This is the rating and price for Kongo Power Figure, Democratic Republic Of The, 1993

Description : KONGO POWER FIGURE, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO nkisi nkondi Wood, shell, nails, fiber, kaolin, feathers, horn height 24 1/4in (61.5cm) Provenance Sotheby’s, London, July 1982, Lot 214 Private Collection, Chicago, Illinois Exhibited Chicago, Illinois, Forms of Expression: African Masks and Sculpture, Washington Library Center, February 5 - April 17, 1993 Wyatt MacGaffey (Africa: The Art of a Continent, 1995, p. 244) notes, “Most of the objects widely admired as Kongo art fall into the category called nkisi (pl. minkisi), an untranslatable term. The Kongo, speakers of the Kikongo language, may number about three million people, distributed among the republics of Angola, Zaire and Congo on the Atlantic coast of Central Africa. Minkisi are ritual procedures for dealing with problems ranging from public strife to theft and disease to the hope of seducing women and becoming wealthy. A nkisi as a ritual programme may include the nganga, the initiated expert who performs the ritual, his or her costume and other paraphernalia, the client, the prescribed songs to sing and rules to be observed, sacrifices, invocations, dancing, and drinking. Minkisi as found today in museums are no more than selected parts of the material apparatus necessary for the performance of rituals in pursuit of particular goals. Most of them date from between about 1880 and 1920. Colonial administrators repressed the use of minkisi, which, though they continue in active use to this day, no longer take the public and visually explicit forms of the past. The basic idea of the nkisi-object is that of a container of forces directed to some desired end. The container held relics of the dead, or clay from the cemetery, which brought the powers of the dead into the nkisi and made it subject to a degree of control by the nganga. It also held bilongo (medicines), which metaphorically represented the uses to which this power was to be put. Other medicines were attached to the outside, where their function was to impress the public by their visual intricacy, suggesting the unusual capacities of such composite objects.” The work presented here is covered throughout the torso and lower jaw with blades, nails and other powerful implements, an indication of extensive usage. The figure wears a European jacket, of the type first introduced by Portuguese traders in the 16th century. The top of the head may have once supported a resin-sealed pack of empowering medicines. The baleful, aggressive body contrasts with the delicacy and calmness of the face, highlighted around the eyes and ears with white kaolin remnants--white relating to light, clarity and goodness. The work is an imposing and beautiful example of a nkisi power figure.
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