Impermanent by Design

In her introductory essay to the first "Ephemeral Arts" issue cheap pendants African Arts (vol. 42, no. 3), Allyson Purpura (2009) explored the ideas, motivations and outcomes - intentional and unintentional - that inform ephemeral arts with power, poignancy and meaning. Her insights equally apply to the essays compiled for this second issue on the topic. As with the first group, the essays in this volume present selected examples of Africa's visual arts that are ephemeral by virtue of their use of fragile, fugitive materials and/or their intentions of a finite "life." They also draw on the conceptual power of the ephemeral to push the boundaries of thought about the social lives of objects and people whose histories, practices, and identities are produced through them. Applying to both "traditional" and contemporary art practices, the concept allows us to break down such categorical distinctions' and offers opportunities to consider the material, conceptual, ethical, and practical challenges posed by works of art that are impermanent by design.

As a backdrop to the in-cheap rings case studies presented in this and the previous volume, this essay provides a brief overview - illustrative, rather than comprehensive - of selected categories of tradition-based African arts whose uses and meanings are closely tied to the ephemeral. While a strict definition of "ephemeral" suggests an intentionally brief lifespan, I propose to take a slightly broader view of the concept as a way to consider impermanence in particular forms and materials in Africa's tradition-based arts. Many of the objects selected to illustrate my points are from the collection of the National Museum of African Art, whose mission, like most other museums, includes the preservation of objects that, in their ordinary contexts of use, would have had finite a lifespan. The preservation, conservation, and stabilization work of museums reflects a "cultural response, one shaped within a Western regime of value that, from the late eighteenth century onwards, extolled permanence as a virtue and cheap tiffany a right of sovereignty" (Purpura 2009:12). In writing this essay, I acknowledge and draw attention to Material Differences, edited by Frank Herremann (2003), which discusses the rich variety of materials employed in the making of African works of art and includes an insightful section on ephemeral arts.

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