Reina Gattuso is a content writer on the Curationist team, and an independent journalist covering gender and sexuality, arts and culture, and food. Her journalism connects analysis of structural inequality to everyday stories of community, creativity, and care. Her work has appeared at _Atlas Obscura_, _The Washington Post_, _Teen Vogue_, _The Lily_, _POPSUGAR_, and more. Reina has an MA in Arts and Aesthetics (cinema, performance, and visual studies) from Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India, where her research focused on sexuality in Hindi film. She writes and teaches writing to high school students in New York City.

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A Gandharan sculpture of the goddess, Hariti, seated and holding a child in her left arm. Her right hand, now partially destroyed is raised in a mudra. She is robed and wears barcelets, anklets necklaces and large earrings. 

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Goddess Hariti: The Joy and Terror of Childbirth

Colony Little (she/her/hers) is a Raleigh-based freelance writer and the creator of Culture Shock Art, a site dedicated to the synergies among art, music, and design. As a Black woman with familial ties to the South, Little presently writes with a particular focus on amplifying the artistic voices of Black creators who are influenced by and create work in the American South.  Freelance writing credits include Artnet News, ARTnews, The Art Newspaper, ARTS.BLACK, CARLA, Hyperallergic, W Magazine, and Walter Magazine in North Carolina. Little was a 2020 recipient of the Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant.

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A photographic portrait by James A. Palmer of a young Black woman wearing a floral dress. She is seated next to a table. Her arms rest on the chair's back and her hands are clasped in a prayer pose.

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The Beauty Remains: Decoding “The Wilde Woman of Aiken”

Isoken Osagie is a contributor from the Curationist Content Team. She has worked on various curatorial projects including exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum and Zoma Museum in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She is a graduate of The New School in New York City. Her interests include African literature, cultural heritage and the intersections of art and technology.

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A 12th century fragment of Shaikh al-Husain ibn Abdallah ibn al-Hasan's tombstone, inscribed in Arabic Kufic calligraphy. The center is carved to resemble a mihrab with arabesque designs surrounding it.

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Honoring the Dead: Funerary Ornamentation and Ritual in Islam  

Noa Rui-Piin Weiss is a dancer, writer, and arts administrator based in New York City. He is a regular contributor to Culturebot and The Brooklyn Rail. Noa's most recent performance collaborations include works by Hope Mohr/Maxe Crandall, Emily Coates, Mia Martelli, and Adrienne Truscott. He has presented choreography in collaboration with his BFFL Miranda Brown at Pageant, Fertile Ground, WAXworks, Current Showcase (Take.5), The Tank, SERIOUS PERFORMANCE!!!!, and the Movement Lab at Barnard College. Noa is currently the Programming Manager at The Joyce Theater. His writing for Curationist focuses on the histories of dance, sexuality, and sex difference in artwork. Recently, Noa has discovered a passion for mash-ups, and would recommend "Nine Inch Nails - Closer But It's Funkytown By Lipps Inc." by William Maranci.

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A painting depicting the Fox tribe dancing. The men wear headdresses and carry staffs, axes, and hatchets. One figure dressed in women's clothing stands still and looks out at the viewer.

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The Making of American Dance History

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A painting of a woman in decorative armor of metal and fine fabric.

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Martial Goddesses and Warrior Queens

Blake Palmer is a scholar, writer, and cultural critic based in Chiang Mai, Thailand, working on popular culture, sustainability, traditional Thai foodways, and Asian contemporary art. His interests are drawn towards the intersection of culture, power, and art as a vector of sociopolitical critique. Blake’s current academic research focuses on multispecies biopolitics in the Southeast Asian context.

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A black and white photograph depicts a temporary shelter made of sewn-together tarps propped up by poles and draped over a dilapidated car. A stove sits in front of the entrance. On the left side of the entrance, a child is peering out from behind the stove pipe. In the shadows behind the right side of the entrance, a woman sits holding an infant on her lap.

A black and white photograph depicts a temporary shelter made of sewn-together tarps draped over a dilapidated car. On the left side of the entrance, a child peers out; also in the shadows on the right, a woman sits holding an infant on her lap.

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Industrial Optics: How We See Labor and Why It Matters

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A landscape-oriented, black and white photograph of a nuclear bomb being detonated in the South Pacific, off the coast of the Marshall Islands.

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Art of the Atomic Bomb

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A round vessel in the shape of a male turkey.

