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Lot n° 234

Kota Shamaye reliquary figure, wood, copper, brass...

Kota Shamaye reliquary figure, wood, copper, brass H.44cmxL.17cm. Provenance: former collection, Normandy, acquired in situ in the 60s, passed down through descendants. This exceptional ancestral effigy from Gabon, decorated with copper and brass, is a representation of an ancestor (boho-na-bwete) who topped a reliquary basket where the relics of the illustrious deceased of the lineage were kept. Kota representations are stylized and often unexpectedly recomposed images, born of the dreamlike imaginations of initiates and other inspired "fetishists", intended to symbolically evoke these notable ancestors. They are usually treated in a rather flat manner, within a plastic structure that spares visual reality (with a few exceptions, such as the works of the "Sébé masters" variant, with skull faces).

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