Lega Spoon; Democratic Republic of Congo, first half of the 20th century.

Lega spoon; Democratic Republic of Congo, first half of the twentieth century.
Bone and iron base.
Provenance: private collection Düsseldorf / Gallery Herman Sommerhage, Germany / private collection Bonn.
Measurements: 17,5 x 4 x 2 cm.
Provenance: private collection Düsseldorf / Gallery Herman Sommerhage, Germany / private collection Bonn.
Spoon made of bone with a handle with geometric shapes crowned by a head.
In this type of magical and religious objects from traditional Africa, nothing is left to chance and everything, down to the smallest detail, responds to a codified and initiatory language, whose reading is not available to all individuals of the cultural group for which they have been conceived, but often only to the most experienced initiates, the elders who have gone through the various stages of training, of initiation. If there is a common thread that allows us to travel through Africa through its artistic creations, that thread is that of a concept as intangible and unreal as that of magic, conceived as the path to follow for the control of supernatural forces and for the understanding of Nature. As part of this attempt to understand the natural and control the supernatural, in Africa, as in practically all pre-industrial societies, instruments suitable for the management of certain energies appear, sometimes in the form of a mask, sometimes in the form of a sculpture, or a fetish, or a conglomerate of elements, sometimes just a stone placed horizontally or a line drawn on the ground.