Tribal Art

Ex Belgian tribal art collection.

This pair of bembe statues impresses by its dimensions. It is about a couple. The man holds a knife and a miniature head covered with kaolin while the woman holds a child on her arm, also covered with kaolin.
Both large figures have a relatively crusty reddish patina. Both wear black ornaments, such as bracelets. They wear a hemispherical headdress topped with a white growth.
The features of the faces are also demarcated from the patina using black pigment, as are the genitals. Bembe statuary has the particularity of highlighting the genitals, especially the male ones, sometimes in surrealist proportions.

The Bembe ethnic group is a Luba branch that left the Congo in the 18th century. Their society and artistic tendencies are marked by the influence of their neighboring ethnic groups in the Lake Tanganyika region, the Lega, the Buyu, etc. Indeed, like the Lega, the Bembe had a bwami association responsible for initiation and structuring society, but while the bwami was exclusive among the Lega, other associations coexisted among the Bembe. Within the bwami, art objects such as masks and statues were used to help aspirants to the highest rank, kindi, to remember the moral rules that they had to know and apply.