[Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch] This Nkisi figure made it to the BMA by 1954, but as you can see, it had a long life before it arrived here. The sculpture underneath all the bristling pieces of metal would've been made by a sculptor commissioned by ngonga. Ngonga is a ritual specialist who helps people solve problems by contacting the spiritual world. The ngonga would have asked a sculptor to make a basic form for the figure with an upraised arm that suggests he's ready to hunt. The ngonga would've added different materials into the central cavity and then sealed it with a mirror. That cavity in the center holds grave earth from powerful ancestors, people who are good hunters or good judges. It may also hold a bit of the yala fruit because the verb luyala means to rule, and you'd like this nkisi to rule over your problems. As clients came to ngonga to ask questions about an illness or a difficulty in their marriage or other problems like this, the ngonga would've driven a nail into the figure in order to wake the figure and to invite a spirit into it to help solve the problems. By the time the object came to the BMA, either the ngonga had likely died or was no longer being successful with clients, and so an object like this would be discarded. So we're seeing the end of the natural life of this object, and now it's a fascinating index of what was happening in parts of what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or in Northern Angola, probably about a century ago.

[Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch] The two nkisi on either side of this figure with the nails driven into it, have some similar elements. Both of them include the same sort of ingredients that are intended to invite a spirit into them. The noble woman seated has a mirrored cavity on her stomach that includes that sort of material. And the figure with his head tilted back and the large projecting, what looks like a hat, that's where the pack of materials is located on that nkisi figure. And not all nkisi are woken by nailing a piece of metal into them. And so the noble woman who is seated with her mirrored eyes turned slightly to her left, might've been woken merely by prayers, and that might be the same for the figure on the other side as well.