African Arts Gallery

br>Various angles punctuate this small yanda figure whose flat face with a curved chin bears features in slight relief. Pointed excrescences, framed by slender arms, form the bust. The spread legs rest on hoofed feet. Satin patina, cracks on the foot.
African art has two types of Azande statues: The Kudu statues, between 30 and 50 cm high, represent ancestors, and the Yanda statues of 10 to 20 cm, in animal or human form, having an apotropaic role, exhibited during the divinatory rites during the rituals of the Mani society. Formerly designated under the name "Niam-Niam" because considered as cannibals, the tribes grouped under the name of Zande, Azandé, settled, coming from Chad, on the border of the R.D.C. (Zaire), Sudan and the Central African Republic. According to their beliefs, man is endowed with two souls, one of which is transformed upon his death into an animal-totem of the clan to which he belongs. The name of their ethnic group means: "those who own a lot of land", an allusion to their warlike past originating in Sudan. The Yanda statuettes were exhibited in divinatory seances during which the head of the society smeared them with paste and blew smoke on them. The Zandé on the other hand used poison oracles in many circumstances, and had a secret language.