An Adamawa Kwandalha healing sculpture

An Adamawa Kwandalha healing sculpture, also called Longuda, according to the language, Eastern Nigeria, close to the Benue river. The figure shows both, male and female sexual characteristics in a single body. With its two heads and only one leg and one arm, the sculpture resembles a siamese twin figure, several old repairs on the left ear and the necks, and a small part of the coiffure of the right head is mossing.

"After a ritual specialist determined the cause of a disease, the patient was given a newly modelled vessel, into which the disease was transferred. Such pots, which tend to embody the symptoms described, are remarkable for their highly expressive and imaginative forms." Source Brooklyn Museum, Vessel for Kwandalha Divination.

"The art of manufacturing and the knowledge of its use is reserved for only a few old people today; the young generation, brought up by missionaries, often no longer even know of their existence", Karl-Ferdinand Schaedler, Erde und Erz, S. 271.

Lit.: Karl-Ferdinand Schaedler, Erde und Erz. 2500 Jahre Afrikanische Kunst aus Terrakotta und Metall, 1979.

Height: 42 cm
Weight: 2,6 kg