ART on view
104
FIG. 1 (below left): Reliquary
guardian fi gure. Sanaga
language culture, Cameroon.
19th century.
Wood, shell, leather, glass beads. H:
26.6 cm.
Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques
Chirac, inv. 71.1901.4.4.
© MQB-JC. Photo: Hughes Dubois.
of Gabon, and the western portion of the Republic
of the Congo.
The exhibition will afford its viewers an opportunity
to experience about 100 works from
the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac’s
collection, the oldest of which were acquired by
Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza in the course of his
expeditions between 1879 and 18851 and attest
to the level of technical mastery that traditional
secular sculpture had attained even then. More
than 200 other pieces come from various European
and international museums, as well as from
private European and American collections.
The exhibition tells the story of the migrations
and displacements of the peoples in this area that
“NATIVE FORESTS”
Arts of Atlantic
Equatorial Africa
The Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques
Chirac will present Les forêts natales, Arts
d’Afrique équatoriale atlantique (Native Forests:
Arts of Atlantic Equatorial Africa), on
view from October 3, 2017, until January 21,
2018. It will feature 322 works by Ndjem, Fang,
Kwele, Kota, Mbede, Aduma, Galwa, Nzebi,
Tsogo, Vuvi, and Punu peoples dating from the
seventeenth through the beginning of the twentieth
century. It will be the largest group of masterpieces
and archetypal artworks from Atlantic
Equatorial Africa ever shown together. The
equatorial region, which is at the heart of Central
Africa, includes peoples of southern Equatorial
Guinea, Southern Cameroon, the Republic
By Najwa Borro
had been ongoing since the fourteenth century,
essentially following a north-to-south path. It
presents the major style groups in four sections:
the north, east, central, and south portions of Atlantic
Equatorial Africa. The study of the history
of the migrations by Guy Claver Loubamono-
Bessacque,2 complemented by the linguistic research
of Patrick Mouguiama-Daouda,3 provides
an overview of the movements that took place and
a chronology confi rmed by linguistic dynamics.
The title, Native Forests, refers to the immense
equatorial forest, irrigated by networks of rivers
and swamps, that constitutes the unique natural
and geographic environment from which the
works shown originate. This Atlantic Equatorial
African cultural area is almost entirely covered
with dense and humid forests, though to a lesser
extent in the Republic of the Congo, which
is characterized by savanna with trees. This
is the cradle of the creative impulse that rests
on a shared conception of the universe and of
man, inherited from the Bantu tradition and expressed
in a diversity of representations that occur
as two object types: fi gures and masks.