Mbangu disease mask - Pende - DR Congo

Mbangu mask (illness mask) – Pende – Democratic Republic of the Congo

A striking representation of human suffering, where illness becomes ritual language and a collective warning.

Masque Mbangu, belonging to the corpus of Pende disease masks, among the most expressive and powerful in Central Africa. These masks deliberately embody physical and moral disorders: facial paralysis, asymmetry, disturbances of speech or vision. They are never mere gratuitous grotesqueness, but serve a fundamental social and educational function.

This specimen presents a stark black-and-white bichrome, typical of the most accomplished Mbangu masks. This chromatic opposition refers to the fundamental duality: health and illness, order and imbalance, the world of the living and invisible forces. The face is deliberately misaligned: drooping eyelids, sunken cheeks, a deformed and pierced mouth, accentuating the impression of suffering and a loss of control over the body.

Vertical scars on the cheeks, combined with the patina of age and altered pigments, testify to a genuine ritual use, probably within the framework of public ceremonies related to social regulation. Among the Pende, Mbangu masks were used to denounce deviant behaviors, to remind of the social and spiritual consequences of faults, but also to symbolically exorcise illness from within the community.

Authentic, old Mbangu masks are now rare, particularly those that preserve such formal intensity and a still legible bichromy. This specimen stands out for the force of its expression, the coherence of its plastic language, and its evident belonging to a documented corpus sought after by collectors and institutions.

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