VuviMasks, figures & African art

Overview

The Vuvi (in colonial and older ethnographic literature often also referred to as Bubi, Buvi, Pove or Vove) represent a demographically marginal, but art-historically and ritually highly significant ethnic group in central Gabon. Their traditional settlement and core area is concentrated in the heavily forested, inaccessible region of the province of Ngounié and in the Lolo river valley, specifically in the areas between the Lolo and its direct tributary, the Wagna (Mayer 1989: 60). Geographically, this population is thus located in the mountainous hinterland of the Chaillu massif, a region that historically served as a refuge for various Bantu groups from the expansive Fang migrations from the north (Perrois 1985: 136). Current demographic estimates put the Vuvi population at only around 10,000 to 15,000 individuals, making them one of the smallest of the more than 40 documented ethnic entities in the Gabonese Republic. Due to this demographic marginality, they are often not shown as a self-sufficient group in higher-level national census data, but are statistically integrated into larger neighbouring clusters.

Linguistically, the Vuvi are assigned to the large family of Bantu languages. Within the classical classification according to Malcolm Guthrie (1953), the Vuvi language, specified as B35, falls into the B30 language group (Van der Veen 2003: 1). This group, which also includes the Mitsogho (B31), Kande and Pinzi languages, is characterised in central Gabon by a high degree of dialectal homogeneity and simultaneous geographical isolation. Linguistic research today often uses computerised lexical distance measurements (Levenshtein distance) to reconstruct migration flows. These data prove that the B30 group - and thus the Vuvi - were part of a secondary or tertiary Bantu migration wave into the Ogooué Basin, which took place after the original Kota-Kele speakers (B20) (Hombert et al. 2006: 55). The self-designation of the group varies between Pove and Vuvi, depending on the source and regional grouping. The foreign designations by neighbouring groups and early French colonial officials were historically very imprecise. The Vuvi were often subsumed under the broader, artificial terms of the Shira-Punu language family or the Mitsogho complex, which to this day leads to serious classification problems in museum collections, such as the archives of the Royal Museum of Central Africa (RMCA) in Tervuren (Hooper 1997: 174).

The social structure of the Vuvi is decidedly acephalous and strongly egalitarian in character. The sources are ambiguous regarding the exact historical genesis of this structure, but research documents that the Vuvi do not have a centralised, monarchical form of rule, such as that found among the coastal peoples of the Loango kingdom or the Orungu (Deschamps 1962: 29). The basic political and social unit is the village, which is made up of several patrilineal or matrilineal lineages (kinship groups). In terms of descendancy arrangements, anthropological research locates the Vuvi in a complex regional transition zone: while some older sources emphasise a predominantly matrilineal structure - typical of the so-called "matrilineal belt" of Central Africa - in which property and ritual status are inherited through the maternal uncle (oko), more recent sociological analyses point to bilateral or increasingly patrilineal tendencies. This duality requires a system of social compensation to maintain relative peace between families and villages, with initiation societies assuming an overarching, lineage-spanning judicial function.

The traditional subsistence strategy of the Vuvi is primarily based on semisedentary shifting cultivation. Temporary cultivation areas for manioc, yams, taro and plantains are created in the dense rainforest by slash-and-burn. This agricultural base is complemented by hunting (for forest antelopes, porcupines and monkeys) and extensive fishing in the Ngounié and its tributaries. The division of labour is strictly gender-specific: While the men are responsible for clearing the land, hunting, carving ritual objects and building houses, the women are responsible for planting the fields, harvesting and fishing in shallow waters.

The relationship between the Vuvi and their neighbouring peoples is characterised by an ambivalent mixture of demarcation and ritual symbiosis. Direct neighbours such as the Mitsogho, Sango and Ndzabi exerted massive cultural influence. One of the central controversies of ethnographic classification concerns the actual independence of the Vuvi from these neighbours. While early ethnographers such as André Raponda-Walker (1950) hardly differentiated the Vuvi from the Mitsogho and merely classified them as a local subgroup, modern research postulates a distinct ethnic and especially iconographic identity of the Vuvi. These fluid ethnic boundaries are the result of centuries of cultural exchange, intermarriages and the transfer of ritual institutions, which often make an exact separation in the pre-colonial context obsolete.

