KOTA, GABON

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Until the middle of the twentieth century, clans across equatorial Africa preserved the memories and spirits of revered ancestors in the form of reliquaries that held the skulls of the renowned and distinguished. Elders of the widespread ancestor cult (most widely known as bwiti or bwete among Kota peoples in areas now belonging to Gabon and the Republic of Congo) commissioned the creation of abstract figural sculptures (mbulu ngulu) to stand atop baskets or bark containers that housed these precious relics. Produced in a variety of styles, they were affixed to the lid of the reliquary container or lashed to a relic bundle placed inside. On a superficial level they acted as the public face of familial altars, but they served a much more complex and important role as agents of ancestral power in communal rites and ritual performances, channeling support and protection to the community.

Combining wood and metal in a semi-figural composition, Kota reliquaries represent a rather unique African tradition. The costly metals that form their dramatic faceplates served to repel evil spirits and communicated social prestige. Their variously concave and convex faces also hold meaning about their identities, concave faces being reputedly female and convex faces male. A range of styles mark the faces’ rendering, but most are highly abstract and sometimes lack any features but eyes.

This small, rare reliquary shows an expressionistic face with striking gaze, textured with rifts and native repairs that lend the sculpture a storied, personal, vaguely brooding aura. Its form is somewhat simplified and reduces the composition to two pieces, a crescent-shaped head plate and large lower face, with staring eyes set in the shadow of the heavy brow and a slender nose joining the two sections. The suggestion of an open mouth is impressed at the bottom of the face. Decorative patterns of pierced holes adorn the main sections of the head, enhancing the tactile quality of the aged metal.

Beginning in the 1870s, Kota reliquary figures were among the earliest African sculptures to be acquired by European naturalists and explorers, among them Paul Du Chaillu, Alfred Marche, Oscar Lenz, and Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza.

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