CategoriesCultural and Religious Styles
Yombe Art
Sculpture of the Yombe, a Kongo people of the Mayombe forest: phemba mother-and-child figures, nail-studded power figures and masks.
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About
The Yombe are a Kongo people of the Mayombe forest, a hilly region near the Atlantic spanning parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo and the Cabinda enclave of Angola. They produced some of the most finely detailed sculpture of the Kongo world.
Phemba figures show a woman seated with crossed legs, nursing or holding a child across her lap. Carvers lavished attention on the body: raised scarification across the chest and back, teeth filed to points, a cap or chiefly headdress, and sometimes inlaid glass eyes. Their meaning is debated, touching on fertility, lineage and female authority. Yombe workshops also made many of the best-known minkisi, power figures activated by a ritual specialist, some bristling with nails and blades, others with medicine packs sealed behind a mirror on the belly. Naturalistic masks with whitened faces and carved ivory complete the repertoire.
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