design patterns

Uli decorations

Uli painting on communal shrine, igbo, Nigeria

Uli shrine wall at Nri, Igbo, Nigeria

Uli painting, Igbo, Nigeria

Uli painting

Obiora and Ada Udechukwu,Wearing Uli designed fabrics

Obiora Udechukwu, Our Journey, Acrylic on canvas, panels 3, 4, 1993

Yoruba Ritual Painting

Epa, Yoruba, NigeriaWood, pigments20th century

Painting the head of an infantIn the ritual of “knowing the inner head”

Orisa Priestess with painted forehead

Obatala shrine, Ile Ife, Nigeria

Orisa Popo ShrineOgbomoso, Nigeria

Ritual painting inside aMuseum, Osogbo, Nigeria

Sacred painting on the façade of a shrine in Ayegunle-Ekiti, Nigeria

Sacred Painting for Ogun, Ilesa, Nigeria

Oluorogbo shrine paintingIle Ife, Nigeria

Women writing on the ground at the beginning of the annual painting rituals

Women painters in front of their work, Ijero Ekiti, Nigeria

Priestess of ObaluayeIle Ife, Nigeria

The painting process,Ile Ife, Nigeria

Orisaikire Shrine painting, Ile Ife, Nigeria

Michael Harris,Love Shrine,Mixed media, 1995

Michael Harris,Soul Chart,Mixed media1995

Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Soponna, Yoruba deity of the PoxesPhotograph, 1987

Bolaji Campbell,Re-creationSoil on canvas,1994/6

Bolaji Campbell,Ahun,Soil on burlap,1999

Bolaji Campbell,Alaamu,Soil on canvas,1996

Bolaji Campbell, and the chameleon said…, oil on canvas, 2000