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Surrounded by arts of various cultures, Amarachi Attamah enchanted an audience with several costume changes and chants from her native Southeastern Nigerian language of Igbo.

“What is most unique is the language, because you don’t know what I’m saying, but you just connect with the whole feeling,” Attamah said.

Attamah, a graduate student in the Museum Studies program with a focus in intangible cultural heritage, has been performing chants for years. She was brought to perform at SU by professor Romita Ray, who teaches history of architecture. Ray had seen Attamah perform and believed she would complement the current exhibit perfectly by merging cultures and ideas.

This show was in tandem with the current exhibit, “Take Me to the Palace of Love” by Rina Banerjee. The performance consisted of three songs and two outfits to accompany the topics.

Attamah said that for her, a place of love is gratitude and that everyone has something to be grateful for. She wanted to make this idea a theme in her performance on Wednesday.

Attamah began her performance with her first song, “Ekele,” which can be translated to greetings to welcome the attendees and start off the performance. The second song, “Fulu Ife,” translated to “a call into seeing the inner part of you” recognized the inner soul of each and every person present, asking the guests to stand as she interacted with the crowd through the performance.

A large part of the performance was expressed through the costumes. Attamah conveyed the importance of costume, especially emphasizing the importance of standing out in a crowd. She had heard from feedback that costumes connect with an audience, and believes the costumes could be a performance by themselves.

“What is African performance without costumes?” Attamah said. “The costume alone is a performance… a cultural performance goes with cultural attire.”

Attamah’s voice in tandem with the artwork and costumes was a new and interesting way to view the exhibit, said Lily Greco, a freshman in the Bandier program.

“It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen before,” Greco said. “I think it’s so nice to experience.”

The third and final song, “Take Me to a Place of Love,” was accompanied by a costume change. This chant was primarily focused on a theme of love and gratitude, communicating Attamah’s feeling to the crowd gathered around the giant red and pink Taj Mahal.

The attendees were asked to stand around the Palace of Love and chant with her. The chant included Attamah saying the Igbo word for love, ‘ihunanya,’ along with the audience’s repetition of the title of the exhibit, “Take Me to the Palace of Love.”

“In each exhibit, I was looking at love and gratitude – the color of (the exhibit) — for instance, red — what do we usually use red for? Usually during Valentines or Christmas,” Attamah said. “These are times when we are grateful for everything in our lives, or for the fact we’re still alive through the struggles of life.”

This gratitude translated to Kate Holohan, who’s the curator of education and academic outreach at the Syracuse Art Museum.

“She’s kind, she’s generous, she’s collaborative, and certainly after seeing her performance, she has a really infectious and galvanizing energy,” Holohan said.

The power of this exhibition came from the energy surrounding it, Attamah said. She mentioned “masking” several times throughout the performance, speaking to how cultures are commonly perceived versus how they are.

“When you go to museums and see this mask, you’re so disappointed and (the culture) is kept to be one evil thing for aesthetics, so when I came and saw how glorious it was exhibited here, oh my God — that alone was just beautiful to me.” Attamah said.

Published on April 13, 2023 at 12:51 am