H x W x D: 29.1 x 15.5 x 12.8 cm (11 7/16 x 6 1/8 x 5 1/16 in.)
Type:
Figure
Geography:
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Date:
19th century
Label Text:
This rare and important Mbala figure depicts a woman holding a child on her lap. The innovation of the child straddling the mother's torso, the child's arms encircling the mother and the mother's arms encircling the child creates an interlocking sculptural dynamism that is constantly changing as the viewer moves around the sculpture. The seat depicted is recognizable as the typical regional variety constructed of palm ribs.
According to 1915 fieldwork, the most important Mbala sculptures were called pindi and were carved in pairs--a maternity figure called gihalu giwenyi and a musician figure called limba. Pindi figures were owned by Mbala land chiefs who invoked the figures in the event of war, great disputes, bad harvests, epidemics, lack of game or natural disasters. Pindi figures were also employed during accession rites for chiefs. Therefore, these figures were directly associated with the person and regalia of the chief. They were kept in a royal treasury along with the chief's stool, adze, staff, fly whisk and other materials directly related with succession rites and lineage affiliation, such as earth from the Kwango River, ancestral bones and kaolin. It is possible that pindi figures either represented chiefly power in abstract terms, or more specifically, they may have represented the chief's primordial ancestor. As elsewhere in Africa, kings and chiefs were thought to have supernatural control of fertility--especially powerful land chiefs who were believed to control both human fertility and the reproductive fertility of the fields, forests and streams in their territory. This maternity figure certainly has important fertility implications related to Mbala chiefdomship. Only the chief or his appointed official could physically touch the figures or make offerings to the figures without endangering himself. Mbala maternity figures may have other associations related to Mbala ideas about leadership and ancestor veneration. Among the Mbala, the principal wife of a deceased chief would descend into the grave and receive on her knees the body of her husband before burial. This referred to the procreative power of the important land chief and the link to his descendants that persisted beyond death.
Description:
A female figure holds a child on her lap. The mother is seated on a low square stool made of palm ribs and supports the weight of the child with her left hand on his back and her right hand touching his knee. The child sits straddling the mother's left thigh. The child's right hand rests on the mother's back and the left hand rests on her left breast. Both figures are carved with identical head and facial features including a narrow head enhanced by an elaborately crested and plaited hair style, prominent forehead, long almond shaped eyes and an open mouth with filed upper and lower teeth. The figure's surface retains some of its original coating of red pigment especially in recessed areas.
Provenance:
Raoul Blondiau collection, 1920s to 1988
Arman collection, New York, 1988 to 1999
Exhibition History:
Conversations: African and African American Artworks in Dialogue - From the Collections of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art and Camille O. and William H. Cosby, Jr., National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, November 7, 2014-January 24, 2016
African Faces, African Art: The Arman Collection, Museum for African Art, New York, October 9, 1997-April 19, 1998
Arman and l'art Africain. Musée d'Arts Africains, Océaniens, Amérindiens de Marseilles, June 23-October 30, 1996; Museé des Arts d'Afrique et d'Océanie, Paris, December 3 1996-February 17, 1997; Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum, Cologne, March-June 1997; Brussels, unspecified dates; New York, unspecified dates
Brussels Universal Exhibition, 1958, no. 81
Published References:
Bourgeois, Arthur P. 1988. "La joueuse de tambour mbala de Jerome L. Joss, les oeuvres apparente´es et leur signification." Arts d'Afrique Noire, Vols. 65 & 66, no. 5.
Kreamer, Christine Mullen and Adrienne L. Childs (eds). 2014. Conversations: African and African American Artworks in Dialogue from the Collections of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art and Camille O. and William H. Cosby, Jr. Washington, D.C.: National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, p. 77, pl. 16.
Mirror du Congo Belge, Vol. 1 & 2. 1929. Bruxelles: Societe Nationale d'Editions Artistiques, p. 214.
Musées de Marseille. 1966. Arman and l'art Africain. Marseille: Reunion des musées nationaux, no. 110.
Nicolas, Alain. 1997. African Faces, African Art: The Arman Collection. New York: Museum for African Art, no. 152.
Olbrechts, Frans. 1958. Kunst in Kongo: Koninklijk Museum van Belgisch-Kongo te Tervuren. Brussels: International Exhibitions Bureau, no. 6.
Sotheby's. 1988. Auction catalogue (May 10). New York, no. 98.
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