Step one of the cycle

Nine traditions, from the Nile to the Pacific Northwest.

We move one tradition at a time. Study the one that's open, and the next one unlocks — with the Cast bank ready to put Nubian, West African, Afro-Latina, and Afro-Caribbean models in the picture.

01Open now

Amarna Period Egyptian Relief

Akhetaten (Amarna), Egypt · c. 1350 BCE

For about seventeen years, one pharaoh turned Egyptian art upside down. He moved the capital to a new city in the desert and put a single god at the centre of everything: the Aten, the sun disk, its rays ending in little hands that reach down to bless the royal family. The artists followed. Bodies grew long and soft, heads tilted, and for the first time the king was shown at home — kissing his daughters, sitting with his queen, relaxed under the sun. It is the most intimate moment in three thousand years of Egyptian art.

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02Open now

Assyrian Palace Relief

Nimrud & Nineveh, Mesopotamia (northern Iraq) · c. 900–600 BCE

Assyrian kings lined their palaces with carved stone panels taller than a person, telling the story of the empire in long bands that run around the room like a scroll. At every doorway stood a lamassu — a guardian with a bull's or lion's body, eagle wings, and a crowned human head, carved so that from the front it stands still and from the side it walks. Wedge-shaped cuneiform writing runs straight across the carving. It is storytelling at architectural scale.

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03Open now

Benin Bronze Court Reliefs

Benin City, Benin Kingdom (Nigeria) · 16th–17th century

In the palace of the Oba of Benin, hundreds of cast brass plaques once covered the wooden pillars of the courtyards — a visual archive of the court. They show the Oba, his chiefs, warriors, musicians, and attendants in high relief, wearing coral-bead collars stacked to the chin and beaded crowns. The backgrounds are filled with small punched flower patterns. Only the royal guild of casters was allowed to make them, and they remain among the finest metalwork anywhere in the world.

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04Open now

Ife Terracotta & Bronze Naturalism

Ile-Ife, Yoruba (Nigeria) · 12th–15th century

Ile-Ife is the sacred city of the Yoruba, and its artists made some of the most serene portrait heads ever created. In terracotta and copper alloy, the faces are calm, full-lipped, and idealised — naturalistic but perfected. Many are covered with fine parallel lines running down the face, and some wear tall beaded crowns. When the first heads reached Europe in the early 1900s, some scholars refused to believe African artists had made them. They were wrong, and the heads are now recognised as masterpieces.

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05Open now

Dogon Wood Sculpture

Bandiagara Escarpment, Mali · 15th century onward

The Dogon live along a dramatic cliff in Mali, in villages built of mud and stone. Their carvers make wooden figures, masks, and doors for granaries and shrines in a bold, angular language: long thin bodies, arms raised, shoulders squared, faces reduced to wedges. Granary doors are covered with rows of repeating ancestor figures and zigzag bands. The style strips the body down to geometry, and that simplicity is what makes it so powerful.

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06Open now

Gondarine Ethiopian Icon Painting

Gondar, Ethiopia · 17th century

When Gondar became Ethiopia's royal capital in the 1600s, its churches filled with painted icons, manuscripts, and murals in a style that is instantly recognisable: flat blocks of bold red, yellow, and green; faces with enormous almond eyes looking straight out; halos covered in patterned ornament; everything outlined in black. It is one of the oldest continuous Christian painting traditions in the world, and it is African from end to end.

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07Open now

Kamasan Balinese Painting

Kamasan village, Klungkung, Bali (Indonesia) · 15th century onward

In the Balinese village of Kamasan, painters have been telling epic stories on cloth for centuries, in a style taken from wayang kulit shadow puppets. Figures are flat, shown in profile or three-quarter, with elaborate costumes and gestures. Stories run in horizontal bands packed with foliage, flames, clouds, and architecture, and borders are thick with curling leaves. These paintings hang in temples and palaces and still get painted today by the same families.

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08Open now

Haida Formline Art

Haida Gwaii, Pacific Northwest Coast · 19th century onward

The Haida and their Northwest Coast neighbours developed formline: a design system built from a few shapes — ovoids, U-forms, and split-U forms — joined by continuous flowing lines that swell thick and taper thin. Crest animals like Raven, Eagle, and Bear are folded, split, and mirrored to fill a surface completely, whether a totem pole, a bentwood box, or a blanket. Primary lines are black, secondary lines red. It is a strict grammar that produces endlessly fluid images.

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09Open now

Fante Asafo Appliqué Flags

Fante coast, Ghana · 19th century onward

Along Ghana's coast, every Fante town has Asafo companies — community groups once organised for defence, now for festivals, public works, and ceremony. Each company flies flags sewn from bold cut-out cloth shapes: lions, elephants, people, boats, trees, stars — each picture a proverb that boasts about the company. Colours are flat and saturated, figures stitched straight onto a bright ground, often with a fringe. They are witty, proud, and meant to be read from across a crowd.

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