20th c.
Wood, cloth, clay
Without stand: 11 1/2" x 5" x 5"
Provenance: Allan Stone Collection, New York
Note: Nkisi such as this one, adorned with headdresses of clay, were used for healing, protecting, and bringing good fortune to their owners.
Throughout the Congo Basin in Central Africa, tribal peoples of the Bantu culture believed that spirits, whether benevolent or malevolent, would interfere in daily affairs. They used objects (wooden figures, clay pots, gourds) to contain these spiritual powers or spirits. An object became a nkishi or nkisi (pl. minkisi / mankishi / zinkisi) when empowered by a ritual specialist (nganga) who filled it with magic and with medicines (bilongo) that gave it the power to intercede between ancestral spirits and the living. The figures essentially served as containers for powerful magic and medicine conjured from organic matter added by the ritual specialists whose knowledge of flora and fauna, understanding of the social order and insight into human nature gave them - and still gives them - powerful ascendancy over the minds of the people and over the imagination of society as a whole. Minkisi safeguard a community’s well-being by assuring fertility, protecting against illnesses and witchcraft, providing success in hunting and generally keeping evil at bay. They could also be used for evil, to aid in the misfortune, sickness and death of foes. Collective consultations occurred following specific dreams or nightmares, and recurrently during celebrations. Central African power figures are among the most recognizable minkisi identified with African art. Power figures were collaborative creations of the sculptor and the nganga. The activity of carving was consider profane, and without many strictly proscribed aesthetic requirements, allowed for the sculptor’s invention and idiosyncracy. The nganga then applied medicines or ritual substances and offerings, typically through an animal horn inserted into the crown of the sculpture’s head or through a concave cavity in the stomach. The two main categories of magical figures, community and personal, differ in size and usually in the content of their covering paraphernalia. Personal figures are smaller than community figures and interact with the familiar spirits who are associated with same transitory, earth-bound realm as the evil, wandering spirits of sorcerers. For the most part the spirits invoked by the personal mankishi are benevolent. Nkisi such as this one, adorned with headdresses of clay, were used for healing, protecting and bringing good fortune to their owner.
References
Made in Central Africa, African Art, Collections, Yale University Art Gallery, https://artgallery.yale.edu/collections/objects/84444

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