Ch 11 Leopard Society Emblem of the Ejagham Culture vs. Petah Coyne's Untiitled #1111

The Leopard Society is a secret, all-male organization that, according to Ejagham belief, draws its power from the leopard spirit. In their culture the leopard is admired for its speed, stealth, and lethal power. Emblems such as this one, created between 19^th to early 20^th century, were hung on the inmost walls of the sacred space of the Leopard Spirit society's house where business and ritual were conducted. The Leopard Spirit societies in villages of southeast Nigeria and southwest Cameroon serve to govern in place of centralized chieftaincy systems. Young Ejagham men initiated into these societies make their way up the ranks to gain power and prestige. The skulls of monkeys and baboons on the emblem were meant to scare away evil. The two brooms framing the center were to sweep away magic and evil and protect the society's members from harm.

Untitled #1111 (Little Ed's Daughter Margaret), is an eleven-foot assemblage of tree branches, feathers, ribbon, thread, tassels, and hundreds of silk flowers dipped in a specially formulated midnight-blue wax. The underlying figure is a cast-fiberglass statue with a hidden mechanism programmed to cause its eyes to well up with "tears" twice a day, at random times. The sculpture also includes remnants of a couture gown specially made for the figure by a dressmaker, two large stuffed fighting birds, and empty bird skins. The artist also incorporated a braid of human hair given to her by an art collector. The braid, according to Coyne, belonged to the collector's mother, a Victorian woman named Margaret who was a musician and early feminist and who died when the collector was a child. After a long and hard look at the piece, buried elements within the sculpture emerge. To me this piece is an elaborate and beautiful thing, but has a deeper, darker story.

Both the Leopard Society Emblem and Petah Coyne's Untitled #1111 (Little Ed's

Daughter Margaret) are interesting pieces that are assembled from materials that we don’t normally associate with a sculpture. The African emblems components have religious and societal meangins to their people while Petah Coyne’s work does not have such deep rooted meanings, but to me has a deeper meaning to the individual viewers of the work.