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| "Sprout" (Boli, ritual object) Mixed media, David B Smith Gallery, Denver, CO 2009 |
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The
driving force behind this body of work has its origin in an experience
I had about fifteen years ago. It began when I encountered a small,
encrusted, odd, animal shaped artifact I came across at the Art
Institute of Chicago Art Museum.
 photo credit The Art Institute of Chicago  photo credit The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Since that first encounter the
enigmatic shape of the object has haunted the pages of my sketchbook
and imagination. I eventually learned the object is called a Boli and
was made by the Bamana People who are members of the Mande culture of
West Africa. The Boli plays an essential role within Bamana spiritual
life. The primary function of a Boli is to accumulate and control the
naturally occurring life force called nyama for the spiritual benefit
of the community. The creature that a Boli represents is unidentifiable
and mysterious. Layers of sacrificial material that accumulate over
time create the composition of the encrusted surface. Each added layer
affords the structure greater spiritual power. The encrustation may
include the blood of chickens or goats, chewed and expectorated kola
nuts, alcoholic beverages, honey, metal, animal bones, vegetable
matter, and sometimes millet. Sometimes this added matter is so
extensive that it obscures the original form and takes on an
anthropomorphic shape. The Boli and their numerous ingredients have
been interpreted in a number of different ways. It has been suggested
that the disparate elements of which the Boli are composed symbolize
the various parts of the universe, so that the whole can be read as a
model of Bamana cosmological belief.
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| "Mist" mixed media, OKOK Gallery, Seattle Washington, 2008 |
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| "A Thousand Points of Light", mixed media, Joshua Liner Gallery, 2008 |
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A central topic in Keyes' work is his speculative imaginings about a
dystopian future, where the United States operates on the world stage
as a political and environmental tyrant (whether these works are
perceived as speculative or futuristic depends on the viewer’s point of
view). The installation A Thousand Points of Light,
a reference to the administration of George H W Bush and George W Bush Jr., creates a new
American flag revealing the United States as both predator and prey in
the political and economic “oceans” of the world.
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