Power Figure (Nkisi N'Kondi: Mangaaka), a wooden sculpture is shown in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met) Gallery 350. This is from Kongo peoples or Yombe group who lived in Republic of the Congo or Cabinda, Angola, Chiloango River Region. This sculpture is made in the 19th century, and the size is 46 1/2 in. * 19 1/2 in. * 15 1/2 in. The Power figure is made of wood, iron, resin, ceramic, plant fiber, textile, and pigment. The accession number is 2008.30. The sculpture is placed in the front of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, gallery 350.
This is a human figure sculpture which is lifted by two rectangular blocks under his feet. And the figure is on a large block when it placed in Met. The block lifted …show more content…
The figure is not perfect symmetry. The forehead is typically high and rounded, although it has a hat on the top of his forehead, and the cheeks are concave. The hat he is wearing makes he looks like warriors. And the hat has a pointed bottom on the top and has parallel straight lines in different directions which clearly show that is a hat, not his hair. He has decorated eyebrow and opened, awake, half circle shape eyes. The eyes are painted in white color which makes it more scared. Usually, in African art, white color is considered as spirit. This might be a figure related to the spiritual world. There is a light reddish brown color stripes cross line from his eyebrow to his ears on both sides of his face His ears are raised up and placed higher than his eyebrow which is different from normal human beings. Our ears are supposed to be lower than our eyebrow. Also, there is a little hole, which looks like an earring hole, in both of his ears. His ears are comparably small. The mouth is opened and in a weird shape and all his teeth is shown off. Some of his teeth are black because it used for a long period. He has long, straight jawbone. Additionally, there are several nails or small metal stick rods pinned along with the line of his jawbone which looks like his