Meagher found the text “Body rituals among the Nacirema” some time ago, the idea, to produce a show around the article. It was decided to falsify a narrative ‘Lost images of the Nacirema’ which proposed that these lost images were found in a hidden attic in the Dunamaise Arts Centre. Meagher painted the ‘found’ images as if painted by tribe members, she also gathered together ‘artifacts’ and chronicled the discovery.
During renovations at Dunamaise Arts Centre, Bat Specialist, Nalced Rehgaem, came across some boxes hidden behind a false wall. On further investigation, he found a hidden cache, the artefacts on display here today.
The culture of this people is still very poorly understood. They are a North American group….. Little is known of their origin.
According to Nacirema mythology, their nation was originated by a culture hero,……..known for two great feats of strength …..the chopping down of a cherry tree and ……
Nacirema culture….the fruits of these labors and a considerable portion of the day are spent in ritual activity. The focus of this activity is the human body, the appearance and health of which loom as a dominant concern in the ethos of the people.
Most houses are of wattle and daub construction, but the shrine rooms of the more wealthy are walled with stone. Poorer families imitate the rich by applying pottery plaques to their shrine walls.
Special women's rites are performed only four times during each lunar month, but what they lack in frequency is made up in barbarity. As part of this ceremony, women bake their heads in small ovens for about an hour.
The medicine men have an imposing temple, or Latipso, in every community of any size. ….These ceremonies involve a permanent group of vestal maidens who move sedately about the temple chambers in distinctive costume and headdress.
The Latipso ceremonies are so harsh that it is phenomenal that a fair proportion of the really sick natives who enter the temple ever recover. … Despite this fact, sick adults are not only willing but eager to undergo the protracted ritual purification, if they can afford to do so.
There remains one other kind of practitioner, known as a "listener." This witch-doctor has the power to exorcise the devils that lodge in the heads of people who have been bewitched. ….The patient simply tells the "listener" all his troubles and fears, beginning with the earliest difficulties he can remember.
……mention must be made of certain practices which have their base in native esthetics but which depend upon the pervasive aversion to the natural body and its functions. …..A few women afflicted with almost inhuman hyper-mammary development are so idolised that they make a handsome living by simply going from village to village…….
In this light, the magical beliefs and practices of the Nacirema present such unusual aspects that it seems desirable to describe them as an example of the extremes to which human behaviour can go.
