STATUE LUBA - DR Congo (No reserve price)

Meticulously sculpted, this delicate female figure of African tribal art, Luba, a spiritual medium, presents classical features in an oval face. Her headdress reveals a shaved forehead that evokes the hairstyles of Luba women in the early 20th century. Her stance recalls that the secrets of royalty (the bizila) belong to women because of their role as political and spiritual intermediaries. She bears the beauty criteria of checkerboard scarifications forming diamonds on the abdomen. The navel presents a prominence that also emphasizes her role in fertility and the transmission of life and its values.

The Luba (Baluba in Tchiluba) are a people of central Africa. Their cradle is Katanga, more precisely the region of the Lubu River, hence the name (Baluba, which means “the Lubas”). They were born from a secession of the Songhoy people, under the leadership of Ilunga Kalala, who caused the old king Kongolo, venerated since, to die in the form of a python. In the 16th century they created a state, organized as a decentralized chiefdom, extending from the Kasaï River to Lake Tanganyika. The chiefdoms cover a small territory with no real border, which comprises at most three villages.