Cleveland Museum of Art

Power figure (nkisi)

Date

late 1800s-early 1900s

Medium

Wood, metalized glass, organic materials (including resin), feathers, plant fibers, iron, and copper alloy

Culture

Africa, Central Africa, Republic of the Congo, Kongo-style maker

Department

African Art

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

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

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