Power figure (nkisi) (late 1800s-early 1900s): Art, History and Details

Power figure (nkisi) (late 1800s-early 1900s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

One of seven minkisi figures previously in the René and Odette Delenne collection, this object contained medicines in which an ancestral spirit was believed to reside. This figure is one of the two tallest in the collection. Feathers of a bird of prey adorn its head, with two small guns pointing upward and a third hanging down. It had belonged to “the sorcerer of Louboulou.”

Object facts

• Title: Power figure (nkisi)
• Date: late 1800s-early 1900s
• Culture: Africa, Central Africa, Republic of the Congo, Kongo-style maker
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: Wood, metalized glass, organic materials (including resin), feathers, plant fibers, iron, and copper alloy
• Dimensions: Overall: 34 x 9.5 x 25 cm (13 3/8 x 3 3/4 x 9 13/16 in.)
• Collection: African Art
• Department: African Art
• Accession number: 2010.439

A detail from the museum

This is one of two tallest in the collection of spiritual figurines loaded with gunpowder to shoot at witches: nduda, or “night guns.”

Collection credit

René and Odette Delenne Collection, Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Petridis, Constantine, et al. Fragments of the Invisible: The René and Odette Delenne Collection of Congo Sculpture. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art. Milan: 5 Continents Editions, 2013, 54-58. .

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.