Paris, France: “Les Forêts natales, Arts d’Afrique équatoriale atlantique”, Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac, 3 October 2017 - 21 January 2018

San Luis, Misuri. “Kota: Digital Excavations in African Art”, Pulitzer Arts Foundation, October 16, 2015 – March 19, 2016.

The intelligence of forms, the alliance of materials, the stylistic audacity of rearrangement and schematization of the body in a fabulous abstraction, shine here through this reliquary, an unwavering guardian of the spirits of the ancestors. Its material, an undeniable sign of wealth, requiring the most accomplished skill and mastery, was intended to ward off malevolent spirits.

Belonging to the Ndumu stylistic canon, this reliquary figure stands out remarkably within the corpus for the expression it emanates.

All the naturalism of the human figure is gracefully removed to transform into a minimal and scholarly composition of geometric forms, profoundly cubist. The face, thus transformed, reduced, and gathered under its most elementary features, results in an inventive two-dimensional representation of forms.

An iconic symbol of the primitive arts, tending towards abstraction, this reliquary stands out from the corpus with its intriguing, surprising, and singular expressiveness.