With a total population of over twenty-two million, the Hausa live primarily in northwestern Nigeria and throughout West Africa, including Niger, Cameroon, and Ghana. Hausa artists create work in a variety of media, including leather, metal, ceramics, and fiber, in which African and Islamic characteristics are often combined. Hausa men both weave and embroider the voluminous prestige gowns that have become the masculine national dress in Nigeria.

Excerpt from

Roslyn A. Walker, The Arts of Africa at the Dallas Museum of Art (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009), 302.

• University of Iowa Museum of Art, Art & Life in Africa
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