Seated Shrine Figure
By Oklenyi of Akungaga
Idoma people
Nigeria
Mid 20th century
Wood, pigments
Height: 39,5 cm
Provenance:
Private Collection, 1989
Ader-Picard-Tajan, “Arts Primitifs. Afrique - Océanie”,
Drouot-Montaigne, Paris, 27 February 1989. Lot 47.
Alain Dufour / Galerie Afrique, Saint-Maur/Ramatuelle, France
Collection Henriette Beybot, France
Collection Yves Develon, Paris, France
Collection Liliane & Michel Durand-Dessert, Paris, France, 2008-2018
Christie’s, Paris, “Futur Antérieur. La Collection d’Art Africain
de Liliane et Michel Durand-Dessert”, 27 June 2018. Lot 58.
Private Collection, Belgium, 2028
Publications:
Neyt (François), “Les Arts de la Benué, aux racines des traditions”=”
The Arts of the Benue, to the roots of tradition”,
Tielt: Editions Hawaiin Agronomics, 1985, p. 99, #III.12
Paudrat (Jean-Louis) et al., “Fragments du Vivant. Sculptures Africaines
dans la collection Durand-Dessert”, Milan: 5 Continents, 2008, pp. 201-202
Expo cat.: “Arts du Nigeria dans les collections privées françaises /
Arts of Nigeria in French Private Collections”, ed. by Alain Lebas,
Milan: 5 Continents, 2012, p. 206, p. 280, #138
Exhibitions:
Paris, France: “Fragments du Vivant. Sculptures Africaines dans la collection Durand-Dessert”, La Monnaie de Paris, 10-24 September 2008
Quebec, Canada, “Arts du Nigeria dans les collections privées françaises”, Musée de La Civilisation, 24 October 2012 - 21 April 2013
This beautiful Idoma statue is of a type called “Anjenu” by the Idoma peoples. These statues are vessels for receiving nature spirits that dwell in rivers or nature. These anjenu spirits made themselves known to people by causing physical symptoms such as headaches, dreams, infertility, or the death of young children. The afflicted person would visit an anjenu priest or priestess who addressed the symptoms by arranging for the sufferer to undergo a session of therapy in which the spirits were called from rivers or streams to possess their adepts and to receive offerings of food and drinks. The statues were used to cure illnesses, insure good luck or, more commonly, bring about human fertility. Sieber wrote that Anjenu was petitioned and promised to sacrifice of a goat after a child was born. (Sieber, op. cit., p. 10). This wooden statue would be the locus of such ceremonies, and the raised position of the arms with the hands open has been interpreted as a gesture of praying to secure the spirit’s benovelence.
This exceptional Idoma statue was carved by Oklenyi of Akungaga, who was active from the 1930s until the late 1970s. Two statues by him are held by Munich’s Staatliches Museum für Völkerkunde (inventory numbers 97-319 304a/b). Except for the painting patterns on the torso, the musuem’s seated figure is almost identical to the figure previously in the Durand-Dessert collection. Lacking any signs of ritual usage, it is most likely both figures were directly acquired from the artist before being possessed by an anjenu spirit and receiving libations. The Munich museums hold a second artwork by Oklenyi taking the shape of a bowl and featuring a half figure with raised arms, flanked by hornbills and with a head at the front and the back.
Oklenyi, first identified by Roy Sieber, who commissioned a lidded bowl from the artist in 1958. Sieber wrote about the artist: “Oklenyi of Akungaga village near Igala territory is self-taught. After watching an Igala carver at work he practiced secretly until he became proficient. He receives a good deal of local recognition both by Igala and Idoma clients. Stylistically, his works evidence their mixed cultural background.” (Sieber (Roy), “Sculpture of Northern Nigeria”, New York: The Museum of Primitive Art, 1961, p. 9). A well-known seated figure that the Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired in 1972 has been attributed to the artist (#1972.74.2). Sieber purchased it from the artist and described the woman with upraised arms as a “lady praying in church”. The Metropolitan owns a second seated Idoma figure, acquired together with the previous, which hasn’t been ascribed to the artist, but also could be made by him (#1972.74.1). Oklenyi also carved large and complex masks. Roy Sieber saw and photographed one in 1958 in Olabochai village that featured a woman with upraised arms.
