Large sitting female figure
Ingrid Richter, Bergisch Gladbach, Germany
Description
wood, remains of polychrome paint, holding a smaller accompanying figure/child on the lap and a massive club-like item in the right hand, the face whitened, the elaborate coiffure with mirror glass inlay, minor missing parts, cracks, strong abrasion of paint, rep. in several places (right wrist, coiffure left hand side, neck lobe, right arm of the smaller figure, stool base);
apart from “ikenga” figures which are personal shrines carved for individual adult men, most of the Igbo figures were created to address community concerns, and most were collectively owned, if sometimes by lineages on behalf of a larger group. Most figural sculptures were housed in shrines dedicated to tutelary deities heading public cults and associated with parts of the natural world such as rivers, forests, the earth, or with days of the week and the markets held on them. They are not “ancestor figures” in the sense of representing actual deceased people. Rather, they are what Siroto (1976) designated as “invented” spirits or deities. Without field data, one cannot be certain which specific public cult a given figure served, yet most of these institutions followed a general tendency: fostering health, peace, and the general prosperity, as well as human and agricultural fertility and productivity.