id: 308829
accession number: 2018.4
share license status: Copyrighted
url: https://clevelandart.org/art/2018.4
updated: 2019-04-22 14:34:19.856000
Twilight of the Idols (Fetish) 3, 2005. Kendell Geers (South African, b. 1968). Chevron tape on lost object, nails; overall: 140 x 43 x 39 cm (55 1/8 x 16 15/16 x 15 3/8 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Sundry Art-Contemporary Fund 2018.4 © Kendell Geers
title: Twilight of the Idols (Fetish) 3
title in original language:
series:
series in original language:
creation date: 2005
creation date earliest: 2005
creation date latest: 2005
current location:
creditline: Sundry Art-Contemporary Fund
copyright: © Kendell Geers
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culture:
technique: Chevron tape on lost object, nails
department: African Art
collection: African Art
type: Sculpture
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catalogue raisonne:
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CREATORS
* Kendell Geers (South African, b. 1968) - artist
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measurements: Overall: 140 x 43 x 39 cm (55 1/8 x 16 15/16 x 15 3/8 in.)
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CURRENT EXHIBITIONS
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LEGACY EXHIBITIONS
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PROVENANCE
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fun fact:
The work’s title is borrowed from Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols, a radical 1888 text which called for war against religious icons and relics.
digital description:
Kendell Geers’s Twilight of the Idols (Fetish) 3 is a compelling work that recalls the fierce-looking nkisi nkondo, the power figure the Kongo people used as protective totems to ward off malevolent spirits, prevent or cure illness, or to administer retributive justice. Created in the spirit of the ready-made, the sculpture addresses the shift in value of African art as it became a global commodity.
wall description:
Twilight of the Idols (Fetish) 3 is the largest of the 10 sculptures comprising the Twilight of the Idols series that Kendell Geers created between 2002 and 2008. The work’s title is borrowed from Friedrich Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols, a radical 1888 text in which Nietzsche called for war against religious icons and relics that he framed as eternal idols. Geers has deployed Nietzsche’s call to action as a layer of meaning in several of his works, but especially in this series exploring the ways in which the meaning and value associated with African ritual objects in their original context changed as they became a global commodity.
To create this sculpture, Geers appropriated an nkisi nkondo of the Kongo people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo that was no longer in use. Nkisi figures were typically used as protective totems; the nails on it represent the many times the object would have been ritually activated. Geers wrapped the object with white and red chevron tape—the South African equivalent to yellow and black caution tape utilized in the US to demarcate the scene of a crime, simultaneously signaling danger and acting as a shield. The artist’s deliberate use of the term fetish recalls how African ritual objects were labeled by early European explorers who thought of them as having mysterious––often negative power. The word also reflects their fetishization as art by the West since the turn of the 20th century.
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