Male Figure

Description

For decades scholars have classified African artworks according to the so-called ethnic groups that made them. Figures such as these would have been categorized as made by either the Yaka or the Suku peoples of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, amongst whom they were collected in the first half of the twentieth century. At the time, however, the Kwango region in Southern Congo was made up of a complex intersection of languages, kingdoms, and cultures that traded goods, interacted socially, and found inspiration in each other’s artistic traditions. Yaka artists were strongly influenced by their Suku, Nkanu, and Teke neighbors, and Yaka ritual healers and a uent chiefs actively collected pieces made by them, especially those they found aesthetically pleasing and visually powerful.
The attribution of this figure to a particular “ethnic” group was based on narrow conceptions of Central Africa that originated in the colonial period, when European nations artificially partitioned the region into distinct ethnic areas. More recent scholarship recognizes that cultural practices were not monolithic, but widely shared among groups, as evidenced by the transfer of artworks and free flow of artistic ideas, and that their makers are not so easily identified.