|
Nkondi
Nkondi (plural varies ''minkondi'', ''zinkondi'', or ''ninkondi'') are mystical statuettes made by the Kongo people of the Congo Basin, Congo region. Nkondi are a subclass of Nkisi, minkisi that are considered aggressive. The name nkondi derives from the verb ''-konda'', meaning "to hunt" and thus nkondi means "hunter" because they can hunt down and attack wrong-doers, witches, or enemies. Functions The primary function of a nkondi is to be the home of a spirit which can travel out from its base, hunt down and harm other people. Many nkondi were publicly held and were used to affirm oaths, or to protect villages and other locations from witches or evildoers. This is achieved by enlisting spiritual power through getting them to inhabit minkisi like nkondi. The vocabulary of nkondi has connections with Kongo conceptions of witchcraft which are anchored in the belief that it is possible for humans to enroll spiritual forces to inflict harm on others through cursing them or causing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nkisi
or (plural varies: , , or ) are spirits or an object that a spirit inhabits. It is frequently applied to a variety of objects used throughout the Congo Basin in Central Africa, especially in the Territory of Cabinda that are believed to contain spiritual powers or spirits. The term and its concept have passed with the Atlantic slave trade to the Americas. Meaning The current meaning of the term derives from the root , referring to a spiritual entity or material objects in which it is manifested or inhabits in Proto-Njila, an ancient subdivision of the Bantu language family. In its earliest attestations in Kikongo dialects in the early seventeenth century, it was transliterated as in Dutch, as the ''mu-'' prefix in this noun class was still pronounced. It was reported by Dutch visitors to Loango, current territory of Cabinda, in the 1668 book '' Description of Africa'' as referring both to a material item and the spiritual entity that inhabits it. In the sixteenth century, w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nkisi Nkondi, Congo, C
or (plural varies: , , or ) are spirits or an object that a spirit inhabits. It is frequently applied to a variety of objects used throughout the Congo Basin in Central Africa, especially in the Territory of Cabinda that are believed to contain spiritual powers or spirits. The term and its concept have passed with the Atlantic slave trade to the Americas. Meaning The current meaning of the term derives from the root , referring to a spiritual entity or material objects in which it is manifested or inhabits in Proto-Njila, an ancient subdivision of the Bantu language family. In its earliest attestations in Kikongo dialects in the early seventeenth century, it was transliterated as in Dutch language, Dutch, as the ''mu-'' prefix in this noun class was still pronounced. It was reported by Dutch visitors to Kingdom of Loango, Loango, current territory of Cabinda, in the 1668 book ''Description of Africa (1668 book), Description of Africa'' as referring both to a material item an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nganga
''Nganga'' is a Kikongo language term for herbalist or spiritual healer in many African societies and also in many societies of the African diaspora such as those in Haiti, Brazil, and Cuba. It is derived from ''*-ganga'' in Proto-Bantu which means "medicine". As this term is a multiple reflex of a Proto-Bantu root, there are slight variations on the term throughout the entire Bantu-speaking world. In Africa The owner and operator of an ''nkisi'', who ministered its powers to others, was the ''nganga''. In the Kingdom of Kongo the term "nganga" was the name for a person who possessed the skill to communicate with the Other World, as well as divining the cause of illness, misfortune and social stress and preparing measures to address them, often by supernatural means but sometimes natural medicine as well. They were also responsible for charging nkisi, or physical objects intended to be the receptacle for spiritual forces. When Kongo converted to Christianity in the late fiftee ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kongo People
The Kongo people ( kg, Bisi Kongo, , singular: ; also , singular: ) are a Bantu ethnic group primarily defined as the speakers of Kikongo. Subgroups include the Beembe, Bwende, Vili, Sundi, Yombe, Dondo, Lari, and others. They have lived along the Atlantic coast of Central Africa, in a region that by the 15th century was a centralized and well-organized Kingdom of Kongo, but is now a part of three countries. Their highest concentrations are found south of in the Republic of the Congo, southwest of Pool Malebo and west of the Kwango River in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, north of Luanda, Angola and southwest Gabon. They are the largest ethnic group in the Republic of the Congo, and one of the major ethnic groups in the other two countries they are found in. In 1975, the Kongo population was reported as 4,040,000. The Kongo people were among the earliest indigenous Africans to welcome Portuguese traders in 1483 CE, and began converting to Catholicism in the late 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Renee Stout
Renee Stout (born 1958) is an American sculptor and contemporary artist known for assemblage artworks dealing with her personal history and African-American heritage. Born in Kansas, raised in Pittsburgh, living in Washington, D.C., and connected through her art to New Orleans, her art reflects this interest in African diasporic culture throughout the United States. Stout was the first American artist to exhibit in the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art. Early life Stout was born in Junction City, Kansas to a family that enjoyed creative activities. Her mother did needlework. Her father, a mechanic and steelworker, liked to tinker. An uncle was a fine-art painter. When Stout was one year old, her family returned to the East Liberty neighborhood in Pittsburgh. She took weekend classes at the Carnegie Museum of Art as a child, which she credits for exposing her to African art. In particular, two objects at the Carnegie Museum profoundly influenced her: shrunken heads f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Neuberger Museum Of Art
