Superb Mask - Kuba - DR Congo (No reserve price)

This mask comes from the border area between the southern Bushong (Kuba) and the northern Kete of the Kasai province. Linked to nature spirits (ngesh among the Kuba and mungish among the Kete), it intervened during initiation rites, and its power was associated with that of the forest and the spirits that dwell there, in the sense of men's dominant position. Its manifest great antiquity places it among these 'old Kuba masks of exceptional quality, some witnesses having miraculously survived'.