Power figure (nkisi)
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CC0
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721 × 893 px · WebP
Suggested credit
Power figure (nkisi) (late 1800s-early 1900s). René and Odette Delenne Collection, Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund Rights: CC0. https://clevelandart.org/art/2010.442

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From the museum record

One of seven anthropomorphic figurines, these minkisi contained medicines in which an ancestral spirit was believed to reside. Minkisi were objects of communal use; if conflict arose between two citizens, the Nkisi figure, along with the nganga (ritual leader) helped resolve the dispute. This small figure belonged to “the sorcerer of Loango,” chief of all sorcerers of that region (a province and port in West Central Africa).

Lupin’s visual index

A weathered, dark-brown wood figure depicts a stylized human head within a conical hat adorned with decorative elements.

Machine-assisted description · useful for discovery, not scholarship.
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