74
ART on view
KUBA
Fabric of an Empire
By Kevin Tervala, Matthew S. Polk Jr., and Amy L. Gould
On the southern edge of the
Congolese River Basin, nestled between the
Kasai and Sankuru Rivers, a remarkable kingdom
fl ourished in the latter half of the second
millennium CE. Known to their neighbors as
“Kuba,” these “people of the king” developed
one of the greatest civilizations in the history of
central Africa. At the apex of its power in the
mid to late nineteenth century, the Kuba kingdom
contained all the features of a modern-day
nation-state: a professional bureaucracy, a system
of taxation, extensive provision of public
goods, a constitution (albeit unwritten), and a
sophisticated legal system featuring trial by jury
and courts of appeal.1
Art and design were central to life in this kingdom.
In addition to developing an elaborate
and varied masquerade tradition, Kuba men
and women were prolifi c textile artists. Houses
were woven, currency was embroidered, and
an individual’s wealth and power were refl ected
in the intricacy of the patterns sewn, dyed, and
embroidered onto their clothing. Like words on
a page, these dazzling designs tell the history of
the polity as clearly as any written account or
oral history. Scholars have long recognized the
potential of Kuba art to shed a brighter light on
the kingdom’s past. Yet, as the eminent Belgian
FIG. 1 (left): Detail of
overskirt shown in fi g. 12.