Reliquary figure (mbulu ngulu)

The faces of this Kota reliquary guardian would have glimmered inside a dimly lit room.  It is a rare two-sided reliquary guardian, a type of figure that began to be made in the early 1800s. The convex side, with sheets of smooth bronze carefully attached to the surface, represents a man. The back, with bronze strip decoration, represents a woman. The smooth semicircles on the top and sides of the head represent the figure’s hair, and the small spools on either side are earrings. The lower half of the diamond-shaped support would have been placed inside a reliquary basket, not exposed as they are today.

Together, a group of three reliquary guardians—male, senior female, and junior female—represented ideal ancestors whose relics were held in a basket below, though it is not entirely clear how two-sided figures functioned in such a display. Kota communities moved every few years, when the quality of the soil could no longer guarantee abundant crops. Reliquary baskets, like the one these figures would have ornamented, helped families maintain a memorial to their beloved deceased relatives when they moved to a new place. The Kota converted to Christianity beginning in 1900, and reliquaries were no longer kept. Communities abandoned their reliquary figures or destroyed them as proof of their new faith, often under pressure from missionaries. Enterprising local traders and colonial officials—at times even the missionaries who had encouraged the sculptures’ destruction—then sold the cast-off reliquary guardians in Europe.