A Boli We’ve Met

It’s been a minute since I watched videos from the Met’s The Artist Project, and this time Nayland Blake discussing a Bamana boli from Mali landed differently. Part of that is my own deeper appreciation of Blake’s work, especially their interest in specific forms of creativity or aesthetic experience that break with the artist/audience, object/viewer paradigm: Blake’s talked about both BDSM and furry communities as sites where understanding is predicated on participation, not just observation. And that resonates with their discussion of the Met’s boli as an object created by a community, through ritual use, whose power and form are the result of accretion, not individualized making. Boli, Bamana initiate, Komo association, 20th c., 14 x 7 20 in. or so, collection Met Museum And part of that is also an expanded awareness of boliw themselves, specifically the recurrence of a boli in Kahlil Joseph’s BLKNWS. For a minute I figured it was being newly aware of boli typology that made me…