Guro

This is the first book on the Guro, who live in the Ivory Coast in close contact with the neighboring Wan, Baule, Yaure, and Bete. For the Guro, the importance of masks goes well beyond aesthetics; they can be considered emblematic, allowing those who wear them to lay claim to their identity as Guro. Despite the effects of French colonization on the Ivory Coast, weakening the prestige of men whose power once resulted from hunting and war activities, the continuation of complex rituals utilizing masks allows these same men to preserve a form of political and religious control. By separating the categories of masks between those created for blood sacrifices to honor spiritual entities and those made for performances at funerals, political demonstrations, and even tourist events, the Guro have reinvented, galvanized, and readapted perfectly integrated rituals to a contemporary society in constant change.

This introduction to the visual art of one of the most renowned peoples of Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo deals exclusively with sculpture. After providing a brief history of the Chokwe, the different chapters examine the figurines used in the ritual of divination, the statuary connected with the humba possession cults, antique (eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) classical statuary referred to as of the native land, court items, privileges of the warrior aristocracy, and wooden masks linked to the chieftianship and the initiation rites of circumcision. Particular attention is devoted to the precious effigies of Chibinda Ilunga, the civilising hero of the myths of the origins, almost all the exemplars of which were brought to Europe in the nineteenth century, as well as to chairs, whose symbolism and function are revelatory both of the religion and the hierarchical structure of the chieftianship.