Antique Trado-Magico-Arts of the Africans: Communicating and Connecting Ancestral History with Modernity

Abstract

This article focused on the impact of African Traditional Religion’s ancient artefacts, relics, symbols and masks in contemporary communities and implication for modern artisans. The world marked by cultural skirmish with Europeans, led to trans-border movement of sacred worship elements which represents African culture. Within historical and cultural contexts, some of these sacred elements passed through modification and distortions but still relatively survive the odds and continued to potently communicate values. Evidently, modern day artisans especially the sculptors, utilized African Traditional Religion’s worship elements in their work to engage with empirical explanation, analyse contemporary issues and foster relativity across cultures thereby cumulating to a heritage referred to as traditional carrier of cultural memory, identity and social values which continued to affect individual and collective beliefs. The method implored qualitative analysis which consist interpretation of secondary data collated from books, journals, dictionaries, encyclopedia and internet sources. Nevertheless, primary data were also collated from series of interview carried out among various culture custodians. The discovery from this study proved that Africa’s ancient artefacts, relics, symbols and masks - the subject matter, suggest that, African societies should take cognisance of the spiritual and historical values of these artefacts which induce modern artisan’s work. Inferably, from these findings, African Traditional Religion’s ancient artefacts, relics, symbols and masks presents inspiration and illumination to uphold, preserve and maintain cultural heritage via museums, heritage sites and digital platform-often reproduced in various forms such as crafts, textile, sculpture and unpixellated pictures.