B. The Transformation of the Oshun Forest through Wenger

Wenger’s development of the Oshun forest, building upon the traditional hermeneutic principles and ritual activity associated with the forest, develops these metaphysical conceptions, articulating them in physical terms through the conceptualization represented by the creation and siting of her sculptural works in the forest. Her achievements could, therefore be interpreted as metaphysical and artistic. Metaphysical, as consisting in a reinterpretation of traditional Yoruba cosmology in relation to the forest, and artistic, because these metaphysical ideas are projected, not just in terms of her highly expressive verbal expositions, but through the individuality of her art, which is created and sited through a creative relationship with the forest.

Her work, therefore, could be seen as demonstrating a relationship to both geography and cosmography. Its geographical dimension is represented by her creation of modifications in landscape that can be described in terms of correlates among physical forms, which are integrated with the natural structures created by the landscape itself. It could be described as cosmographic because it embodies a representation of the forces that constitute the metaphysical structure of the cosmos. It is, therefore, cosmogeographic because it tries to suggest and embody the essence and form of a cosmography through the modification of physical space realized through correlations between sculptural forms and between these forms and landscape structures within which they are sited.

Her sculptural work, and its siting in relation to the landscape constituted by the forest, could be seen as interpreting the forest as a giant, organic mandala, a visually realized constellation of spiritual personalities united within a metaphysical matrix, in which the constituent forces of the cosmos, as embodied in the Yoruba deities, are here interpreted in terms of sculptural forms. The interrelationships among thses forces are further visualized in terms of the spatial relationships between the sculptures. The totality of the cosmic framework within which these relationships emerge is suggested by the spatial relationships between these sculptural forms and between these forms and the natural structures created by the forest within which they are sited.

Like the mandala, her metaphysical reinterpretation of the forest through language and art depicts this physical space as capable of interpretation in both centripetal and centrifugal terms. In centripetal terms, this intervention in the forest enables its perception as an expression of the emanation of the cosmos from a center and in centrifugal terms as expressive of the integration of the cosmos in relation to a unifying reality. Figures 1 to 4 represent central aspects of this artistic realization of a metaphysical vision7.

