LEGA, Democratic Republic of the Congo. - Lot 145

LEGA, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Grade mask featuring an elongated face with a long, straight nose. The half-closed coffee-bean eyes and open mouth give the whole an intense, concentrated expression. The convex forehead is adorned with an incised decoration of triangular motifs and dotted lines, soberly structuring the surface. The large fiber collar underlines the object's ceremonial character. Wood, kaolin, raffia, old patinas and marks of use. These masks belong to the corpus of rank objects of the Bwami initiation society of the Lega. They were not worn on the face, but manipulated, sometimes worn on the arm, or presented during initiation rites, in order to materialize a rank, knowledge or symbolic progression within the initiation hierarchy. Their refined aesthetics and strong expressiveness helped transmit the moral and social values of legа society.