Celine Wachsmuth
Abstract
During my graduate internship at the Denver Art Museum, I worked on many objects slated for display in the reinstallation of the Arts of Africa and Arts of Oceania Galleries. Foremost among them was my work with a carved figure of the Yoruba orisa, Esu. Esu is commonly known as the “Trickster God” and this Esu figure had a few tricks of his own to share with me and the laboratory. The main condition issue with this Esu figure was the significantly denatured hide strands. In addition to being brittle, powdery, and inflexible, they are holding a significant amount of weight from being threaded with cowrie shells. This figure has undergone several previous treatments, most of which were failing prior to my treatment in 2023. Not having much experience treating hide, I turned to my colleagues for advice. Amidst the suggestions and conversations, I was pointed in the direction of an Alaska based conservator with a trick for using Tyvek to line and support hide. I tested this method and tweaked it to suit the needs of Esu’s treatment. This talk will detail my conversations and experimentation with different backing materials, adhesives, and application methods.
Additionally, this talk will explore an ethical debate that started when I first began the initial assessment and background research. Esu is an orisa who receives many offerings and it is likely that this figure would have received them during his use-life. When confronted with this knowledge regarding an Indigenous American object, there is increasingly a professional consensus to find a way to leave some sort of offering for the material or being in question. This is not so straightforward for powerful objects of other cultures. I struggled with whether it would be right of me, a white non-Yoruba person, to leave offerings for Esu. I slowly grew the conversation to a wider net of colleagues resulting in mixed opinions. Ultimately, I decided to leave offerings. It was after I made this decision that I learned the then Anderman Family Curatorial Fellow for Arts of Africa is Yoruba and spoke with him and the Mellon Curator of Native Arts about my decision. I will detail my thought process and conversations in hopes of continuing the nuanced discussion of leaving offerings when there is no cultural representative who can be easily contacted for guidance.