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Figure
unidentified Congolese
Congolese
----
undated
This magnificent figure is a template for Luba body arts, and demonstrates the degree to which perfection of the body was a significant communicative social process for Luba people in late precolonial and early colonial times. The coiffure, for instance, is of the "cascade" style called mabutu and associated with turn-of-the-century central or east-central Luba (sometimes called "Luba Shankadi"). Mary Nooter (1991: 253, 412, 415) has reproduced a watercolor and a photograph rendered by W. F. P. Burton in the 1920s, in which both the æsthetic sophistication and the difficulty of creating and maintaining such a hairdo are apparent. The lower register of the coiffure was built around a support, secured by long iron pins and set off with beads and buttons. The central knot above the center of the woman's forehead was adorned with beads, and emphasized the line of scarification leading down the center of the forehead. On the Stanley figure, a line of scarification leads from the ears to the line of the eyes, with an implied junction with the perpendicular line down the center of the forehead. Such a scarification pattern was practiced by other peoples of what is now southeastern Zaire, including the Tabwa who call it "face of the cross" and who still use it to emphasize the point between the eyes that is the seat of prophetic wisdom (see the entries for Tabwa objects in this catalog XXXX and Roberts 1990b:11-2). The figure's chest and abdomen are also richly decorated with scarification in patterns with names making poetic or ironic allusions to Luba life (Nooter 1991: 246). Among Hemba (Luba-influenced peoples to the northeast of the Luba heartland), a male sculptor of ancestral figures traced patterns and made incisions on a young woman's "less intimate parts of the body, leaving the rest to a woman" to complete (Kazadi Ntole 1980: 2-3). Different parts of the body were scarified as a girl matured, with the most painful operations performed last. While some scarification patterns are no longer created, others are still used as important statements of female being. The pain endured, as well as the increasing communication of erotic beauty, led to the cultural transformation of girl to woman (Roberts 1988[a or b? Teg XXXX]). So, too, did elongation of the labia majora, also illustrated by the Stanley figure. "Elder Luba women insist on the importance of this attribute assuring a woman's sense of dignity" and erotic pleasure (Nooter 1991: 249), but names given to such a perfected state or lack thereof indicate that this body art further represents achievement of a state consistent with cultural refinement as defined in Luba cosmogonic myths (Heusch 1972: 33-5; cf Roberts 1986: 22-3). These various body arts were similar in their communicative capacity to graphic forms (wall and rock paintings or the studding with beads and carved images of lukasa "memory boards") and significant phenomena recognized or created in nature such as constellations of stars and trail blazes on trees practiced by Luba and other peoples of southeastern Zaire (Roberts 1988 [Teg]; Nooter 1990: 40-1). Such expression offered "visual support for a certain vision of the world" (Kazadi Ntole 1980: 9) important to Luba religion and political economy, and, indeed, can be called a "tegumentary language" (Zahan 1975:101). It is quite possible, for instance, that the Stanley figure is an example of masubu figures displayed during the last phases of initiation to Budye, a society that both reinforced the ideology of Luba sacred rule and was a counterweight to it (Nooter 1990: 40). As such, it would stand in explicit reference to tutelary and ancestral spirits of the society, but would provide a more general visual statement of royal bearing and being based upon the most ultimate social values embodied by the perfected Luba woman-lover-mother. One can only imagine the impact of an object so beautifully achieved as the Stanley figure, as it was revealed in the dramatic processes of Budye initiation. -- Professor Christopher Roy, School of Art and Art History, University of Iowa
Southern Savannah Africa Congo (Zaire)
Luba
Height: 16 1/4 inches Width: 6 1/2 inches Depth: 4 3/4 inches
Wood, shells, pigment, beads, string
The Stanley Collection
University of Iowa. Stanley Museum of Art
X1986_331
7/5/2007
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wood (plant material) shell (animal material) pigment beads (pierced objects) string (fiber product)
183425165
Shrine
Women's art Governance
Ancestral