Anyone who visits the African galleries of the great European ethnographic museums almost always meets a figure that strikes with its power: a standing wooden statue with an intense gaze, its body bristling with nails, blades and fragments of iron. It is an nkisi nkondi, one of the best-known objects of Kongo art. To understand it, however, we need to move away from the idea of an «idol» and look at a broader conception: that of the minkisi.
What an nkisi is
The word nkisi (plural minkisi) refers, in the Kongo culture of Central Africa, to a container holding a spiritual presence able to act in the world. An nkisi can take many forms:
- an anthropomorphic or zoomorphic statue;
- a bag or bundle tied with cords;
- a shell, a gourd, a pot;
- a small cloth package.
The outer form is not the decisive element. What makes an object an nkisi is the substances it contains, called bilongo, and the rite by which it is prepared and activated. The bilongo were chosen on symbolic grounds: earth from graves, white clay, seeds, plant fragments, minerals. Many of these materials were chosen for their names, which in Kikongo evoked, through wordplay, the quality the nkisi was meant to have.
The nganga: the specialist
Preparing and using minkisi was the task of the nganga (plural banganga), the ritual specialist. The term is hard to translate: it denotes a person endowed with knowledge, who knows the materials, words and gestures needed to put the community in touch with invisible forces. The nganga was not a mere craftsman: a sculptor might carve the wooden figure, but it was the nganga who made it an nkisi.
The name survives in the diaspora: in Cuba, in Palo Monte, nganga refers to the sacred vessel itself.
The nkondi: the hunters
Among the many types of minkisi, the nkondi are the most famous. Their name is generally linked to a verb meaning «to hunt»: the nkondi is the hunter that pursues whoever has broken an agreement or done wrong. They were powerful objects, feared and respected, kept by an nganga and consulted in serious situations.
Why the nails
The nails and blades were not all driven in at once by the sculptor. They were added one at a time, over the years, each time the figure was called upon. The documented purposes vary:
- sealing an oath, for example when two villages made an agreement;
- settling a dispute, entrusting the nkondi with striking whoever was lying;
- activating the figure's power against an evil threatening the community.
Each nail was thus the trace of an event, an agreement, a word given. An nkondi heavily laden with iron told a long story of agreements and conflicts. It could be called a kind of community archive, written not in ink but in metal.
The mirror on the belly
Many Kongo figures have a cavity on the belly closed by a mirror or a piece of glass. Behind the mirror the bilongo were placed. The mirror had several symbolic values: it protected the substances, allowed the figure to «see» into the invisible world, and recalled the reflective surface of water, which in Kongo thought separates the world of the living from that of the dead.
From «fetish» to museum
The Europeans who encountered these practices called them by a Portuguese term, feitiço, from which the word «fetish» derives. The term, born of a misunderstanding, enjoyed great success in European thought, eventually entering the language of philosophy and psychology.
Many nkondi now in museums were collected in the colonial period, between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, often in violent circumstances: seizures by the authorities, destruction encouraged by some missionaries, unequal exchanges. Today their presence in collections is at the centre of a lively debate about the history of these objects and their possible return.
Art and thought
In the twentieth century the nkondi fascinated European artists with their expressive power. But seeing them only as sculptures means missing their meaning. Each figure was an instrument of relationship: between people, between villages, between the living and the dead. Its value lay not in the beauty of its form but in its capacity to hold the community together through the memory of agreements.
In short
- An nkisi is a container of spiritual force, activated by substances called bilongo and by a rite.
- The nganga is the ritual specialist who prepares and uses minkisi.
- The nkondi, «hunters», served to seal oaths and settle disputes.
- Each nail driven in recalls an agreement or event: the figure is an archive of metal.
- The word «fetish» stems from a European misunderstanding of these practices.