Cultural context

The religious and cosmological system of the Vuvi, in direct analogy to their neighbours in central Gabon, is fundamentally structured by an omnipresent ancestor cult and complex, highly regulated initiation covenants. The cosmology of the Vuvi operates on a strict spatial and spiritual dichotomy: the profane space of the village, which represents the orderly, visible and social, and the sacred space of the forest, which is considered the domain of spirits, the raw forces of nature and untamed spiritual energy. At the centre of the spiritual order are the spirits of the deceased (moghondzi), who are not understood as passive memories but as highly active entities. These ancestral spirits continually intervene in the world of the living, guaranteeing the fertility of people and land, but can bring illness, infertility or death if ritual duties are neglected (Bonhomme 2005: 142).

Two primary institutions organise the ritual and social practices of the men: the Bwiti (or Bwete) cult, which is dedicated to ancestor worship, philosophical contemplation and divination, and the Mwiri secret society. Mwiri operates as an exclusively male initiation society with a strong judicial and regulatory character (Sallée 1975: 45). While the Bwiti seeks vertical contact with the ancestors, the Mwiri functions as a horizontal, social control instrument. His authorities - often referred to as evovi (initiated dignitaries and judges) - sanction social misbehaviour, settle land conflicts, punish theft and punish practices of destructive witchcraft. In contrast to the extremely militant covenants of the northern neighbours, such as the notorious Ngil of the Fang, which focus on physical ordinances, Mwiri operates primarily through ritual intimidation, strict taboos and symbolic purification processes (Perrois 1985: 209).

The Ndjembe (or Nyembe) covenant exists in parallel for the ritual integration of women. The rites of this covenant are strictly separated from the male sphere and are subject to the utmost secrecy. The Ndjembe cements the role of women not only as biological reproducers, but also as spiritual bearers of fertility and guardians of matrilineal healing power. The complementary existence of Mwiri and Ndjembe reflects the attempt of Vuvi society to establish a cosmic and social balance between the sexes.

The central ritual authority within the village community is the nganga (healer, divinator and master of rites). He acts as an indispensable mediator between the physical reality and the transcendent world of spirits. A fundamental and widely known component of the transition and initiation rituals of the Vuvi is the ritual consumption of the bark of the hallucinogenic plant Tabernanthe iboga (bois sacré). Taking the alkaloids contained in the root bark induces deep visionary trance states after a phase of physical exhaustion. This pharmacological effect is not interpreted as intoxication, but as the actual "seeing" and communicating with the ancestors. The initiate temporarily overcomes the boundary of death and returns to the community with spiritual knowledge (Chabloz 2009: 194).

In international ethnographic research, there is a profound, sometimes polemical controversy regarding the historical genesis of this complex Bwiti system. The controversy manifests itself exemplarily in the positions of Roger Sillans versus Julien Bonhomme. While early researchers such as Raponda-Walker and Sillans (1962) interpreted the Bwiti cult primarily as an autochthonous, elitist development of the central Gabonese Bantu groups (especially the Tsogho and Vuvi), more recent researchers such as Bonhomme (2005) argue strongly against this. Bonhomme postulates that the fundamental cosmological concepts, the deep botanical knowledge of iboga and the initial ritual form originally came from the marginalised pygmy populations living in the forest (the Babongo). Only in a secondary historical process are the Vuvi and Tsogho said to have adapted this knowledge, formalised it hierarchically and finally transferred it into their own elaborate sculptural practice (masks and relics).

Structurally, the religion of the Vuvi differs considerably from that of neighbouring coastal peoples (such as the Lumbo or Punu). While naturalistic ancestor portraits and the belief in a more this-worldly incarnation are prevalent on the coast, the conceptualisation of the Vuvi is characterised by a significantly higher degree of abstraction. The Vuvi turn away from naturalism and focus on radically geometricised spirit symbols, which manifests itself directly in their ritual art. This can be exemplified in collections such as those of the Fowler Museum at UCLA, where Central African initiation complexes are documented in their material reduction.

Aesthetic features

The canonical object type of the Vuvi is extremely limited in terms of quantity; the global corpus of authentic, pre-colonial pieces is negligible. The material culture is essentially limited to two main sculptural categories: the world-famous, white-ground face masks and the small, often highly abstracted relic figures (mbumba bwiti). The Vuvi masks represent an absolute paradigm of morphological reduction and flatness within African art history. In their strict geometry, they differ strikingly from the idealised, naturalistic, almost Asian-looking Okuyi masks of the neighbouring Punu.

