Dinka Woman's Hearth
Artist/Maker
William Morris
(United States, b. 1957)
Date2003
Medium14-piece hand sculpted glass wall installation
Dimensionsvarious dimensions
ClassificationsVisual Works
Credit LineGift of Lin Arison
Terms
Object number2008.16.1A-N
DescriptionOne of the artist’s multi-part masterpieces, Dinka Woman’s Hearth reflects Morris’s ongoing fascination with anthropology, hunting, and the symbiotic relationship in nature between man and beast. Although its title mentions the Dinka, a Nilotic people constituting the largest ethnic group in the South Sudan, the work itself does not address any specific culture. Instead, Morris combines references to Native American, pre-Columbian, and Oceanic cultures with animal forms and stylized human figures to present his own fanciful narrative. Reminiscent of ethnographic or non-Western art installations in American and European museums, the objects are displayed frontally and do not interact. Although most are glass, Morris has treated their reflective and refractive surfaces with powders so that they resemble materials such as clay and bone.
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