Ancestor worship figure

The ntadi sculpture depicts fumani - a thinker, a chief pensive about the fate and happiness of his people. Stone in Africa is a relatively rarely used material for sculpture. Wood is more often used for this purpose. Mintadi figures are associated with the cult of ancestors and deceased heads of villages and families and carved in chlorite slate and steatite. Chlorite schist belongs to the soft rocks. It is composed of magnesium, flint and aluminium compounds. It occurs in white-grey and grey-brown colours. Steatite, known as tailor chalk, is also a soft microcrystalline rock with a high concentration of talc and a grey, pink or greenish colour. Both chlorite schist and soapstone are easily worked. Mintadi carvers use the tools for wood carving, namely a knife, a narrow-bladed blowpipe and an axe. Before they start carving the figures, they first select and level a suitable block of stone. Then they sketch the sculpture on it and start working. The artist first carves the head of ntadi. He shapes it very carefully and finishes it before moving on to the torso and limbs of the figure. It is because the head is considered by the Bakongo the seat of the human soul and thoughts. Mintadi figures are no more than 60 centimetres high.

Katarzyna Findlik-Gawron