Okungaga, the home of the sculptor was a tiny Idoma village, located in Otukpa District on the border of easnter Igala. Kasfir met the artist, old but still sprightly, in 1978. The artist’s masks and sculptures are unmistakable with their unusual round mouths and neat rows of upper and lower teeth, which are often stet off by upward curving scars originating at the edges of the mouth. The eyes and eyebrows repeat this same ovoid shape in reverse. Oklenyi’s work demonstrates the high degree of individual agency encouraged in Idoma artists, who lack workshops and apprenticeship systems. As Kasfir noted, in Oklenyi’s case, it is important to remember that the location of his home, Okungaga, also exposed him to the eastern Igala mask complex and at the same time distanced him from the work of other Idoma artists. (Kasfir in Berns (Marla C.), Fardon (Richard), Littlefield Kasfir (Sidney) (ed.), “Central Nigeria Unmasked: Arts of the Benue River Valley”, Fowler Museum at UCLA, Los Angeles, 2011, p. 93)
Oklenyi carved this large and complex platform mask in the 1950s. Roy Sieber saw and photographed it in 1958 and also purchased from the artist one of the mask’s figures, the woman with upraised arms (“lady praying in church”), which went to the Rockefeller collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. photograph by Roy Sieber, Olabochai village, 1958. Published in: Berns (Marla C.), Fardon (Richard), Littlefield Kasfir (Sidney) (ed.), “Central Nigeria Unmasked: Arts of the Benue River Valley”, Fowler Museum at UCLA, Los Angeles, 2011, p. 92, #A.9. When Kasfir saw the mask in 1978 no one recalled who had made it.
The Idoma say anjenu is not an old ritual complex, but one that arrived in Idoma country at about the same time as the white man (around the turn of the twentieth century). It is said to come from Igala, and in fact many of the songs are sung in that language. The belief in water spirits who dwell in certain rivers and streams is, however, very ancient, and a part of a wider set of beliefs concerning the sacrality of nature. While there are few male priests, anjenu is spoken of as a ‘women’s juju’ related to healing and fertility. The usual route to discipleship is through the advice of a diviner who is consulted when a woman fails to conceive or gives birth to a stillborn child. The misfortune is diagnosed as the intervention of anjenu spirits, who must be fed with sacrifices and appeased with rituals in their honor. Anjenu is profoundly concerned not only with the well-being of women who would conceive but also with the mortality of the child and the ever-present closeness of death itself.
The same Idoma mask named Adagba (elephant, i.e., big one) carved by Oklenyi of Okungaga. Photographed by Roy Sieber in Otum Village, Nigeria, May 18, 1958. Sieber records the owner of the mask, shown in the foreground, as Chief Obekpe Onoja. Collection Smithsonian. National Museum of African Art, Washington, D.C., USA (EEPA A1993-09-138). Published in Geary (Christraud M.), “The Incidental Photographer: Roy Sieber and His African Images”, African Arts, VOL.XXXVI, NO.2, 2003, p. 81, #27.
Kasfir wrote about anjenu: “There are two essential characteristics of the anjenu cult in Idoma. One is the belief in a class of nature spirits, anjenu, that have the power to “seize” a person. The symptoms of this seizure may be either dreams of a disturbing nature or, less often, trance states in which the afflicted is temporarily possessed by anjenu spirits. The second is the appeasement and propitiation of these spirits (and subsequent curing of the symptoms) through a set of rituals that involve singing, dancing, and sacrifice at a shrine erected to honor anjenu. Such shrines must include bottles of sacred water, the eka medicine calabash, sacrificial food for the spirits to “eat,” and frequently (though not always) carved images of the spirits themselves, as well as the mud figure of a lion or a leopard. Perhaps the most striking feature of the cult is the fact that its disciples are mainly women. However, it would be an exaggeration to state that anjenu is a women’s cult. Most anjenu priests are men, if for no other reason than the fact that Idoma divination is a male profession and is essential to the diagnosis of anjenu spirits. While in the case of women, the afflictions. brought on by anjenu are usually related to fertility, they may also be neurotic disorders, such as depression, that occur as readily among men as among women. It also seems to be the case that membership “runs in families” and therefore encompasses both sexes. But women far outnumber men.” (Kasfir (Sidney L.), “Anjenu: Sculpture for Idoma Water Spirits”, African Arts, Vol. 15, No. 4, 1982, p. 48).
Kasfir continues: “The other distinctive feature of the cult is the sculptural representation of anjenu. Perhaps the most interesting aspect for the art historian concerns their derivation from other genres of Idoma art. First of all, their occurrence coincides with the presence of woodcarvers, whose distribution is quite uneven in Idomaland. While there is roughly one carver to every 1,000 people, this is only an average figure and there are some districts, such as Agila, in which carvers are very scarce. In these places, anjenu shrines tend to be bereft of figure sculpture unless the owner is rich enough to have gone to another district to commission a carving. And by the same argument, shrines belonging to carvers themselves are replete with anjenu figures. These water spirits, usually called ahana, are as varied and numerous as the carver’s imagination permits, and are thus responsive to social change. In the shrine of one innovative carver, they included a messenger, a soldier, an “information officer,” and a female doctor wearing a metal crown. Some of these are horned, others not. Furthermore, they bear no direct association with water, but like the larger male and female figures are visual replicas of Idoma social categories. Despite the modernizing of female anjenu figures by sometimes dressing them up in earrings and wrappers, even head-ties, they usually retain the 19th-century Idoma ritual hairstyle in the form of a sagittal crest, and frequently the body scarification patterns as well.” (Kasfir, 1982, pp. 48-49) The body designs on the present figure could also represent Idoma body paintings rather than scarifications.