Culture's diversity: Tribal body painting

From military training to entertainment, body painting have been used for any kind of purposes, but have we ever taken a look at the tribal aspect of the body painting? Cultural or traditionnal, body painting through different ethnicities, have his own signification.

Let's start with the KARO gathering in the Omo Valley, Ethiopia.
They use charcoal, chalk, ochre and pulverized mineral rock to create a variety of different colours which include orange, white, black, yellow and red. They use vibrant designs to accentuate fine facial features and enhance their graceful movements. Their body painting help them differenciate themselves from neighbouring tribes.

 

 

 

This is a Karo girl, also from Ethiopia. This painting is one of a kind and it's considered a great art.

 

 

 

 

This is a Nuba man, from Sudan. I can't really explain the painting because there's not much article about it, but it's very beautifull and we can see a lot of details on the painting.

 

 

 

 

The Andamanese tribe is one the earliest native African tribe and the first inhabitants of India. They're facing a possible extinction, but they're the first black African who inhabited the Asian territory before the arrival of the Mongolians.

 

 

 

 

This is a Masaï warrior from kenya. His body painting is pretty similar with that of a Samburu warrior, since they both live in Kenya, but I don't know if they're tribe's neighbour.





Masaï warrior





Samburu Warrior

 

 Karo's girls in Ethiopia put their body painting themselves, just like women put on their make-up.

It's a personnal beauty standard that each one of them chooses, and we can see a variety of different painting on every single girls.





 







Karo girl

 

Karo girl

 

 Now this is a tribe I've been extremely curious about: the Wodaabe.

Contrarily to the beauty standard of women putting make-up on, in the Wodaabe tribe, it's men who put make-up on, and participate to beauty pageant. They put their make-up on by themselves by making sure they accentuate their facial features, and at the end of the pageant, the winner is choosen based on the facial painting, the white teeth, and how well you rolled your eyes. No one wants to see a bad facial painting so after every rounds because of the dust, they have to re-do their make-up because someone with a bad make-up can become the laughing stock of the audience.

 

 



 

This is a boy from the Surma tribe. in Ethiopia. Body painting is something they have developped to attrack more tourist to their village because they understood the importance of the body painting impact in the photography art, and that they would be more interesting to shot.

 

 











This is a couple of other pictures I've seen some of them fromEthiopia, and the others, from all around Africa.

 

 

 

 

Body painting is a very important cultural aspect in some tribes and as we saw, Ethiopians are the one who practice it the most even if it's also practiced in some other countries. It also represents a beauty standard for some women and the traditionnal aspect of the body painting is actually what we should really be looking at.