The DOGON. Between earth and sky

Umberto Knycz traveler and photographer who has always loved African culture, thanks to a long and arduous personal research and several expeditions in areas of the Bandiagara escarpment, has collected numerous, incredible testimonies of art and the Dogon culture. Masks, sculptures, doors, bronze objects and jewelry of this still mysterious population of Mali will be exhibited in the charming home of the Natural History Museum in Venice.

The Dogon, wise farmers that are adapted over time to live in the cliffs turned into forms of architecture, remained relatively isolated from the rest of the country until the twentieth century. This has allowed them to develop in the course of five centuries a completely original culture. Animists, with a rigid social and religious organization, live suspended between earth and sky, expressing themselves through dance and ritual ceremonies.

Their ancestors have left on the walls of the caves of the Bandiagara paintings and pictographs that have only recently been deciphered, since under the dell'Hogon housing, high priest guardian of Sapie. Thanks to the valuable collection here exposed can now learn more about the culture of the Dogon, so long and tenaciously defended and preserved.