Statuette Employee Pour Les Envoutements
Exhibited : Standard Bank Gallery, Johannesburg, Alexis Preller: Africa, the Sun and Shadow, 13 October to 5 December 2009.
Literature : Esmé Berman and Karel Nel (2009) Collected Images (vol. 2), Johannesburg: Shelf Publishing, illustrated in black and white on page 43.
Note : The French inscription 'Statuette employee pour les envoutements. Enfoncer un clou en invoquant l’image d’une personne provoquera la mort de cette derniere (Batsangi) Moyen Congo' can be translated roughly as 'Statuette used for spells/magic. Driving in a nail while invoking the image of a person will bring about his death (Batsangi) Moyen Congo'.
This sketch was probably made on one of Preller's visits to the Trocadero Museum (later the Musée de l'Homme), the anthropology museum in Paris, in either 1937 or 1946. The Songye/Songe nkisi power figure depicted in the sketch is likely to have been collected in Moyen-Congo (Middle Congo), formerly French colonial equatorial Africa, and today part of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