Neuberger Museum of Art is located in Purchase, New York, United States. It is affiliated with Purchase College, part of the State University of New York system. It is the nation's tenth-largest university museum. The museum is one of 14 sites on the African American Heritage Trail of Westchester County. Collections The Neuberger Museum of Art is located in a Philip Johnson-designed building at the heart of Purchase College, State University of New York, in Purchase, NY. Founded in 1969 with a promised gift of 300 works by Roy R. Neuberger—one of the greatest private collectors, philanthropists, and arts advocates of the twentieth century—the Museum's collection of modern, contemporary and African art has grown to over 6,000 objects by artists including Milton Avery, Romare Bearden, Willem de Kooning, Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Jackson Pollock. Alongside the permanent collection, critically acclaimed special exhibitions feature the works of 20th-century masters, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Visser
Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Robert Visser (December 2, 1860 in Düsseldorf – 1937) was a merchant, photographer and collector of ethnographica. Life Robert Visser was the fifth of thirteen children in a Catholic family of merchants and seamen. Upon completing his education, Robert wanted to be a ship's captain. He signed up on a freight steamship in Rotterdam. Stressful experiences on the first trip between the Netherlands and Russia discouraged him pursuing that profession. Instead he took part in a scientific expedition to Brazil, but nothing is known about the purpose, length, or course of that trip. From 1882 to 1904 he was employed as a plantation manager in Africa by the Dutch trading company Nieuwe Afrikaansche Handelsvennootschap. He was active in Cayo, French Congo, from 1882 to at least 1899, in Congo Free State in 1901, and in Chiloango, Portuguese Congo, from 1902 to 1904. By his own account, Visser was one of the first Europeans to establish coffee and cocoa plantations in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stephanie Dinkins
Stephanie Dinkins (born 1964) is a transdisciplinary American artist based in Brooklyn, New York. She is known for creating art about artificial intelligence (AI) as it intersects race, gender, and history. Her aim is to "create a unique culturally attuned AI entity in collaboration with coders, engineers and in close consultation with local communities of color that reflects and is empowered to work toward the goals of its community." Dinkins is best known for her projects, ''Conversations with Bina48'', a series of conversations between Dinkins and the first social, artificially intelligent humanoid robot BINA48 who looks like a black woman and ''Not the Only One'', a multigenerational artificially intelligent memoir trained off of three generations of Dinkins's family. Early life and education Dinkins was born in Perth Amboy, New Jersey to Black American parents who raised her in Staten Island, New York. She credits her grandmother with teaching her how to think about art a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tania Bruguera
Tania Bruguera (born 1968 in Havana, Cuba) is an artist and activist who focuses on installation and performance art. She lives and works between New York City and Havana, and has participated in numerous international exhibitions. Her work is in the permanent collections of many institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art and Bronx Museum of the Arts and the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de La Habana. Bruguera's work pivots around issues of power and control, and several of her works interrogate and re-present events in Cuban history. As a result of her artistic actions and activism, Bruguera has been arrested and jailed several times. Biography She was born Tania Brugueras, the daughter of diplomat and politician Miguel Brugueras, but aged 18 changed her name to Bruguera, "her first act of political rebellion". With her father being a diplomat and minister in the Fidel Castro government, Tania moved three times throughout her childhood. Her father's career took the fami ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Metropolitan Museum Of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 Fifth Avenue, along the Museum Mile on the eastern edge of Central Park on Manhattan's Upper East Side, is by area one of the world's largest art museums. The first portion of the approximately building was built in 1880. A much smaller second location, The Cloisters at Fort Tryon Park in Upper Manhattan, contains an extensive collection of art, architecture, and artifacts from medieval Europe. The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870 with its mission to bring art and art education to the American people. The museum's permanent collection consists of works of art from classical antiquity and ancient Egypt, paintings, and sculptures from nearly all the European masters, and an extensive collection of American and modern ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kara Walker
Kara Elizabeth Walker (born November 26, 1969) is an American contemporary painter, silhouettist, print-maker, installation artist, filmmaker, and professor who explores race, gender, sexuality, violence, and identity in her work. She is best known for her room-size tableaux of black cut-paper silhouettes. Walker was awarded a MacArthur fellowship in 1997, at the age of 28, becoming one of the youngest ever recipients of the award. She has been the Tepper Chair in Visual Arts at the Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University since 2015. Walker is regarded as among the most prominent and acclaimed Black American artists working today. Early life and education Walker was born in 1969 in Stockton, California. Her father, Larry Walker, was a painter and professor. Her mother Gwendolyn was an administrative assistant. Als, Hilton (October 8, 2007)"The Shadow Act" ''The New Yorker''. A 2007 review in the New York Times described her early life as calm, noting that "nothing a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Palo (religion)
Palo, also known as Las Reglas de Congo, is an African diasporic religion that developed in Cuba during the late 19th or early 20th century. It arose through a process of syncretism between the traditional Kongo religion of Central Africa, the Roman Catholic branch of Christianity, and Spiritism. Initiates in the religion are termed ''paleros'' (male) or ''paleras'' (female). An initiatory religion, Palo is organised through small autonomous groups called ''munanso congo'', each led by a figure known as a ''tata'' (father) or ''yayi'' (mother). Although teaching the existence of a creator deity, Nsambi or Sambia, Palo regards this entity as being uninvolved in human affairs and thus focuses its attention on the spirts of the dead, collectively known as ''Kalunga''. Central to Palo is the ''nganga'' or ''prenda'', a vessel usually made from an iron cauldron, clay pot, or gourd. Many ''nganga'' are regarded as material manifestations of particular deities known as ''mpungu''. The ''n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
