On view
African Art
Kundul figures,
20th century
Artist unrecorded
Wurkun
2015-6681 a-b
Kundul figures served as part of Wurkun ritual practice in northern Nigeria. A healer would instruct clients to acquire a set from an artist as a component of treatment. The ritual expert then applied organic materials to empower the statues to aid the client’s well-being. The figures were then washed with a solution of brown or red clay and polished with oil from a local seed, producing the encrusted surfaces seen here. Objects like these may have been decorated around their long necks with palm frond fibers, the friction from the fibers smoothing the surface. A vertical head crest distinguishes the male from its female counterpart.
More About This Object
Information
Title
Kundul figures
Dates
20th century
Maker
Medium
Wood and organic material
Dimensions
45.7 × 10.2 × 8.3 cm (18 × 4 × 3 1/4 in.)
Credit Line
Museum acquisition from the Holly and David Ross Collection, with the support of the Fowler McCormick Fund
Object Number
2015-6681 a-b
Place Made
Africa, Nigeria
Type
Materials
Subject
[Galerie Leloup, Paris, France, by ca. 1972]; purchased by Holly and David Ross, Princeton, NJ, 2002; purchased by the Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, NJ, 2015.
- Alisa LaGamma, Echoing Images: couples in African sculpture (New York, New Haven, CT, & London: Metropolitan Museum of Art & Yale University Press, 2004), p. 48
- "Acquisitions of the Princeton University Art Museum 2015," Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 75/76 (2016-17): 102-125., p. 110
