The decorative patterns of the clay objects manufactured in the center of Maghreb would go back to the Neolithic era. Another illuminating exhibition in Quai Branly.

Here the snake is a notched line, the scorpion, a cross, flies and birds are represented with rafters, the eye is a rhombus, the woman, a triangle. Here is the world of the Berber potters. Their art, which spreads from the Middle Atlas and the Moroccan Rif to Tunisia and passing by the Oranais, the Minor and the Major Kabylia and Aurès, and goes down southward to the Sahara, is to be presently discovered in Quai Branly. It goes back to an age without ovens or wheels. A proto-history of 8 000 years old, that the archaeologists of the Mediterranean circumference defined initially by some rupestrian drawings then by those present on some rocks of the desert before realizing that it is still alive, transmitted from mother to daughter, unconsciously, in clay, tattooing, tapestry, jewels and even pastry making. Just think of the gazelle horns… Because the symbol-forms are everywhere similar here. "They are animists’ survivals, explains Marie-France Vivier, commissioner, ancient scientifist of the Museum of arts of Africa and Oceania and who has just retired after having been responsible for the collections of North Africa in the Quai Branly. We also find protective magic patterns and intimate images of the woman: fertility, coupling, menstruation, childbirth.”

Esthetics of the arid counties

These patterns are perpetuated in the Moslem world, during colonization, and our modernity did not yet completely kill them because this esthetics is that of arid counties and very remote mountains. (…) Earthenware jars, pots, braziers, candlesticks or oil lamps tell a history without word, badly considered in this East where the husband is the unquestioned Master. An art which is more occulted by Arabo-Andalusian ceramics, more refined, that come from ancient Italy and privileged by men. However, the Berber pottery is of a beautiful creativity. Still today, from its ancestral vocabulary, personalities affirm themselves. The variety of anonymous compositions testifies it. There is not only the color of clay, different according to the areas, redder in the Major Kabylia, almost white in the Minor Kabylia, which changes. What the mother did is not just copied but is reinterpreted by the daughter. Emulation and pride are felt. Even in the works of the contemporary plastic artist, Ouiza Bacha, whose some work pieces are visible at the end of the process.

“Ideqqi, Art of Berber Women”, until September 16, Eastern Suspended Gallery of the Quai Branly Museum. Catalogue co-edited by the Museum of the Quai Branly and the 5 Continents, 95 p., 25 €

Source: Le Figaro - June 22, 2007

Translation: D.Messaoudi