Figure d'ancêtre "singiti" ·  R. D. Congo, Hemba · ID: 3045335

Description

wood, collection number “650”, label “Hemba 198”, base

A “singiti” figure of the same artist was auctioned on October 31, 2017 at the Dorotheum in Vienna.

“Singiti” figures are idealised and stylised depictions of deceased Hemba leaders. It is believed that the chief’s spirit inhabited the “singiti” figure and that ancestors are able to influence the success and wellbeing of villagers and of the community. As such, prayers were directed to figures and sacrifices of chicken blood offered.

It also provided a powerful ideological message about family continuity and legitimized the political authority inherited by the ancestor’s living kin.

Not every Hemba chief was honored with such a depiction. Such commissions were divinely sanctioned when a sitting chief was visited in a dream by one of his predecessors and this was interpreted as a sign that a “singiti” figure should be carved in that individual’s honor.

Hemba artists emphasized two bodily passages of such representations – the head as the site of one’s intellect where knowledge is taken in through the eyes and the stomach where the umbilicus is the point of connection with one’s extended lineage.

Littérature comparée

Neyt, Francois, La Grande Statuaire Hemba du Zaire, Louvain-la-Neuve 1977, p. 84