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Figure: Seated Female with Child

Kongo peoples; Yombe group

Not on view

There is an intensely vivid quality to this figure, with its dramatically contrasting and densely applied white and red pigments. This dynamism is complemented by the zigzag pattern inscribed around her mpu cap. In view of the exquisite carved details of Kongo “mother and child” figures, European collectors often removed their original ritual surfaces. The layers of mpemba and tukula retained here are composed of white clay and redwood powder and metaphorically associated with the bones and blood of the ancestors. Suspended around the woman’s neck from a finely knotted cord is a pendant composed of two leopard claws joined in a crescent. This form, which evokes the handheld slit drums conceived as vessels for spiritual communication, was an insignia of acolytes of the Lemba society. The secondary figure is unusual for the gesture of holding a hand to its mouth.

Figure: Seated Female with Child, Wood (Canarium schweinfurthii Engl.), plant  fiber, glass, leopard claw, kaolin, pigment, Kongo peoples; Yombe group

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