Inside an open-sided building, dozens of life-sized clay figures stand and sit in brightly painted colours. There is the earth goddess Ala with a child on her knee, a colonial officer on a motorbike, a woman giving birth, animals, spirits and ordinary villagers. This is an mbari house, a form of sacred art created by Igbo communities in the Owerri area of south-eastern Nigeria. Built as an offering to the gods, each one was allowed to crumble back into the earth.
Ala and the builders
Ala is the Igbo goddess of the earth, fertility and morality. She is one of the most important deities in Igbo religion, and mbari houses were often built in her honour. A community might decide to build an mbari after a crisis, such as illness or misfortune, or on the instructions of a diviner. The project was a sacrifice of time, labour and resources.
Professional artists led the work, along with selected members of the community who lived in seclusion during construction, sometimes for many months.
Figures, unveiling and decay
The sculptures were made of clay and painted in bright colours. They showed gods, humans and animals, along with scenes from everyday life, including new arrivals such as colonial officials, telephones and cars. When the mbari was complete, it was opened to the public with a ceremony. People came to see and admire the figures.
After the unveiling, the mbari was not maintained. It was left to the weather, and the figures slowly returned to the earth. Scholars such as Herbert Cole documented mbari houses in the twentieth century, recording a tradition that was becoming rarer.
The Mbari Club and today
In 1961, writers and artists in Ibadan, including Ulli Beier, Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe, founded the Mbari Club, naming it after the tradition. Few new mbari are built today, but surviving examples and photographs keep the tradition alive. Building an mbari brought a community together around a shared goal. The work was demanding, and it was understood as a gift to Ala on behalf of everyone in the village.
The builders of an mbari knew from the start that their work would fall apart. Making it was the offering; keeping it was never the plan.
