African Arts Gallery

A diamond-shaped head crowned with a diadem, offering a flat profile, surmounts a proportionally reduced powerful body, whose abdomen forms a projection. The stocky legs, set on wide feet, rise from a rectangular block. Crusty black patina, desication cracks.
Migratory flows have mixed within the same territories Bembe , Lega , Buyu (Buye) or Boyo , Binji and Bangubangu. The Basikasingo, considered by some to be a Buyu sub-clan, are however not of Bembe origin, Biebuyck's work having made it possible to trace their history. Organized into lineages, they borrowed the association of Bwami from the Lega. The bembe and boyo traditions are relatively similar: they venerate the spirits of nature, of water specifically among the Boyo, but also the heroic ancestors, whose will we seek to know by means of divinatory rites. The hunt is also an opportunity to perform sacrifices of gratitude towards the entities whose favor and protection have been requested. Their masks are rare and their function poorly documented.