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7 The conception of the mandala developed here derives from “Mandala” in Encyclopedia Britannica, 1971.Figure 1 :This map shows a section of the shrine complex, composed of Wenger’s sculptural forms, surrounded by thick forest, suggesting the physical and symbolic integration of the shrine/sculpture framework into the surrounding landscape. The sculptures depicted here are identified by the names of the deities they represent. Worship of the deities takes place within the shrine sculptures. The form of the shrines suggests the attributes as well as the narratives associated with the deities, and symbolizes the manifestation of the attributes of the deity through his or her narratives. The close spatial relationship between the sculptures demonstrates a metaphysical significance in relation to the deities they symbolize. This significance consists in the coexistence of divergent but ultimately complementary aspects of the Ultimate. The presence of the river encircling the shrine/sculpture complex, as understood in spiritual traditions in the south of Nigeria, represents a source of spiritual power, which concretizes itself in certain locations, of which this section of the forest chosen for the shrine/sculpture configuration could be one (Beier, 1975,p.34-35p.66). Among the deities whose sculptures are represented are the following: Obatala, the Lord of the White Cloth, symbolizing his purity of being, also represented by the pristine clarity of the stream at dawn. This purity of being also suggests his essence as the primal expression of the Ultimate. His being is the repository of the ultimate guiding force of the existence of the human person’s earthly journey. He is the creative force that molds the physical frame of the human being as a vehicle for his or her spirit as that is implanted by the Ultimate.He is also the primal ground from which all the deities have emerged through a cataclysmic process described as being smashed to pieces by a boulder rolled onto him by his slave The remaining pieces were reintegrated in a calabash by the occult power of Orunmila, the Lord of wisdom, but other fragments have escaped and become the other Orisha or deities. This could be interpreted as symbolizing the emergence of the constituent spiritual personalities that represent the creative power of Spirit in the cosmos through a creative process similar to the depiction of rupture described in the Lurianic Kabbalah in which the cosmos came into being through divine retraction and the shattering of the phenomenal universe into its present shape. These mythic images, along with associated astronomical ideas on the universe as having been created through a primal explosion or Big Bang, suggest an image of cosmic creation as an agonistic process, as in childbirth (Idowu,1962, p.71-75,Beier,1975,p.34-35,Osundare,Jeyifo,2001p.xvii-xviii;Tidjani-Serpos,Armstrong,1993,p.266-271,Soyinka,1979,p.69,82-83). The other Orisa include Eshu, Lord of paradox, he who “throws a stone today and kills a bird yesterday”, wearer of the cap that is both black and red, sage adult and mischievous child, and, yet, holder of the creative power that sustains the cosmos, the ase of Olodumare, the supreme being. He could be seen as embodying the paradoxical coexistence of contraries as fundamental to existence, as symbolizing the cosmos as the axis within which contraries revolve and converge (Idowu, 1962,80-85;Gates,1989,3-43,Abimbola,1975).Ogun, warrior, hunter, Lord of iron, cyclonic force, master of the crossing of primordial realms between deities and human beings (Soyinka, 1990,1979).Oshun, provider of children to those in need, “the young… velvet skinned concubine”,“desirable and seductive”, “whose life giving force [is] available to all [and also] the ancient woman steeped in magic”, “the archaic force of water”, cradle of deities, guide of Timohin, founder of Oshogbo(Beier,1975, 35-38,83)Figure 2:A detail of the tortoise gate entrance to the forest shrine complex. The tortoise here is “not the comic [trickster] character of the Yoruba tales [as the fox, his counterpart in English folklore] but “the weight of the world, the heaviness of the earth” “flying up weightless by inspiration” “from Oshun: as if the worshipper entering the deeper part of the Oshun forest will be able to rise from the weight of [their] own body into the ecstasy that is offered by [the goddess](Wenger, 1977, p.39; Wenger and Chesi, 1983,p.160; Beier, 1975,p.83-84). Figure 3:A picture of the shrine house of the Ogboni cult, who venerate the powers of the earth. Beier describes the artistic form of this shrine and its symbolism most evocatively: “Three enormous thatch roofs rise against the sky like three giant lizards”. The reptilian forms suggested by the sweep of the thatch huts as well as by the dynamic thrust of the elongated sculptural forms they contain “symbolize the forces that inhabited the earth before [humanity], already charged with magical forces, which [humankind] tries to filter and use in [their] rituals for Ile, the earth spirit…” (Beier, 1975, p.79-80). This idea of chthonic powers that predate humanity and yet with which he can relate is developed in another context in a manner that suggests its suggestive potency in Clifford Simak’s fantasy story “The Whistling Well” in which Parker encounters prehistoric creature who were worshiped by the dinosaurs who had swallowed small stones as expression of worship. As Parker tries to escape from the prehistoric creatures out of fear of their inhuman strangeness, they call to him, wanting to identify with him, but as insists on escaping from their desire to relate with him they let him go with the parting words: “Pass, strange one. For you carry with you the talisman we gave our people. You have with you the token of your faith’ alluding to the stone Parker recovered from the gizzard of one of the dinosaurs he discovered in his explorations of the landscape where the prehistoric creature have lain in the earth for ages. He responds in fearful denial that he has no relationship with them he says ‘Not my faith, not my talisman swallowed no gizzard stone” recalling the dinosaurs’ act of veneration but the creatures respond “but you are brother” they told him “to the one who did” thereby indicating their own understanding of his relationship to the dinosaurs as a fellow dweller on the same planet as them and therefore their brother, even though they are separated by the distance of ages. Parker’s concluding reflections suggest an aspect of the ecological significance of Wenger’s sculptural interpretation of Ogboni lore as represented in the architecture and art of the shrine house. Parker’s summative conclusions are: “Brother, he thought, they said brother to me. And indeed I am. All life on earth is brother and sister and each of us can carry, if we wish the token of our faith” (Simak, 1987, p.43-76). The resonance between Simak’s narrative and Wenger’s architectural and sculptural interpretation of Ogboni belief, suggests, therefore, that the shrine house represents the filial relationship shared by all beings that have ever dwelt on the earth, above or below ground, in the past as well as the present. Figure 4:Statue by Susan Wenger and her assistant Adebisi Akanji, of Iya Mopo “the goddess who is both pot and potter as dramatized by her activity of “molding form around preexistent space”. Since this space is understood in both biological and ontological terms, she is, therefore, not only “patroness of all women’s occupations (including a woman’s erotic vocation, conception and birth [symbolized by the children on her back]) and all women’s trades” but is representative of the primal spiritual power of women as incarnated in the conception of the witch, in which capacity the witch’s ability for spiritual motion is represented here by the massive wings that unfurl from her back. “Three pairs of slender outstretched arms [emerge in front of her] one to receive and one to throw out sacred fecundities and one in the fist over fist symbol gesture of the Ogboni the cult of the earth, with which she is associated as representing an aspect of the earth as physical and spiritual creatrix (Brockmann and Hotter, 1994,p.53; Wenger and Chesi, 1983,p.140).