The iconographic vocabulary of the classic Vuvi mask is strictly regulated and follows a rigid canon of proportions. The facial field is characterised by a radical flatness that dispenses with any three-dimensional modelling of the cheeks. The shape is strongly elongated (up to 35 centimetres high in places) and ends in a strikingly elongated, pointed triangular chin (Perrois 1972: 86). The dominantly high forehead is bordered by protruding eyebrows curved in wide arches, which run from the root of the nose to the edges of the mask and visually divide the field of vision into a characteristic heart shape (LaGamma 2007: 284). The eyes themselves are slit-shaped or designed as relief-like, compressed "coffee bean" ellipses that appear to float on the flat surface. The polychromy is strictly limited to a thick, haptically often rough layer of white kaolin (pemba), which contrasts with localised accents of red (tukula wood powder) and black (charcoal or heated plant resin) pigments on the eyebrows, eyes and the central headband.

One of the most profound iconographic controversies in Central African art history concerns the precise stylistic autonomy of these masks. Perrois (1979) often subsumed these two-dimensional masks historically into the broad "Punu-Tsogho complex". He argued that the stylistic transitions in the Ogooué Basin were so fluid that the so-called "Vuvi" masks could also have been produced by Tsogho carvers and used only by the Vuvi due to ritual alliances. In contrast, later research (Perrois 1985 Ancestral Art of Gabon; Sallée 1975 Art tsogho) established distinct Vuvi style characteristics. This re-evaluation isolated specific morphological details - in particular the presence of linear, painted or finely incised cheek scarification marks ("line tattoos") horizontally below the eyes and the exact elliptical shape of the mouth, which corresponds to that of the eyes. These features define the vuvi corpus as self-sufficient and enable it to be distinguished from the rounder tsogho masks.

In addition to the masks, the carved front doors of the Vuvi are another distinctive aesthetic feature of profane activation. These wooden panels are carved in bas-relief with symbols of the Mwiri covenant (diamond motifs, concentric circles, rainbows). They function semiotically as a warning and mark the status of the householder as an evovi, whereby the house and its inhabitants are to be protected from theft and magical attacks.

The identification of individual "master hands" (master carvers) is de facto impossible among the Vuvi due to the extremely small known corpus, the extensive anonymity of ritual art production and the lack of early field research data. In this context, researchers prefer to speak of workshops or "regional style centres" that formed in specific river valleys (Perrois 1985: 107).

For the private collectors' market, forgery criteria are highly relevant. As authentic Vuvi masks fetch top prices at auctions, numerous high-quality forgeries circulate. Genuine, historically used pieces are characterised by an organically grown, complex patina. The kaolin was not applied once, but renewed before each ritual use, allowing it to penetrate deep into the pores of the mostly light Funtumia elastica wood in multiple layers. Artificially acid-induced termite damage, which often appears too superficial and artificial, as well as the complete absence of natural heartwood cracks (which inevitably occur in the wood due to the constant alternation of tropical humidity and dryness over decades) are considered definitive forensic exclusion criteria for authenticity. A ritually activated object can also be distinguished from pure, profane carvings by the remains of offerings (oxidised palm oil, resin residues) and by the typical perforations around the edges: these holes must show asymmetrical, strong traces of abrasion from the bast and plant fibres with which the heavy dance costume was once attached to the mask. Museum reference works of undisputed authenticity can be found in the collections of the Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac in Paris (e.g. inv. no. 71.1939.52.4) and in the Rietberg Museum in Zurich.

Ritual practice

The performance and handling of ritual objects among the Vuvi follows strict, esoteric rules that are deeply rooted in the cosmology of the Bwiti and Mwiri cults. The life cycle of a ritual object, especially the mask, is a precisely orchestrated process of spiritual charging and later emptying. This cycle begins far away from the eyes of the non-initiated villagers in the dense forest, where a specialised craftsman, who must necessarily belong to the secret society, carves the object from soft, light-coloured wood. In its raw, unpainted state, the carving is considered purely profane, a piece of wood without intrinsic power.

