Boyo Statue - Buyu - Drc - Provenance

Beautiful Boyo statue - Congo Effigy of a royal ancestor, this sculpture decorated with decorative motifs, was placed accompanied by a female statuette, sheltered in a small funerary hut. Dense and heavy wood, brown patina. 77cm high Provenance: collected in the 1950s by a man named Kibabi and sold in the 1970s to a Belgian painter then through descent. The Boyos are said to be of Luba ancestry, through an ancestor who emigrated with her brothers. Two migratory flows mixed Bembe, Lega, Buyu or Boyo, Binji and Bangubangu within the same territories. The Bembé and Boyo tribal traditions are relatively similar: they revere the spirits of nature, water specifically among the Boyo, but also the heroic ancestors, whose will we seek to know by means of divinatory rites.