(mellow piano music)
- [Steven] We're in the Brooklyn Museum
and we're looking at two small,
wooden figures known as Ere Ibeji.
They come from the country
that we now call Nigeria, they're Yoruba.
- [Peri] These are twin figures.
These were used by the Yoruba traditionally
as receptacles for the spirits of deceased twins.
The Yoruba have one of the highest twinning ratios
in the world, something like 45 out
of 1,000 births result in twins.
- [Steven] And twins were seen as indicative
of something special.
Twins are celebrated in Yoruba culture.
- [Peri] Unfortunately, twins don't always survive
and when a mother would lose her twin
she would consult a diviner to see what she might do
and in some cases a carver would be brought in
to carve one of these figures
to hold, as a receptacle, the spirit of that child.
- [Steven] So this was something
that the mother could then possess
that would in turn hold the spirit
of her deceased child so these would've been
intensely personal objects.
- [Peri] And they would've been kept
in shrines in her house, possibly even in her bedroom.
They could've been taken out and when they were
they would be tied and held in a cloth wrapper
around her waist.
They would've been offered millet gruel
and they would've been given libations
just as a child might be honored.
- [Steven] But it's important
to make a distinction that although these figures
are treated as if they were a child
they do not represent visually a child.
What we're seeing here are a male
and female figure and the proportions
of those figures suggest an adult body
rather than an infant's body.
- [Peri] Their bodies suggest
what we call the prime of life,
that is that critical time, that perfect time
in life, when you are no longer a child
and you haven't yet married but you have the knowledge
and you have the skills and you have the energy
in which to bring forth life.
This is the ideal for parents.
This is where they would like their kids to get.
- [Steven] So the potential that
this particular child will not reach
but is embodied here.
So what we're seeing are objects
that would've been the result of this relationship
between the mother and her diviner.
The figures themselves are wonderfully abstract.
The hair is abstracted and is the same
on both the male and the female figure.
The figures wear jewelry and the faces seem
to almost have been worn away.
- [Peri] You can tell that these figures were loved
by their mother because she has touched the faces
so often that the features have actually disappeared.
So she's rubbed oil on them to make them glisten.
She's given them offerings of food
and in the course of time these features
have all but disappeared.
She's also applied red camwood onto the bodies,
a kind of oil, which you can see residue of
and blue indigo dye to their coiffures, to their hair.
- [Steven] We're seeing this set
of relatively simple forms that are,
nevertheless, this magnet for intense spiritual
and emotional meaning.
- [Peri] The objects that we have here
in the Brooklyn Museum date to the late 19th,
early 20th century, and while these are older pieces,
this belief among the Yoruba has not died.
We find women still using these Ere Ibejis
but today they can take on new forms.
They could be plastic manufactured dolls
from China that a woman might find available
in the marketplace if she can't afford
to have a carver do these more elaborate types.
- [Steven] As I understand it, the concern is not
with the physical form of the Ere Ibeji themselves
but it's with this notion of what they can hold
and so it's an imbuing of power
and meaning within the object
rather than the object itself.
- [Peri] In many cases in African art,
we see that the form is less important
than what the object itself stands for or contains.
I think these Ere Ibeji's do have ascetic qualities
that are valuable to the Yoruba
but they're also very personal, cherished objects
that have the spirit, the essence, the aura
of your deceased child so they also
have a strong connection to your past
and also your future because there is a belief
that any child that dies will be reincarnated
in another generation.
- [Steven] I'd feel very privileged to look
at an object that had such a powerful connection
to somebody at such a vulnerable moment in their lives.
(mellow piano music)