Showing posts with label the Kara. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the Kara. Show all posts

Monday, October 10, 2011

MASKS

HIDING FOR FUN and TRADITION 
October 10, 2011 

"The mask I wear is ME"

COLLAGE OBSESSION, one of my favorite challenge blogs, requested participating artists to create some art around the theme of MASKS. I wonder about the use of masks...their purposes: fun, camouflage, fear, embarrassment, tradition, religion...the reasons one wears a mask are many. Poet Paul Laurence Dunbar wrote:
We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes-
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be overwise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask......
 


This last tribal piece is of an Ethiopian friend of mine...an elder in the southern part of the country's Omo Region...a member of the Kara tribe. He and his tribe paint masks on their faces and decorate their bodies as a daily ritual...it's one of their traditions. I love the natural mask! 
Thanks for stopping by...hope to see you for my next posting!

xox,
abbyj

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

KARA VILLAGE, ETHIOPIA

My Extended Families...the Kara

February 16, 2011...

The reason I posted the previous video about the Kara tribe in the Omo Region of Southern Ethiopia... is because I saw another Kara video on a friend's blog, borrowed from YouTube.  It was NOT what these people are truly like...it only showed beautiful photos of what an inventive photographer dreamed up for them. They're world renown for their intricate  and very often magnificent body and face painting... something they do as is their tradition...NOT only for tourists! They are very wonderful people...warm, curious, fun-loving...who are exposed to few tourists. As this changes...IF this changes... (for they're a vanishing tribe in a very primitive area,) I imagine they'll do whatever it takes to become more well known...like having a photographer pose them in ways that are unfamiliar and atypical of WHO THEY ARE. I have two adopted families within THIS Kara tribe...they've been my extended family for 8 years now. I'd like to share their photos with you...
First, the family of my friend, Walla...her husband and 4 children (one of them named ABBY...after me!!)



This is Walla with Abby
Walla's husband, Dido with their oldest, son Gallipo...holding my "flat" grandchildren...Flat Lilly and Flat Hunter who travel with me everywhere!


Now, Buno and her family...











We speak to each other through an interpreter, with pantomime...and with our hearts.

  
Thanks for checking in...I hope this post was of some interest to you. Please come back soon...  XOX,  abbyj