The Fang peoples of Gabon believed that ancestral relics held great spiritual power. Byeri was a Fang association devoted to the veneration of lineage ancestors and founders, leaders, and fertile women who made significant contributions to society during their lifetime. After death, their relics, particularly the skull, were conserved in cylindrical bark containers and guarded by carved wooden heads or figures mounted atop the receptacles.
The lustrous black surface of this carved female figure still glistens from repeated applications of palm oil used for ritual purification. The sculptor shaped this figure to illustrate the ability to hold opposites in balance, a quality admired by the Fang. He juxtaposed the large head of an infant with the developed body of an adult. The static pose and expressionless face contrast with the palpable tension of the bulging muscles and the projecting forms of the arms, legs, and breasts. These reliquary sculptures may be male or female and are not considered portraits of the deceased. They were often decorated with gifts of jewelry or feathers and received ritual offerings of libations, such as palm oil.
Hierarchical scale is the use of scale to indicate relative importance. In the royal altar to the hand, the king is at the center because he is the most important followed by his attendants.
The first one can be seen either way. For me, I saw a vase first. In all of the pictures, the black drawing is considered the positive space and the white background behind it is considered to be the negative space. If you look at the vase picture again and imagine the background to be the black portion, you see two faces.
The context of this sculpture is important, because it is actually based off of a goddess name Nike; hence the name. Nike of Samothrace was created to honor the goddess Nike and commemorate a sea battle.
