SONGYE. THE FORMIDABLE STATUARY OF CENTRAL AFRICA

SONGYE
A tribal people located in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Songye are best known for their distinctive statuaries and masks, which for centuries have been used to protect villages, ward off enemies, and bring fertility and wealth.
Approximately one thousand of these pieces are shown in this vibrant collection. The Songye often named their statues and decorated them with horns, skins, beads, tacks, shells, and bits of cloth. As a result, each item displays a singular, impressive identity. Considered to be imbued with magical energy and used only by village shamans, these statues have enormous cultural and historical significance, and they are also powerful works of art in their own right. Songye statues are fascinating in form and exude an impressive beauty. For power, intensity and inspiration they have no equal in Central Africa.This volume illustrates around a thousand examples, which have been the subject of a highly detailed morphological, stylistic and historical study. There is a close relationship between the two major known traditions those of the western regions, from the Belande to the Eki, and the stylistic centres of the Kalebwe and the Songye in the east. The creation of a Songye statue requires the intervention of three persons: the smith, the sculptor and the nganga or witch-doctor. Their collaboration transforms the statues into active powers efficacious and redoubtable. In them we discover an unsuspected dimension that harks back to the very origins of the Central African peoples. Human beings, as they measured themselves against the forces of the universe, developed a new political and social culture through an esoteric form of acquired knowledge. The Songye statues, silent witnesses of this transition, have finally won their place in the history of art. François NEYT, a Benedictine monk at the monastery of Saint-André, Ottignies (Belgium), was born in Likasi in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where he spent his childhood and adolescence. After gaining his PhD in humanities from the Catholic University of Louvain with a thesis on the Christian Orient, he went back to Africa from 1968 to 1972 to teach African arts, first at the Official University of the Congo and then at the National University of Zaire. He also collaborated with the National Museum Institute of Zaire. After his return to Europe, he carried out a number of projects on the Ivory Coast and in Mali and Nigeria. In Zaire he researched Hemba and Luba culture and was visiting professor at Lubumbashi. In 1980 he succeeded Albert Maesen in the archaeology and history of art department at Louvain-la-Neuve. During Brazils 500th anniversary celebrations, he was appointed curator of Afro-Brazilian arts at Sao Paulo.