SEEING THE UNSEEN, arts of power associations on the Senufo-Mande cultural "frontier"

311pp., b/w & colour illus., paperback, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2022

ISBN: 9780253064288

Art historian Susan Elizabeth Gagliardi "examines tensions between the seen and unseen that makers, patrons, and audiences of arts in western West Africa negotiate through objects, assemblages, and performances ... how ambiguity anchors design of the arts, and ... attempts to determine exact meanings miss the point."

"Seeing the Unseen's broadest impact will be its revisionist call for scholars to both recognize and abandon the structures of knowledge that have shaped the representation of African histories and worldviews, flattened African identities, and reinforced dangerous misconceptions of African lives as bounded by ethnicity, language, and tradition." Victoria L. Rovine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Susan Elizabeth Gagliardi is Associate Professor of Art History at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. She is author of Senufo Unbound: Dynamics of art and identity in West Africa, and she co-directs the collaborative digital project Mapping Senufo: Art, evidence, and the production of knowledge.