This body of work was a courageous undertaking for the artist because of the complex personal issues surrounding the phenomenon of female genital mutilation. For Musasama, an American with a deep sense of belonging and commitment to African culture, even contemplating this project was fraught with conflicting emotions, values and allegiances. People still generalize Africa, and the prevailing view is that Africans universally practice and condone clitorodectomy At the core of it all are the antagonistic agendas of those who would want to shamelessly own the cultural patrimony of Africa and women's movement advocates who see clitoridectomy as a universal gender issue of absolute wrong and brook no cultural relativism.

But if there are any places, any cultures that are characterized by relativity in defiance of the defining generalities we literally lust after, it is Black Africa. I have spent about twenty-five percent of my adult life since 1968 living among the Akan people of southern Ghana. To the Akan and their neighbors, the Ewe of Togo and the Baule, Anyi, Evalue, Evakim, Attie and Ebrie of the southwestern Ivory Coast, genital mutilation is as intellectually perplexing as it is to us. The practice would appear to be most disturbing to people who place a premium on the experience of sex. Such societies also have more liberal ideas in general on gender roles and a woman's right to control her own body. Thus the Chokwe of Angola and the Luba of Zaire would join us and the Akan in our inability to understand genital mutilation. Where they stop short on agreement with us is the right of an outsider to intervene. I do not intend here to compile a list of the African societies that are pro or con the issue of clitoridectomy, but I think I have demonstrated that it is not remotely a universal practice in Africa. You may also note that it is not condoned by the Koran. For the curious who want to know where clitorodectomy is practiced or shunned in Africa, and the ritual and cosmogenic rationales of it, I refer you to Boris de Rachewilz' excellent study, Black Eros (1956; Eng. Ed. 1964) and, while not by any means the social science of de Rachewilz, but, at times as enlightening is Felix Bryk's Voodoo Eros (19640

Musasama has on exhibit over two dozen pained and glazed terracotta forms, displayed as "wall mounted pieces." The mask-like forms are about the size of human face and hung at face level. Musasama's formal themes and variations are based on combinations of redefining the lips of the labia, clitoris and the blades, needles and fibers used to mutilate it.

A dedicated visitor to Africa, Musasama recently related to me a perplexing experience of her first trip to Africa many years ago. She described the beautiful friendships that she had developed during a sustained visit to the Mende peoples in the bush (African for outback) of Sierra Leone. She was herself a young woman and many of her friends and constant visitors were also young. One day, they were gone, completely disappeared. And when they returned to the village they treated her as if they had never known her. "Our ritual of sisterhood was no more," says Musasama. The young people of the village had been taken to the grigri bush for thirteen months in what is described alternately as the bush camp, circumcision camp or "bush school." It is the place where young girls and boys, segregated by gender, are taught tribal lore, secrets of the initiated and circumcised. What this means for women in Medeland is that the foreskin of the clitoris is cut away. What Musasama may not have noticed at the time is that custom dictated that they treat their own families with the same estrangement for a predetermined time. They had been transformed. Their former, pre-socialized selves had been transformed. They had been "devoured" by the spirits of the forest and "regurgitated," born again.

I have asked my male friends of the Senufo (a people of the northern Ivory Coast and Southern Mali) why their ancestors formerly practiced female circumcision and I was told that it was intended to "control women's sexual behavior." They also described the traditional Senufo practices of sexual intercourse as extremely boring and repressive, in particular for the woman. These men expressed the high desirability of women who had not been subjected to the ritual. Back in 1970-71, I questioned women of the Grushi peoples of southern Burkina Faso who had undergone female circumcision, and they were extremely varied in the responses. One of the woman said it was the traumatic event that cemented her conversion to Christianity once she was old enough to make the choice. She had appointed herself the sexual policewoman of her friends' personal lives. Her best friend, who was the object of unsolicited police protection, passed it off as simply part of her culture. She wouldn't have it done to her daughter, she didn't condemn her people for it, had no views about right or wrong, felt sexually well adjusted and was not interested in converting to Islam or Christianity.

In the brochure essay, T.S. Murphy writes that these "dramatic ceramic sculptures...are powerful evidence that {suffering of the girls} never left Sana. With her provocative pieces, she is reintroducing us to rituals that enslave, hurt, kill and transform." These words fit the political context of the issue. Reintroduce us? Hardly. Enslave us? Yes, most likely for many. Hurt and kill? Yes, and there are fatalities. Transform? Yes, but in the sense of the African, in the manner ordained by cosmic order, whether their world view embraced female and male circumcision, solely female circumcision, or only male circumcision?

This body of work and exhibition represent a cathartic experience for the artist, and I mean this in the sincerest sense of the term. Musasama's knowledge of female genital mutilation caught her off guard at a time when her visit to Sierra Leone was not intended to reveal that aspect of Africa. She has since sorted out things. She has returned. Her work bears no news of the battle between the cultural relativists and those who would march on the mutilators with live ammunition. The acts of female mutilation will go on until they self-destruct. We are powerless to stop this carnage unless we are willing to go to war over this issue. The Taliban have blown up the ancient statues of Buddha in the face of worldwide protest. And what did we do? The Russians could not dislodge them with their Katushkaya rockets and T-model tanks. The cosmos moves on and according to scripture: "God sees every bird that falls."

Masusama's homage to the right of female initiation is outside of the political discourse, beyond uncritical love of "Mother Africa," beyond the civil rights movement. It is highly personal and void of polemic. Ti provides us with the only thing we can do about the practice of female circumcision, and that is simply to witness that it exists.