Bette Cerf Hill - Fine Art

VOGUE
Or BEFORE THE GENOCIDE
By Bette Cerf Hill

This series of paintings are of two groups of people. One group called the Omo live in East Africa on the border of Ethiopia, Kenya and the Sudan and the second are the Nuba people of Kau in the Sudan.

In the Lower Valley of the Omo, an area of lush vegetation and unbearable heat, the Surma and Mursi are among the tribes who decorate their faces and bodies with rich raw pigment of white, yellow ochre and terra cotta and adorn themselves with flowers, pods, leaf and grasses as well as feathers, butterfly wings, buffalo horn and beads.

In the semi arid Nuba Mountains there are villages separated by less then 100 miles who's tribes speak different languages, have different culture and very different temperaments. The men are fierce fighters (in sport rather then war in the case of these portraits) and decorate themselves with pigment, individual geometric patterned face paint and uniform hair decorations representing the village. With double edged blades they fight neighboring villages while referees pair the combatants based on skill and strength. Women decorate their bodies in patterns of scars and cover their bodies with red pigment and oil.

In both of the areas the common custom is to be completely naked and to decorate the face and body every day. When because of pregnancy, age or disfigurement they stop enhancing their beauty, they wear clothes.

Visual access to the geometrically painted People of Kau, is through the extraordinary photographs dating from before 1976 by Leni Riefenstal. The flower adorned people of Omo were photographed by Hans Selvester.

Update:

By Brent Stirton
"In the sprawling, desolate Southern Omo River Valley region of Ethiopia are several tribes living as they have for centuries, in voluntary isolation from the modern world. Recently, however, the tribes -- Dassanech, Mursi, Hamar, Karo, Bume, Beshadar and others -- are under increasing pressure from the outside world. Most recent is the Omo River dam project to provide hydroelectric power to Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa. This will reduce the river to one-fifth its size and eliminate the flood plain so valuable to Omo Valley tribal farmers. The geographically distant government in Addis Ababa appears to place little importance on the threat to these unique Omo Valley cultures, and the days of their existence as intact cultures are numbered."

By Justin Ambago Ramba
May 11, 2009

"The people of the Nuba Mountains are still to come out of their shock, when they learned of the Sudanese president Omer al Bashir's strange and wrongly timed appointment as governor for South Kordofan of the fugitive, Ahmed Haroun who is wanted by the ICC for over 50 crimes against humanity committed in the western province of Darfur in the periods between, 2003 - 2004.

Who will ever be surprised again following the above event if we are to hear of another presidential decree appointing the other fugitives, namely Ali Kushyeib and Musa Hilali to high security positions in the same state of south Kordofan, thus completing the National Islamic front's conspiracy against the peaceful people of the Nuba Mountains?

The people of the Nuba Mountains should be questioning why has Al Bashir chosen to mistreat them this harsh. Is it not enough that the Nuba people were brutally killed, tortured, scattered and forcefully removed from their homeland and relocated to servitude and humiliation camps in northern Kordofan during the civil war, where they received sub human treatment and intimidations?"