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How Chocolate Reached the Eastern Hemisphere

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A print on yellowed paper depicts a seated woman in a flowered kimono painting willow fronds onto a screen that fills the upper left corner of the image. Painting implements litter the space near her. 

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The Learned Courtesan in Edo Japan

Cat Coffin

Cat Coffin with Mummy

Sarcophagus and Cat Mummy

Cat Mummy in Cartonnage

Cat Mummy

Sacred animal mummy of a cat

Cat with kittens on damaged box for animal mummy

Cat Statuette intended to contain a mummified cat

Two cats surmounting a box for an animal mummy

Box for animal mummy surmounted by a cat, inscribed

Created by Reina Gattuso.
 
In ancient Egypt, cats represented the goddess Bastet. Bastet was a cat deity of childbirth and the sun. Ancient Egyptians mummified cats to honor her.
 
Ancient Egyptians revered certain animals as embodiments of deities. They honored cats as living avatars of the goddess <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bastet">Bastet</a>, who was associated with the sun, childbirth, and fertility.1 Bastet originated as a fierce lioness goddess in Lower Egypt. Eventually, worshipers came to regard Bastet as a friendly deity. Ancient Egyptians depicted Bastet as either a cat or as a woman with the head of a cat.
 
Ancient Egyptians created millions of animal mummies.2 Some of these, including cats, dogs, gazelles, and monkeys, were beloved pets mummified along with an owner so they could stay together in the afterlife.3 Others were mummified as spiritual offerings. 
 
Cat mummies were particularly popular because of their association with Bastet.4 Some religious compounds kept cats for the purpose of sacrifice and mummification. Worshipers could pay to have a cat mummified as a way of gaining spiritual favor. When archeologists excavated Bastet’s main temple at Bubastis (modern-day Zagazig), they uncovered over 300,000 mummified cats.5 
 
Cat mummification became a profitable business for temples.6 Archeologists have used x-rays to discover that some mummies that appeared to be cats were actually filled with stones, dirt, or spare bones. This either represented a lucrative temple scam played on worshipers or a symbolic mummification that offered devotees a bargain option to make an offering. 
 
This collection contains mummified cats, cat coffins, and at least one cat-shaped mummy filled with nothing at all.
 
 
CITATIONS
 
[1] “Bastet.” Wikipedia, 11 March 2022, ​​https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastet. Accessed 31 March 2022. 

[2] “Sarcophagus and Cat Mummy.” Brooklyn Museum, https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/4184. Accessed 31 March 2022. 

[3] “Animal Mummy.” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_mummy. Accessed 31 March 2022. 

[4] “Mummified Cat.” The Walters, https://art.thewalters.org/detail/38882/cat-mummy-2/. Accessed 31 March 2022. 

[5] “Bastet.” 

[6] “Mummified Cat.” The Walters, https://art.thewalters.org/detail/21582/cat-mummy/. Accessed 31 March 2022.

Mummified Cats

Convent of St. Saba

Temple Banner with Pilgrimage Sites and Scenes from the Svayambhu-purana (Ancient Text of the Primordial Buddha)

Monastery of Mega Spileon, Greece

Monastery of San Francesco di Civitella in the Sabine Mountains

Fushan Monastery

The Monastery of San Pedro (Our Lady of the Snows)

Looking for a Monastery in the Misty Mountains

Ru-Shan Monastery

Created by Noa Rui-Piin Weiss.
 
Monasteries are meant to be retreats: buildings separated from everyday society for monks, nuns, or other people of faith to commit themselves to a life immersed in religion. Across cultures, monasteries have been built in ways that communicate seclusion, both through their location and their architectural choices. However, the function of monasteries also depends on their accessibility. They are sites of pilgrimage and places for lay people to participate in religious life alongside the cloistered. This collection of works highlights the balance between openness and isolation in representations of monastic life. Some depictions show figures making their way to monasteries, while others focus on the surrounding natural environment that encloses these remote buildings.

