African Arts Gallery

Mask Mahongwe. Mahongwé (mahongwe) are approximately 15000 installed in the east of Gabon. Close relations of Kota Kota, they are known for their figures of guards of reliquaries similar to the heads of Naja deployed and glazes on the face of horizontally juxtaposed copper wires.

The cult of ancestors, the bwete (North Kota) was at the heart of the social and religious life of the Kota and has many analogies with that of the Fang . In the exclusive presence of insiders, the clan's major decisions were made during ceremonies during which the reliquaries were taken out and used. In order to reactivate the magic charge, the initiates rubbed the relic with sand. In the Kota , these figures have reached a degree of stylization and abstraction as toddning: reduced to the shoulders and to the "" topped with a large face, the latter can be concave (female) or convex (male). The concave warhead face topped by a small tubular outgrowth here offers two cabochon eyes with a pupil on either side of a nasal ridge whose end ends in internal volute. Copper and brass threads ...