DESCRIPTION OF NUDITY AS ISU-EBONYI FOLK KINESICS ART
Art creates symbols shared by the folk generator. It adds beauty and pleasure to everyday life. Various art forms are cultural outputs of inconceivable possibilities of a people’s imagination. Perhaps, pristine art form involves using human body as a board for artistic expressions by painting, tattooing scarification, piercing ornamentation, reshaping and kinesics. This study used participant observation and focus-group methods to inquire into the symbolism of bodily nude kinesics art. The theoretical berth is symbolic interactionism. The ethnographic data were collected by focus-group discussion from Isu-Ebonyi folk community in Ebony South of South-Eastern Nigeria. Conclusions obtained however, do apply to other Igbo communities. Kinesics messages of nude bodily motions are not invitation to sexual activity or eroticism among the studied folks but delectable naturalism of beauty and not-to-be hidden purity, strength and valor. Beauty and purity are height of feminine wealth; strength and valor are essence of masculinity among the Isu-folks. Women’s suppleness and “wooden” body frame of men are art symbols with subliminal message of beauty, purity, strength and valor. Any elicitation of sexual appeal by nude body is strange and a corrupt transmorfiguration of the folk naturalism brought by recent social urbanization. The study recommends cultural reorientation to the people’s cultural values.