Monastic Isolation

Tsuba with a Hawk, Sparrows and Chrysanthemums

Pair of Sword-Grip Ornaments (Menuki)

Sword Guard (Tsuba) Depicting Eagle Preying on Monkey (猿捕食猛禽図鐔)

Sword Guard (Tsuba)

Tsuka with Horse, Gourd and Rooster

Tsuba with One Hundred Monkeys

Tsuba with Deer Caught in a Storm

Created by Reina Gattuso. 
For more than a thousand years, Japanese sword makers crafted a rich vocabulary of practical and decorative elements. Swordsmiths outfitted samurai, feudal Japan’s elite fighting and administrative class. Master swordsmiths, often presiding over esteemed workshops, fashioned the sword blades. Then, they commissioned other craftspeople to create the sword’s additional elements. Two of these elements are menuki and tsuba. Menuki are pairs of ornaments, resembling brooches, that help the user grip the sword. Sword makers originally developed menuki to cover the nails (mekugi) on a sword’s hilt (tsuka). Tsuba are guards that separate the hilt of the sword from the blade. Tsuba originated as early as the third century CE as simple iron rings that kept the user’s hand from slipping. Eventually, sword makers began crafting ornamental tsuba and menuki made of gold, silver, copper, and other precious metals. Their details are meticulous and playful, depicting nature scenes, popular stories, and abstract designs.
Today, museums often collect menuki and tsuba as standalone objects, separate from their original blades. This collection features tsuba and menuki from the 1600s–1900s. It highlights the delightful, often comical use of animal imagery in these small masterpieces. Japanese myth is full of animals, each with their own symbolic meaning. This meaning was often a reflection of their place in the zodiac. The lively, strikingly detailed animals portrayed on swords also reflect the long tradition of Japanese artists drawing on the natural world. Sometimes fierce, sometimes funny, the querulous monkeys, beneficent elephants, and mighty crustaceans that scamper across these objects likely accompanied warriors into battle—and lived to tell the tale.

The Playful Menageries of Menuki and Tsuba

Pair of Akuaba Figures Seated on a Stool

Pair of Akuaba Figures

Fertility Doll  (Akuaba)

Fertility Doll (Akuaba)

Female Figure (akua'ba)

Created by Reina Gattuso. 
The Akan peoples, including the Asante, Fante, and other groups in current-day Ghana, are matrilineal. Akan people share a powerful legend about fertility. A woman named Akua wanted to conceive a daughter, but was not able to. She approached a diviner, a spiritual practitioner, for help. The diviner told her to have a carver make her a wooden figure, and to care for this carving as though it was a real child. Soon after, Akua conceived and then gave birth to a baby girl. 

Thereafter, Akan women began to commission wooden akua ba—literally “child of Akua”—figures as fertility aids. Akua ba have breasts and other features representing idealized young women’s beauty. Their high, oval foreheads indicate the practice of cranial shaping of newborns. The rings of fat around the necks signify prosperity and fertility.1 The figures are female, reflecting the Akua myth and Akan matrilineal culture.2

The figures are flat to enable women to carry them on their backs like infants. Women who commission akua ba figures offer them symbolic food and honor them at the family altar. If women conceive, they offer the akua ba figure to a nearby shrine to honor the spirits who aided them, or give them to a family member also trying to have a baby.3

Since the early 20th century, the form of akua ba has changed as they became increasingly prized on the tourist market. Artists began to make more naturalistic figures, carving distinct legs where they would previously have included only pedestals. As tourist souvenirs, akua ba are divorced from their original context. Many Westerners have come to see them as generalized symbols of Africa rather than the spiritually powerful and emotionally charged objects they are.4 Some 21st century Akan women continue to use akua ba as fertility aids, but the practice is slowly disappearing.5

This collection includes examples of akua ba from Fante and Asante makers. They date from the 19th and 20th centuries.

 
CITATIONS 



1 “Female Fertility Figurine (akuaba).” The Met, www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/312279. Accessed 18 March 2022. 

2 Klemm, Peri. “Akua’ba Female Figure (Akan peoples).” Khan Academy, www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-africa/west-africa/ghana/a/akuaba-female-figure-akan-peoples. Accessed 18 March 2022. 

3 “Female Figure (akua’ba).” The Cleveland Museum of Art, www.clevelandart.org/art/1975.158. Accessed 18 March 2022. 

4 Klemm. 

5 Kushiator, G., Rahman, A., and Ofori, D.H. “The Influence of Western Culture on Traditional Art Forms and Cultural Practices: ‘Akuaba’ Doll Among Akan Women in Africa.” Adrri Journal of Arts and Social Sciences, vol. 17 no. 6, July 2020, https://journals.adrri.org/index.php/adrrijass/article/download/543/518. Accessed 20 April 2022.

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