Mboko Cutting Carrier Statue - Luba - Congo DRC

Figurine of a Mboko Cup Carrier - LUBA - D. R Congo. Provenance: private collection, Belgium. Dimensions: 36 x 13 cm. Material: wood. Certificate of authenticity: included. Currently, we can inventory about more than twenty pieces of the “masters of the Buli”, name of the village where Father Maurice had discovered a throne in this style. This piece comes from the region of Kanunu, it was formerly part of the Luba Kingdom. In the heart of the kingdom, when the kaolin of the king is missing, the two spirits protecting the royalty, make appear at the surface of their sacred lake, a calabash with mboko kaolin, if they believe that the sovereign is worthy to reign; a calabash itself joins the walls surrounding the palace in which the king ensures the cult of the ancestors; his dignitaries then offer to him a feminine figure, most likely a cup carrier, to store this recipient in it . The sculpture represents Mpanga, a feminine spirit, whereas the calabash is a sign of the Banze, her spouse or twin, depending on the versions. The main users of this figurine are not political leaders, but kilumbu mediums, who perform divination through a state of trance, inspired by the spirits. Their main charm lays in the Mboko calabash, housed by the spirits. To perform divination, some mediums shake their calabash in order to establish a diagnosis by observing the configuration of the charms which are inside. The cup carrier represents the soothsayer who carries the Mboko of his spirits. The feminine identity of these statuettes is used so that the union between a man and a woman serves as metaphor of alliance between the spirits and humans, the latter are on the land of their “spouses”, taking the form of living rituals or figurines. Cup carriers can heal by a simple contact, these can protect the village against misfortune, etc. It is also used in a divinatory aim, like a ventriloquist, the soothsayer makes the sculpture talk. The latter enter in the general category of the Nkishi, anthropomorphic statuettes used by mediums to magically influence the course of things. Like the Nkishi, cup carriers acquire their efficiency during a ritual in which these are activated by the insertion of many charms inside of the receptacle, or in a horn stuck in the head, in order for a spirit to connect with a sculpture and to confer its power. The additional picture is the one of the cup carrier of the masters of the Buli of the Tervuren Museum. Collected between 1981 and 1912. Express and secure shipment. Tags: figurine, sculpture, figure, statuette, wood, art, contemporary, first, primitive, tribal, African, antiquity, masterpiece, gallery, Picasso, Giacometti.