Hyena by Mikita Brottman

Author:Mikita Brottman
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: REAKTION BOOKS

Pieter Hugo, Abdullahi Mohammed with Mainasara, Ogre-Remo, Nigeria, 2007, C-print.

Pieter Hugo, Mummy Ahmadu and Mallam Mantari Lamal with Mainasara, Abuja, Nigeria, 2005, C-print.

The gadawan kura believe that their charms, concoctions and incantations make them invulnerable to hyena attacks. One of Hugo’s more disturbing photographs shows Abdullahi’s six-year-old daughter, Mummy, sitting astride the back of a large hyena. ‘She cannot be harmed’, said Abdullahi. ‘She has taken a potion of traditional herbs and has been bathed with it. So her safety from the animals is guaranteed for the rest of her life.’ In the city streets, the hyena men play with their animals and sell charms to onlookers that allow them to do the same; these charms are also said to protect against the curses and spells that many Nigerians believe are responsible for their misfortunes. In some respects, then, the performance of the gadawan kura reinforces the hyena’s reputation as hostile, evil and possibly infernal in origin.

In Hugo’s photographs, the hyenas are bound with woven muzzles attached to thick, heavy chains, and some of the men are depicted with sticks or clubs. The possibility of barely suppressed animal violence erupting is obviously what makes these hyenas compelling spectacles – or effective partners in crime. Their role in the act is to behave like savage and untamable creatures that have temporarily become placid, thereby endorsing the power of the charms, potions and amulets on sale. Significantly, however, Hugo notes that every one of the hyena men had scars on his face, legs and hands.

In 2005 Hugo and Abiola spent eight days travelling with the gadawan kura; they returned again in 2007 to take more photographs. The resulting images, exhibited in galleries worldwide, can also be seen on Hugo’s website (www.pieterhugo.com). Interestingly, the photographer chose not to picture the men in the city streets where they plied their trade; instead, he shows them posing with their animals in bleak, wasteland settings – on a dusty backstreet, under a massive flyover, in a stretch of wilderness behind factories with broken windows. The titles of the photographs include the names of both the humans and animals depicted, along with a reference to the various cities in Nigeria where the images were taken. The portraits imply that a new kind of trans-species relationship is emerging in these bleak zones of poverty and uncontrolled urbanization. Critic Will Smith points out that

the compositions isolate individual men and animals in an otherwise depopulated landscape of shantytowns and highway overpasses. These are spaces in flux: streets and concrete houses appear to be either under construction or already in ruins. The partial infrastructure suggests an equally incomplete consolidation of the codes and conventions of urban life.24

The choice of backdrop not only makes the hyenas seem all the more totemic, but also emphasizes the in-between-ness of the hyenas, as well as their handlers. Both men and beasts, the photographs seem to imply, are unwanted creatures reduced to lives of scavenging on the margins of society, living every day with the simmering threat of repressed violence.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.