Only the ritual "activation" transforms the artefact into the temporary carrier of a spiritual presence. This initial activation takes place primarily through the application of liquid white clay (pemba). In the symbolism of the Vuvi, white is the undisputed colour of death, bone dust and ancestral spirits. This is supplemented by anointing with red tukula powder and palm oil, which is said to provide the spirit being with "heat" and vital energy. Occasionally, offerings in the form of animal blood (usually from a chicken or goat) are also spread over specific parts of the mask in order to ritually seal the bond between the object and the ancestors (Bonhomme 2005).

During the ritual performance, the mask represents the moghondzi, an ancestor who has temporarily returned from the realm of the dead to visit the living. The performance takes place at night without exception in order to preserve the liminal character of the ritual. The appearance of the spirit is announced acoustically by specific, highly complex drum rhythms. Instruments such as the small support drum (vuvi) and the large master drum (vuga) are used, whose polyrhythms demand the attention of the community and force the dancer into the rhythm. The dancer, whose human identity must remain completely concealed, is enveloped in a dense, heavy costume made of raffia fibres, textile fabrics and animal skins. This costume is painstakingly attached to the perforated edge of the mask. Through the ritual consumption of iboga roots before the dance, the hypnotic, repetitive chanting of the lead singer (who declares the specific personality of the respective moghondzi) and the flickering light of the torches, the nightly ceremony culminates in an ecstatic state of trance. In this state, the individuality of the dancer is extinguished; he becomes a physical vehicle, and the mask itself becomes an acting, speaking entity (Sallée 1975: 45). The presence of the moghondzi is perceived by the community in a deeply ambivalent way: It can bring blessings, harvest luck and healing, but can induce madness, social confusion or physical illness if the ritual is performed incorrectly, disrespected or taboos are broken. Daylight ceremonies do exist, but they are almost exclusively for profane entertainment and do not have the numinous seriousness of the night-time rites.

The use of the altar (rwembe) in the Bwiti cult differs fundamentally from the dynamic mask performance due to its static, highly secretive character. The small, highly abstracted Mbumba Bwiti relic figures are placed on cylindrical or woven baskets (mbulu). These baskets contain the ultimate sources of power of the lineage: tibia bones, skull pieces or phalanges of important ancestors known by name, mixed with magical-medicinal substances. These altars are located in the rearmost, strictly taboo area of the ebanza (the sacred cult house of the Bwiti). Here, shielded from the public, the Nganga and the elders perform ritual feedings of the ancestral relics. They regularly smear the sculptures with chewed red tukula paste or spit palm wine on them in order to maintain the protective effect and neutral benevolence of the ancestors for the affairs of this world.

The deactivation and disposal of ritual objects is usually done for strictly pragmatic reasons. If a mask loses its magical charge due to severe, destructive termite damage, irreparable physical breakage or the death of its initiated wearer, it is ritually desecrated. In a deactivation rite, the indwelling spirit is asked to leave the wood. The mask is then either left to decay naturally in the forest or buried in special, hidden huts that act as graveyards for ritual objects. In contrast to masks, the relic figures enthroned on the ancestral baskets are almost never disposed of; they are regarded as permanent guardians and are passed down through many generations. This explains the extremely thick, resinous and bloody encrusted patinas that authentic Bwete relic figures on the art market display, as impressively documented in the holdings of the Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA) in Tervuren.

Historical context

The historical localisation of the Vuvi is inextricably linked to the massive demographic upheavals and migratory movements of Central Africa over the last few centuries. The exact dating of these waves of migration is the subject of ongoing debate in anthropological and historical research, which is why the sources remain ambiguous with regard to absolute dates. Linguistic and genetic reconstructions (such as those by Van der Veen 2003 and Hombert et al. 2006) place the arrival of the B30 Bantu speakers in the Ogooué Basin in a secondary migration wave. This took place well after the establishment of the original B20 groups (Kota-Kele). The oral traditions (traditions orales) of the Vuvi, which were meticulously documented in the late 1970s and 1980s (Mayer 1989), localise their socio-cultural origins historically further east, specifically in the valleys between the Lolo and Wagna rivers. These narratives unanimously report a successive, forced displacement of the Vuvi and their neighbours into the densely forested, impassable mountain regions of the Chaillu massif. The reason for this was the massive military and demographic pressure caused by the expansive migrations of the Fang populations from the north and north-east in the course of the 18th and early 19th centuries (Perrois 1972). This geographical isolation in the forests of the Ngounié region protected the art and cosmology of the Vuvi from external influences for a long time and led to the development of their highly specific, abstract style.

