Banda Ngbaka figure
Cultural hybridization in African art in the Congo
This superb African statue with a very stylized look comes from the Ubangi region, where many ethnic groups live together, straddling the DR Congo and the Central African Republic. Among the most famous groups, the Azande, the Ngbandi, the Mangbetu, the Ngbaka and the Banda. If it is most often not easy to precisely identify a piece from this region given the geographical and cultural intricacies of ethnic groups, the typology of the piece that I am proposing here allows at least to attribute it to the Ngbaka. or the Banda.
Located to the north-west of Ubangi, many Banda who arrived in DR Congo were assimilated there by the Ngbaka among others. Their artefacts were thus "ngbaka-ized" in this case. Numerous objects bearing Banda morphological characteristics bear witness to this integration.
The statuettes of this type intervened within the framework of initiations organized by secret societies in charge of circumcision, excision and thereby the passage from childhood to adulthood as we see an example in the contextual photo. where a teenage Banda is circumcised.
In the work Ubangi, J.-L. GROOTAERS, Actes Sud, p. 177, we find a couple of Ngbaka Banda figurines with very similar typology. Note, on the image on the left it is an original Banda statuette.
01592
Data sheet
- Presumed dating
- Mid XXth century
- Size
- 27 cm
- Ethnic group
- Material(s)
- Wood, metal
- Country
- Origin
- Tribal art collection France
- Condition
- Excellent
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Cultural hybridization in African art in the Congo
This superb African statue with a very stylized look comes from the Ubangi region, where many ethnic groups live together, straddling the DR Congo and the Central African Republic. Among the most famous groups, the Azande, the Ngbandi, the Mangbetu, the Ngbaka and the Banda. If it is most often not easy to precisely identify a piece from this region given the geographical and cultural intricacies of ethnic groups, the typology of the piece that I am proposing here allows at least to attribute it to the Ngbaka. or the Banda.
Located to the north-west of Ubangi, many Banda who arrived in DR Congo were assimilated there by the Ngbaka among others. Their artefacts were thus "ngbaka-ized" in this case. Numerous objects bearing Banda morphological characteristics bear witness to this integration.
The statuettes of this type intervened within the framework of initiations organized by secret societies in charge of circumcision, excision and thereby the passage from childhood to adulthood as we see an example in the contextual photo. where a teenage Banda is circumcised.
In the work Ubangi, J.-L. GROOTAERS, Actes Sud, p. 177, we find a couple of Ngbaka Banda figurines with very similar typology. Note, on the image on the left it is an original Banda statuette.