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Wednesday, April 15, 2009

ILE – IFE CULTURE

Ile- Ife, the cradle of the Yoruba race is located in the present day Osun State. The uniqueness of Ile-Ife or simply Ife in Africa history manifested itself at many important levels in the cosmology of the universe, the centre at which the first man was created or molded in clay and given the breath of life. In spiritual terms Ife had been and remains a holy city, home of Divinities (Orisa) of which the king the Oni is the living embodiment. At the political level, the culture of the region Ile-Ife was the source, the centre from which the kings of the numerous kingdom and empires including Oyo, Benin, Ketu etc were sent to rule. Ife remains the source of the legitimacy of these and other rulers.
From the point of view of the cultural history of Africa, Ile-Ife was an early centre of urban tradition. The dynasty of Oduduwa and other predynastic system before it centered on the Obatala, Orisa Nla are within a time span of one thousand years or more.
The art of Ife combines terracotta, bronze and stone sculptures; these are done in life sizes or naturalistic styles.
The Ife terracuttas represents kings, Queens and commoners (even criminal and victims of human sacrifices) all these are date to between 900AD and 1400AD. As in Nok terracottas which depict animals (rams, elephants, hippos), articulation of beauty through body and facial markings, dress for the body and depiction of kingly crowns bracelets and emblems of royal and cultural authority.
Ife goes beyond its terracotta’s medium the copper, brass/bronze tradition of metal casting by the lost – wax or cire-perdue method has received extensive publicity.
Also prominent among Ife corpus is the stone sculptures. These include obelisks, representations of humans and fish, stools and enigmatic of cult objects, the Ife stone sculpture has northern dimensions especially in the little studied collections from Esure, some 100km. south of north-east of Ile-Ife sculpture have very important extensions in relation to arts of Benin and Owo.

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