Repainting the Walls of Lunda tells a story of the publication and dissemination of an anthropology book, Paredes Pintadas da Lunda (Painted Walls of Lunda) (1953), which reproduced images of Chokwe wall murals and sand drawings in northeastern Angola—and which was subsequently adapted in post-Independence nationalist art and post-civil war contemporary art. After historicizing the moment of a drastic change in media for the Chokwe images, from sand and hut to book, “analog” to “digital,” I analyze the formal and infrastructural logic of the two dimensional images in their subsequent formats o ... More

Repainting the Walls of Lunda tells a story of the publication and dissemination of an anthropology book, Paredes Pintadas da Lunda (Painted Walls of Lunda) (1953), which reproduced images of Chokwe wall murals and sand drawings in northeastern Angola—and which was subsequently adapted in post-Independence nationalist art and post-civil war contemporary art. After historicizing the moment of a drastic change in media for the Chokwe images, from sand and hut to book, “analog” to “digital,” I analyze the formal and infrastructural logic of the two dimensional images in their subsequent formats of post-independence canvas paintings and now the Internet. Rather than describing each of these iterations of the Chokwe images as a negation or obliteration of the previous one, I argue that the logic of reproductive media is such that it envelops the past; each mediation adds another layer of context and content to the Chokwe image. The images’ historicity is embedded within these media layers, which many Angolan post-independence artists speak of in terms of ghosts or ancestors when describing their encounter with reproductions of the Chokwe murals. The history of Paredes Pintadas da Lunda and its subsequent use in Angolan art follows the history of the diamond industry in Angola, as the major diamond interests there have funded its dissemination. Thus the infrastructural history of Angola is more than just context for the continual reworking of the Chokwe images.