Mami Wota … You can always tell them, because they are beautiful with a beauty that is too perfect and too cold. Chinua Achebe, 1972

Eeh, if you see Mami Wata, never you run away. Sir Victor Uwaiofo, “Guitar Boy,” 1967

For the past two years one of the Carlos Museum’s most impressive African art works, an almost life-sized Ibibio carving of Mami Wata, who is a beautiful and powerful African and African Atlantic water spirit, has been on national tour as part of The Fowler Museum of UCLA's exhibition, Mami Wata: Arts for Water Spirits in Africa and its Diaspora (Fig. 1). The exhibition opened at the Fowler Museum before traveling to the Chazen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin- Madison, and the National Museum for African Art, Washington DC. Also included in the exhibit were two other Carlos Museum Mami Wata art works--a red marionette figure also carved by an Ibibio artist (Fig. 2) and a figure group from southern Nigeria that emulates Indian carvings of the Hindu deity Hanuman (Fig. 3).

Allowing the large Carlos Museum Mami Wata sculpture to go on tour generated much debate at the Carlos Museum since it is such a seminal piece, and because of its fragile kaolin-covered surface. So, while on tour, she was treated to the highest standard of museum care--Carlos Museum conservator Renee Stein gave her a “conservation-full-body-spa-treatment”, she traveled in an ultra cushioned packing case, received extra attention from Fowler conservation staff who wrote often to confirm her well-being, and she basked in only the finest of climate-controlled environments. Such care benefits not only this particularly fragile artwork, but also the powerful spirit it represents.

Who is Mami Wata?
Mami Wata, which translates as “Mother Water” in West African pidgin English, is a femme fatale water spirit with a global following from Lagos to Los Angeles, and Havana and beyond. As Paul Richards wrote in the Washington Post: “Mami Wata isn't only African. She's Jungian, she's universal …. You don't have to be a polytheist to acknowledge her ubiquity. You just have to look around. Mack Sennett's Bathing Beauties, and wet Anita Ekberg in Fellini's 'La Dolce Vita,"'and dripping Ursula Andress, the quintessential Bond girl, stepping from the waves in the movie ‘Dr. No,’ they all are Mami Wata …. A visitor from ancient Greece … would recognize her instantly. The naiads, nymphs and nereids who flickered through the antique world were Mami Wata's kin.”(i)

However, Mami Wata has a darker side; she is all Diva--she can be beautiful, seductive, loving, and generous when treated well, but if angered or ignored, turns jealous and vengeful, an outright Medusa like Glenn Close in “Fatal Attraction.” As Henry Drewal, curator of the exhibit wrote: “Mami Wata is … at once …sexy mama; provider of riches; healer of physical and spiritual ills; and embodiment of dangers and desires, risks and challenges, dreams and aspirations, fears and forebodings. People are attracted to the seemingly endless possibilities she represents and, at the same time, frightened by her destructive potential.” (ii)

What Are Her Powers?
As her name indicates, Mami Wata is a spirit of water: deep oceans, gentle rivers, and tempestuous tides. Not only is water an essential element of life, but it is a vehicle for global flows in trade and modernity (for better and for worse). She is the “capitalist deity par excellence.” (iii) It is Mami Wata who assists with the purchase of a new car, the procurement of a better job, entrance to university, a good mortgage rate, and excellent returns on stocks and bonds. In thanks, followers deck her altars with expensive imported goods including alcohol, perfume, talcum powder, cigarettes, jewelry, and other luxuries.

How is Mami Wata Represented in Art?
In art, Mami Wata takes many forms, but most often she is either a mermaid-like being (half fish-half human), or as a snake charmer and, sometimes in combination with mermaid characteristics as is the case in both the Carlos Museum Mami Wata images. Figure 1 and Figure 2 shows her in the snake-charmer form, a woman’s torso wreathed in snakes, because, say the Ibibio peoples who carved this work, “she is hiding her secret” (her tail and thus other-worldy nature). The mermaid image may have been inspired by the figureheads of European trading and slave vessels that visited Nigerian ports as early as the 16th century. Another possible imported source for Mami Wata images is a German print of a Hindu snake charmer, introduced into Nigeria in the early 20th century (Figure 4). These imported images -- mermaid and snake charmer --- were reinterpreted according to ancient indigenous beliefs about African water spirits. Pale skin represents otherworldly status, luxuriant long hair refers to the dada locks worn by spiritually-marked individuals in West Africa, and the snakes are pythons sacred in West African belief.

Mami Wata is often accompanied by male water spirits who are often referred to as “Papi Watas.”  It is possible that Figure 4, a sculpture carved by an Ibibio or Ogboni artist from a type of wood found in Nigeria, may be such a Papi Wata, even though it looks like the Hindu simian god Hanuman. The British traded Indian Madras cloth into Nigeria during the colonial period, and this became a route by which prints of various Hindu gods traveled. Hanuman was praised in India for his superhuman strength, ability to perform magical acts, and protect his patrons from the forces of evil. In this sculpture, the human male figure with monkey-like face is carrying, and therefore protecting, two small figures while appearing to overpower the lower figure.

Where Can One See Mami Wata?
Our Mami Wata sculpture has returned to Emory. When next you see her on display in the expanded African galleries in 2011, remember, as musician Sir Victor Uwaiofo observed, “Eeh, if you see Mami Wata, never you run away.” Stick around and reap good fortune.

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i Paul Richards, “Scathing Beauties: “Mami Wata,’ the Spirit of the Waters, Brings With Her a Surfeit of Serpents.” Washington Post, Saturday, May 2, 2009

ii Henry Drewal, http://africa.si.edu/exhibits/mamiwata/intro.html

iii quoted in Holland Cotter, “From the Deep, a Diva with Many Faces,” New York Times, April 2. 2009.

Fig 1: Photo by Bruce M. White, 2006
Fig 2: Photo by Michael McKelvey
Fig 3: Photo by Michael McKelvey