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African and Oceanic Art from the Barbier-Mueller Museum, Geneva: A Legacy of Collecting
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Funerary Post
Southwestern Sudan; Bongo or Belanda Mbegumba peoples, 20th century
Wood, metal; H. 78 3/4 in. (200 cm)
Provenance: Christian Duponcheel, 1972; [Henri Kamer, New York]; Barbier-Muller collection, since 1973
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This figure from southwestern Sudan was carved by a Bongo or a Belanda Mbegumba sculptor to commemorate a hunter-warrior at his burial site. It is part of a corpus of sixteen such works collected in Sudan by Christian Duponcheel in 1972 that also includes an example in the Metropolitan's own collection. The slight, idiosyncratic curvature of these over-lifesize vertical figurative posts reflects the carvers' sensitivities to the natural properties of the wood. Within the corpus, each work embodies a distinct sensibility. While the form in the example in the Metropolitan is that of a modeled body, this more columnar interpretation is boldly inscribed with symbolic notations.
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