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| MIMBRES RITUAL FIGURE, circa 1350 |
 (A carved and Painted Wooden Effigy of a Female Deity, Mimbres, Southwestern New Mexico, circa 1350 AD.)
Between 850 and 1350 AD, the southwest corner of what is now the state of New Mexico was inhabited by a prehistoric tribe called the Mimbres. (Mimbres is Spanish for “willow." The name the Mimbres people called themselves is unknown.)
Among the Mimbres, the sky was seen and understood to be the location of divine beings. Clouds, lighting, rain, the sun, the moon, the planets and the stars were all worshipped as personifications of an immortal world. The Mimbres' fascination with the skies was so acute that representations of the Crab Nebula explosion of 1054 were painted onto the insides of Mimbres ceramic bowls.
The standing figure illustrated here is a lightning deity, as evidenced by the jagged black stripes, which appear on her chest. The checkered rhomboid designs at her base are clouds, and her face is decorated with the night sky. As a deity, she is responsible for the arrival of lightning and, by extension, for the rain that follows. Like nature itself, her manner is paradoxical. She seems calm but also angry; generous but also cruel; passive but also dangerous. Her folded arms restrain the bolts of lightning, but they can be released at any time. - Joshua Baer
Poster Size: 24 x 36 (inches) - 60.96 x 91.44 (centimeters) |
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