Many representations exist showing the human being as Janus, of dual sex. Janus masks of the Ejagham in Nigeria, for example, have one face dark and one light, delineating the oppositions of physical and spiritual, female and male. Human figures of the Lobi of Burkina Faso, the Dogon of Mali, and the Luba of Congo (Kinshasha), among many African ethnic groups, are carved with a male face on one side and a female face on the other. This depiction can represent the bisexual ancestors or other spiritual beings who are both male and female or have attributes of both. It can also represent the ability to work in both the physical and the spiritual worlds, themselves frequently aligned with such dyads as the interior and exterior, the village and the wilderness, and the feminine and the masculine.

Sponsor Message.

Conclusion

Although homosexual activity is widely documented in the history of Africa, and homosexual status is known as a tradition in various areas, the depiction of the homosexual is almost unknown in sculpture and painting for traditional ritual. However, it is well-known in ritual performance. The problem for research is how to interpret this phenomenon, and even more basically, how to decipher it within an artistic system based upon metaphor and hidden meaning.

While there is little evidence of the homosexuality of artists, per se, there is widespread documentation of the homosexuality or gender transformation of the leaders of ritual performance, who function as intermediaries between worlds because of their gender fluidity. In the world of African art and ritual dominated by men, the enormous corpus of phallic objects seems to suggest, if not homosexual preference, then homosexual fascination, celebration, reverence, or titillation. In the exhibition of homosexual activity, gender transformation, cross-dressing, androgyny, and sexual duality, many possibilities of interpretation exist, and the student of African art and communication, which are always highly metaphoric, is cautioned to avoid assuming the obvious.

Bulelwa Madekurozwa and Rotimi Fani-Kayode are the most prominent of contemporary openly gay African artists who produce work with homosexual themes.

With reports from hundreds of sub-Saharan African locales of male-male sexual relations and from about fifty of female-female sexual relations, it is clear that same-sex sexual relations existed in traditional African societies, though varying in forms and in the degree of public acceptance

The art of the Pacific cultures that practiced male homosexuality in a ritual context included flutes, bullroarers, and woven textiles used in male initiations and other ceremonies.