Secrecy: African Art That Reveals and Conceals examines the relationships among art, knowledge, and secrecy in Africa. Whether in initiation ceremonies, the royal courts, divination practices, or elaborate works of art and architecture, African cultural forms often draw attention to secret knowledge at the same time that they conceal its content. This book explains the language of secrecy in African art. It explores who has rights to the secret, the ways art transmits knowledge, how art marks boundaries, and how secrecy affects Western understanding of African art. It contains images of sculpture, textiles, and architecture—including the front of a chief’s house and a masking association’s dance enclosure—as well as masquerade performances and kings in regalia from more than thirty societies across Africa. The masks, figures, emblems, and other works may signify the presence of secrets, but are not secret themselves; often, what is secret is either invisible (the breath of an ancestor, for example, sealed inside a sculpture) or apparently uninteresting (grains and bones may hold secrets). Secrecy shows that what is hidden or insignificant is often more essential than what is displayed. This book examines secrecy as an aesthetic channel of communication; as a social and political divider; and as a form of property and power. Merging data from local studies with theoretical observations on boundaries, property, language, and power, the author proposes new ways of thinking about knowledge and artistic creativity in Africa.

Exhibition catalogue edited by Mary H. Nooter, with foreword, Art and Secrecy by Kwame Anthony Appiah; introduction and chapters written by the author: Introduction: The Aesthetics and Politics of Things Unseen with essay, Secrecy and Society: The Paradox of Knowing and the Knowing of Paradox by T.O. Beidelman; Chapter I. The Visual Language of Secrecy with catalogue and essays: Insight, or, Not Seeing is Believing by by Allen F. Roberts, Through the Cosmic Flower: Secret Resistance in the Mural Art of Sotho-Tswana Women by Gary van Wyk; Chapter II. Secret Knowledge as Ownership and Power with catalogue and essays: Agbaa: Dangme Art and the Politics of Secrecy by Nii Otokunor Quarcoopome, The Leopard Who Sleeps in a Basket: Akuapem Secrecy in Everyday Life and in Royal Metaphor by Michelle Gilbert; Chapter III. The Physical and Social Boundaries of Secrecy with catalogue and essays: Eastern Pende Constructions of Secrecy by Z.S. Strother, Art and Secret Agency: Concealment and Revelation in Artistic Expression by Suzanne Preston Blier, Sigma! The Pilgrim’s Progress and the Logic of Secrecy by Cesare Poppi; Chapter IV. Coda: Secrecy and the Other with catalogue and essays: Secrecy and Objectivity in the Methodology and Literature of Ifa Divination by ‘Wande Abimbola and Barry Hallen, Seduction, Surrender, and Portable Paradise: Dogon Art in Modern Mali by Rachel Hoffman; and Conclusion: The Impact of the Unseen.. Published and distributed by The Museum for African Art and Prestel, Munich, February 1993. 256 pp. Cloth: ISBN 3-7913-1230-8, Paper: ISBN 0-945802-12-9. LCCN: 92-38495.