The colonial encounter with the French administration in the late 19th century intervened drastically and often destructively in this isolated social structure. Early expeditions, above all that of Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza in the 1880s, opened up the hinterland to colonial exploitation and missionary zeal. French efforts to concentrate the widely dispersed village population along newly built arteries as part of the regroupement des villages in order to collect taxes and facilitate forced labour destroyed the traditional socio-geographical order. At the same time, the colonial administration and Christian missionaries waged a merciless struggle against the traditional secret societies, which they identified as subversive, anti-colonial centres of power. In the 1920s and 1930s, this conflict culminated in massive iconoclastic actions: Numerous Bwiti altars were looted, thousands of ancestral baskets and ritual masks were confiscated, publicly burnt or thrown into the rivers (Ogooué, Ngounié). This systematic cultural genocide explains the current, almost absolute vacuum of authentic, pre-colonial primary material directly on site in Gabon.

On the Western art market, the "discovery" and art-historical emancipation of Vuvi art took place extremely late and with considerable delay. While the naturalistic Punu masks and the expressive Fang relic figures (Byeri) were already discovered and enthusiastically received by artists of the European avant-garde (such as Picasso, Derain, Vlaminck) in Paris at the turn of the century (around 1905-1915), the highly abstract Vuvi objects remained largely unknown. When they did appear in early collections, they were erroneously catalogued as "atypical, flat Punu masks" or as rudimentary Tsogho works due to a lack of ethnographic knowledge. The real breakthrough only came in the post-colonial period of the 1960s. In this decade, pioneers of the African art trade and field researchers such as Philippe Guimiot, the legendary Henri Kamer and later the Parisian expert Charles Ratton penetrated deeper into the remote areas of Gabon and brought the remaining, often hidden Vuvi artefacts to Europe.

A definitive milestone for the academic and collector recognition of the Vuvi was the groundbreaking exhibition "The Art of Black Africa", which took place in 1970 at the Kunsthaus Zürich under the curation of Elsy Leuzinger. Here, the collection of Josef Mueller (later Jean Paul Barbier-Mueller) in particular presented the two-dimensional Vuvi design, characterised by extreme seriousness and reduction, to a broad public (Barbier-Mueller 1985). This exhibition acted as a catalyst: suddenly the abstract formal language of Vuvi was no longer recognised as "primitive", but as the pinnacle of conceptual sculpture. Decades later, the exhibition "Eternal Ancestors: The Art of the Central African Reliquary" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (curated by Alisa LaGamma, 2007) cemented the outstanding art-historical significance of the relic art of the Ogooué Basin.

Prices for authentic Vuvi masks have risen exorbitantly in the last two decades on the international auction market (especially at Sotheby's and Christie's in Paris and New York), as the corpus of indisputably authentic works is limited to a few dozen pieces worldwide. Today, top objects with complete provenance realise six-figure euro sums. This enormous increase in value has inevitably led to a massive counterfeiting problem, which is placing a heavy burden on the market. Workshops in West and Central Africa are now producing forgeries of extreme technical sophistication. Modern forensic authenticity tests have therefore become indispensable for private collectors. These appraisals do not focus primarily on the formal carving, but on the microscopic and chemical analysis of the patina (such as the detection of historically oxidised palm oil, genuine tukula and authentic sacrificial blood as opposed to rubbed-on shoe polish or industrial stains). Further forensic parameters are the analysis of organic termite feeding (which shows natural feeding galleries and has not been artificially imitated by acids or mechanical tools) and the assessment of deep heartwood cracks. The latter necessarily form along the annual rings of the wood due to the constant, decades-long alternation of tropical humidity and drought in the village context. Seamless provenances from elite historical collections (such as Barbier-Mueller, Vérité) or proof of holdings in renowned museums (such as the British Museum or the Rietberg in Zurich) before 1950 act as the ultimate and often only secure protection mechanism for investments in vuvi art on today's market.