CENTRAL AFRICA

Baga, Guinea, late 19th centuryAccession Number 20.8.97.20
Baga mainly live along the coastal regions of Guinea but this d’mba figure was collected in Sierra Leone, probably through Temne middlemen. We know very little about this type of figure, even though Pablo Picasso owned two like it.
“I have felt my strongest artistic emotions when suddenly confronted with the sublime beauty of sculptures executed by the anonymous artists of Africa. These works of a religious, passionate, and rigorously logical art are the most powerful and most beautiful things the human imagination has ever produced.”Pablo Picasso

We or Bete, Côte-d’Ivoire, before 1967Accession Number 1967.327
The We live in small communities without powerful chiefs. They have a wide variety of masquerades that play important roles in regulating and policing the community. This mask would have been worn in one of those masquerades.
The European artists, critics and connoisseurs who helped to reassess the value of ethnographic artefacts as ‘art’ knew very little about the original meaning and function of these objects. They analysed them according to Western ideas and viewed them as heroic, yet anonymous, expressions of universal aesthetic values. This led to an expansion of the Western category of ‘art’ to include artefacts produced by diverse peoples across the globe. Although this is widely seen as a positive move, it does not help us to understand African artefacts as unique cultural achievements in their own right .

20th Century European art and African sculpture

Senufo, Côte-d’Ivoire, before 1968.

This pulley holder would have been used with a narrow strip loom.

Its design is probably purely decorative and shows a buffalo mask.
“I often used to pass … a curio shop called “Le Père Sauvage”... There was a whole corner of little wooden statues of Negro origin. I was astonished to see how they were conceived from the point of view of sculptural language. … Compared to European sculpture, which always took its point of departure from the description of the object, these Negro statues were made … according to invented planes and proportions.”Henri Matisse

Lagoons, S E Côte-d’Ivoire, about 1905
This figure from the Lagoons region of S E Côte-d’Ivoire may have been made as a spirit companion figure or as diviners’ helper.
European colonial attitudes during the late 19th century viewed other cultures, particularly African, as unevolved. Seeing themselves as highly evolved, Europeans claimed moral and cultural superiority. But as knowledge of European atrocities against Africans became widely known, some Europeans began to question the moral and cultural superiority of the ‘civilised nations’.
Artists like Picasso and Matisse became interested in African artefacts during the first decade of the 20th century. They were astonished that such objects, generally detested or thought valueless, revealed complex sculptural ideas that suggested new ways of making images. They drew inspiration from African artefacts in order to revitalise European art with new visual, psychological and spiritual meaning.

Agwe and Lasirèn are water spirits - the king and queen of the sea.

Agwe is often shown as captain of the boat Imamou that transports the dead to their ancestral home.

He is one of the chief spirits of the ‘cool’ Rada pantheon.

Lasirèn is depicted as a mermaid and is usually placed with the ‘hot’ Petwo spirits.

What are Minkisi?

Kongo, Mayumba, Gabon, late 19th century

According to our records, this nkisi was used to cure a particular illness. Its various visible parts include the horn of an antelope, tail quills of the forest porcupine, and the skin of a genet cat.
Minkisi] receive … powers by composition, conjuring and consecration.

They are composed of earths, ashes, herbs, leaves and of relics of the dead …

These are the properties of minkisi, to cause sickness in a man and also to remove it.

To destroy, to kill, to benefit. … The way of every nkisi is this: when you have composed it, observe its rules lest it be annoyed and punish you.

It knows no mercy.‘Simon Kavuna, around 1915 Nkondi minkisi ‘power figures’
‘We don’t insult the [Christian] reliquaries of the medieval period by labeling them fetishes. Indeed, we see them as part of a complex of ideal moral gestures.

And so we are coming to view nkondi. We see them not as “exotic” (a bourgeois term for the culturally complex and strange).

We see them as ringing with elements from a parallel language of moral vision.’

Robert Farris Thompson, Professor of African Art History, Yale University, 1987
You can learn more about nkondi minkisi in this special interactive feature based on the world cultures gallery.

Nsemi on minkisi‘

Nkisi is the name of things we use to help a man when he is sick and from which we obtain health; the name refers to leaves and medicines combined together. … an nkisi is also something that hunts down illness and chases it away from the body. Many people therefore compose an nkisi … It is a hiding place for people’s souls, to keep and compose in order to preserve life.‘Nsemi, Cahier 391

Kongo, Mayombe, Dem. Rep. Congo, about 1899

This remarkable nkisi is composed of hook, knife, mirrors, model arrows, spoons and boat-shaped implements all set in ‘medicine’ packs. There are also iron bells and cloth packages attached to it. People wore minkisi like this one on the arm to protect themselves from harm while travelling through the bush.

Nkisi nkondi Kozo

Kongo, Landana, Cabinda, late 19th century
Many Kongo and other Central Africans believe that spiritual powers derive from communication with the dead. Most of the figures on display in the gallery were made to commemorate important people after their death and to serve as a focus for communication with them. Ordinary people did not usually communicate with the dead, as this required special knowledge and preparations that were available only to chiefs, witches and ‘baganga’ [singular ‘nganga’].
‘Baganga’ were (and still are) ritual specialists, healers and diviners who defend people against witchcraft and disease. In order to ensure the effectiveness of their work they used powerful objects [‘minkisi’, singular ‘nkisi’] containing forces obtained from the graves of the dead. All the nail-studded figures displayed in this section would have been operated by Kongo baganga.
BaKongo say that dogs have ‘four eyes’ - one pair for this world and another for the supernatural world. This may be why this dog figure has two heads. Dogs are also hunters and have a special ability to seek out and attack prey. This dog’s prey was probably witches and other wrong-doers.

Ivory Madonna

Kongo, Democratic Republic of Congo or Angola, 19th century

European views of Africans were mainly positive in the 15th to the 17th centuries.

In the 16th century the Kongo Kingdom adopted Catholicism as the state religion from the Portuguese.

The ruling class already had a good relationship with European missionaries and traders. Catholicism only strengthened their cooperation and mutual respect.
However, in the 17th century the slave trade and political interference by the Portuguese helped split the Kongo Kingdom into small chiefdoms.

Europeans gradually began to view Africans as uncivilised savages.

These new views were used to justify slavery and colonial rule.

Europeans colonised Central Africa during the late 19th century.

The region and its people were brutally exploited as Europeans forced Africans to harvest wild rubber. Europeans portrayed exploitation of African labour as a civilising influence, even though it caused great suffering to Central African peoples.
One reason why traders, missionaries and colonial officers enthusiastically collected African artefacts was because they wanted to destroy Kongo power, making it easier to impose European control over the people.
A Kongo ivory carver made this figure of a Madonna for a Catholic mission over 100 years ago. The Portuguese made their first Kongo converts to Christianity over 500 years ago.