Ɵ Banda Statuette, Mobaye area, Central African... - Lot 74 - Giquello

Lot 74
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120000 - 150000 EUR
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Result : 135 400EUR
Ɵ Banda Statuette, Mobaye area, Central African... - Lot 74 - Giquello
Ɵ Banda Statuette, Mobaye area, Central African Republic Late 19th century Wood with a dark brown patina, used, bone inlays (?) H. 40 cm Banda Figure, Mobaye area, Central Republic of Africa H. 15 1/5 in Provenance: - Private collection Publication: - Alisa LaGamma, Echoing Images: Couples in African Sculpture, The Metropolitan Museum, 2004, p. 41 The history of the populations of the Ubangi region has been strongly marked by the displacement and mixing of populations linked to the culpable activities of the Chadian and Sudanese slave traders of the 19th century. The Banda people were certainly the most devastated by these incessant raids, which no doubt explains why, despite the size of their population, few works of art have reached us. The plastic arts often need a sedentary lifestyle, peace and prosperity in order to flourish in a society. However, at the beginning of the 20th century, a French colonial administrator named Xavier Bellouard collected a number of statuettes in the Mobaye region with such a well-defined style and workmanship that most of them were attributed by art historians to the same hand, that of the "master of Mobaye". Very explicitly gendered and working in pairs, these small sculptures were used during the ceremonies of passage of the secret Banda initiatory associations, when the tangible presence of the ancestors was required by the ritual. It is likely that they were symbolically linked to the allegory of a founding ancestor couple, following the example of Seto and Nabo of the neighbouring Ngbaka. With a controlled modesty, the work imposes itself... The long torso, with its long, flat arms, from which only the umbilicus emerges as a proud symbol of filiation, stands firmly on legs in the classical style of the region, and bears a hemispherical head in a mushroom hat at the zenith. The face appears in the tangle of the headdress, a simple circular flattened area in relief, inl
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