Amongst the Hemba, in southeastern Congo, such large, elegant figures represent famous ancestors, clan founders and important chiefs. They are called ‘Singiti’ and they are preserved, venerated and receive sacrificial offerings in the houses of the chiefs or in special shrines and huts. These ‘Singiti’ figures document a very long line of ancestry of the chief and of his family clan. Therefore, they legitimise, as his ‘ancestors’, the chief’s claim to power.
The ‘Singiti’ ancestor figure presented here is carved out of very hard wood and was originally dyed black. It displays a typical Hemba head with appropriately serious and calm facial expression, which radiates a self-evident, peaceful power of ‘dignity’ and ‘authority’. The face is wide, with only half-opened eyes, as well as with finely modelled nose and delicate mouth. As a sign of dignified age, the ‘Singiti’ displays a beard of two rows in relief carved out from the same piece, from both ears to the pointed chin at the front. At the back of his head, the venerated ancestor has a characteristic, backward-sweeping Hemba hairstyle. On the back of the coiffure four plaits are woven in a cross form, here stylised into flat bars laid across one another. The head rests on a proportionally long neck, with powerful shoulders and arms carved free from the body. The wide, heavy hands lie at the side on the abdomen. The back of the figure shows an accentuated, carved back line above a wide posterior, from which the starting points of the heavy, powerful legs begin (no longer preserved due to age and weathering).
Overall, the sculpture on the front side has additional heavy old breaks and erosions, from the neck over the chest down to the abdominal area. This, however, only marginally detracts from the serious and dignified total impression of this ‘ancestor’. Additional, smaller, old breakages are detectable on the left arm on the outside, on the abdomen, as well as on the hips and the posterior. There is also a certain amount of colour abrasion to the forehead, eyebrows, nose, mouth and to the edges of the hairstyle on the back, through long use of the ancestor figure. This is compensated by a good, partially shiny and partially slightly encrusted patina as a result of frequent sacrificial offerings.
Dimensions: 55 cm x 17 cm x 16 cm.
First third of the 20th century. (ME)

Provenance:
South African private collection.

Lit.:
‘Die Kunst Schwarzafrikas’ by Miklós Szalay, Völkerkundemuseum der Universität Zürich, p. 143, 144, ill. III, IV; ‘100 Peoples of Zaire and their Sculpture’ by Marc L. Felix, p. 35, ill. 2, 3; ‘Die Kunst des schwarzen Afrika’ by Kerchache, Paudrat, Stephan, ill. 678, p. 585, ill. 1013: ‘The Tribal Arts of Africa’ by Jean-Baptiste Bacquart, cover photo and p. 161, ill. 6,9, p. 163, ill. B.