ritual figure

A wooden power figure from Central or West Africa. The body and face of the figure has been blackened and red pigment applied in a design across the face, being predominately over the cheeks, eyebrows, and forehead. The chest of the figure is embedded with nails and other pieces of metal, one of which is slightly loose, which protrude from the chest. There is a square hole in the abdomen of the figure, this is currently empty but may have originally contained a spiritually charged substance. As mentioned above, the face of the figure is decorated with red pigment and additional traces of white pigment. The eyes appear to be made from glass with a mirror situated behind. A lenght of twisted blue cloth has been tied around the waist and groin.

Collection Information

These objects are only a part of our collections, of which there are more than 350,000 objects. This information comes from our collections database. Some of this is incomplete and there may be errors. This part of the website is also still under construction, so there may be some fields repeated or incorrectly formatted information.

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