Pende

The Pende They live in an area between the Loango and Kasai rivers in the DRC. Its area extends to northern Angola where they lived in other times. This town is made up of numerous territorial groups, in family clans, led by the most senior family leaders in the family hierarchy, the most important being the Kwilu to the west and the Kasaï to the east. Lacking centralized power, these small kingdoms or chiefdoms are presided over by a family chief, Djigo, whose function is rather religious, to act as an intermediary with the ancestors, mvumbi, to favor the clan. Although today they live from agriculture they were originally warriors and hunters did not know the iron until, according to legend, came the blacksmith Bembo Kalambo who taught his people to melt the mineral and to forge the metal in addition to teaching to weave the hombes and pottery to women. NgombeHis wife taught him how to grow and care for cattle. As in many African ethnic groups young people are organized by age classes and must pass the tests established in the initiation that ends in the adolescent stage with the rite of circumcision. They have a variety of masks they use in their ceremonies. Despite being a matriarchal people the art of sculpture is transmitted from parents to children. Their masks are mainly worn during the Minganji cult. They sculpt few statues but have a variety of masks, at least more than sixty, often anthropomorphic but also zoomorphs. Their “disease” masks are known. Also their tiny masks in ivory, wood, bone and even lead are worn hanging from their necks. They usually work light wood, with frequent raffia ornaments or vegetable fibers. It dominates pigmentation in black, white and ochre. Their mascaras of illness, called “mbangu”, are known today as masks of fun. The deformed face of the so-called masks of disease represents in African art the effects of an epileptic crisis that is supposedly a manifestation of the spirits. The opposition of the white color (color of the spirits of death) from half the face to the other black mean (symbol of diseases and handicaps) is also the image of the combat between good and evil.