AFRICAN. ALCHEMY.

The intersect between art and

science in indigenous
knowledge
Nyokabi Musila, PhD

Dialogue on Progressive Enlightenment

North Carolina A&T State University
17th March 2011
 My journey: going full circle
Western education and socialization

“Indigenous
Pharmacy”
Pharmacy
Nominal
reincarnation

Ancestral learning
Afryqah
Berbers in Sudan?

Africa 55 COUNTRIES

Afrika 1,000,000,000
PEOPLE
 KENYA

40+ languages spoken

KiSwahili and English

THE POLITICIZATION OF CULTURE
“If we have lost touch with what our
forefathers discovered and knew, this has
been due to the system of education to which
we were introduced.”  

“This system of education prepared us for a

subservient role to Europe and things
European.  It was directed at estranging us
from our own cultures in order the more
effectively to serve a new and alien interest.”
- Kwame Nkrumah
I speak to my ANCESTORS
in a FOREIGN tongue
 AFRICAN ART
Form is implicit to function

Kuba Mukenga mask (DRC)

AFRICAN ART AND WESTERN SCIENCE

Translations to European disciplines

are partial, highly interpretative and
in danger of misrepresenting the
indigenous view

- Mudimbe’s “Invention of Africa”

 1. AFRICAN ART AND MATH

African Fractal Geometry

Fractals are repetitions of similar patterns at

diminishing scale

⅓ ⅓
The Cantor set
“When Europeans first came to
Africa, they considered the
architecture very disorganized and
thus primitive. It never occurred to
them that the Africans might have
been using a form of mathematics
that they hadn't even discovered
yet.“
-Ron Eglash
African Fractals
From homesteads to hairstyles

Dr. Gloria Gilmer

 2. AFRICAN ART AND CHEMISTRY
Ife Kingdom bronzes

Forced Europeans to re-think of the

place of Africa in art
Ife > Nigeria > West Africa
A short film about the bronze cast
process of the head of an Ife King
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8N_KeN2I_kQ
3. AFRICAN ART AND MEDICINE /
PSYCHOLOGY

African world view on good health

– body, mind and spirit

• Music
• Medicine Men
• Diviners
SENGENYA MUSIC
Medicinal Plants
 A clip from a docu-film:
My grandfather, Mulyungi wa Muli,
on Medicinemen and Diviners

http://www.sci-cultura.com/tv
 PAST TO PRESENT

The individual vs. the community

The personal narrative builds the
collective narrative

Gender balance and contribution to

society
People live with contradicting beliefs
 nairobi

http://mutuamatheka.wordpress.com/
@truthslinger
 1. African Fractals

Spirituality meets design

Distinctive, meaningful architecture in a

globalised 21st Century world
 2. African Art and Politics
“The denigration of all things African
surely contributes to this excitement
and astonishment”
- Dr Kwame Opoku

The Ife exhibition did not tour African

countries

The return of looted African artefacts

 3. African Medicinemen
In some Asian and African countries,
80% of the population depend on
traditional medicine for primary health
care

- World Health Organization

Association for African Medicinal Plants
Mandate
• Address lack of
regulation
• Document African
herbal medicines
to international
medicinal
standards
http://www.aamps.org/
b: http://www.sci-cultura.com
e: scicult{at}gmail{dot}com
t: @sciculturist