FEATURE
122
FIG. 8 (above):
Henri Kerels, Belgian
(1896–1956), A Congolese
Woman, 1930.
Oil on canvas. 60 x 50 cm.
Private collection.
Photo: © Christie’s.
this general shape, with geometric facial features,
represent an interregional tradition called Bwadi
bwa Kifwebe, which is shared between the Luba
and Songye peoples. The name refers both to the
masks and to the male initiation society that owns
and uses them to fi ght crime and other threats.
Among the Luba, the masks generally have benevolent
connotations. Through its references to
the moon as a symbol of rebirth, rejuvenation, and
enlightenment, the sculptures’ predominant white
color has overwhelming positive associations referring
to benign spirits and healing. In fact, the
etymology of the word kifwebe in the Luba language
also means “to chase away, or put to fl ight,
death.” In the past, the masks were most typically
worn and danced at the time of the investiture or
the death and funeral of a chief or other titleholder,
but they also performed on the occasion of the
new moon.
An accidental discovery of a Kongo-kunst loan
object in a museum collection—and a revision
to my 2001 research—occurred in 2014 when
I visited The Nelson A. Rockefeller Vision, an
exhibition about the formation of what is today
the collection of the arts of Africa, Oceania, and
the Americas at the Metropolitan Museum of
Art. One of the wonderful African works which
curators Alisa LaGamma and Yaëlle Biro pulled
the 1922 Curiosités congolaises. The museum
acquired the mask in 1997 from Brussels-based
dealer Charles Jacques Massar, but apparently
his records did not include any reference to this
earlier provenance. Until I wrote to the museum’s
current curator for West Africa, Jonathan Fine,
in 2015, this important aspect of the object’s history
was not in the institution’s records. It has
not been confi rmed whether the mask still bears
any of Olbrechts’ inscriptions, but his sketch and
the dimensions of the mask leave no doubt that it
was indeed part of the historic exhibition.
Even though it is often impossible to distinguish
between the so-called white kifwebe masks of the
Songye and those of their Luba neighbors, there
are reasons to believe that the Berlin example warrants
a Luba attribution, as Olbrechts seems to
have accepted when he included the sculpture in
his exhibition. Koloss apparently also agreed with
this Luba label when he purchased the mask for
the Berlin museum. Striated or grooved masks of