Description

Odundo’s pots--constructed in a coiling technique that is thousands of years old--comprise fluid forms that are influenced by traditional pottery from Kenya, Nigeria, and the American Southwest. They may resemble containers, but none is meant to be used as such. This thin-walled, gracefully balanced example reflects the torso of a pregnant woman and is the most recent contemporary African work in the museum’s collection. It is juxtaposed here with the oldest object in the African collection, a fragment of a figure in the same medium from Nigeria’s Nok region.