Unknown Kuyu artist

Double Figure (late 19th–early 20th century)

Close Looking: Queer African Art and flux

Visual description:

This is a Kuyu double, or Janus-faced, figure with one male side and one female side. Each side shows the coiffure, filed teeth, scarification patterns, and ornaments of an idealized adult man and woman. Sitting atop the head is a panther, facing toward the male side, with its tail hanging in front of the female.

The female face has tear-shaped scarification marks beneath the eyes representing beauty and spiritual potency.

Context:

Figures such as this were often used in dance and initiation rituals. Masked dancers representing spirits held the figure in one hand as they jumped, stamped, spun, and collapsed, with the wand blurring through the air. These movements echoed those of the panther on the figure’s head.

The panther, a mythological ancestor of the Kuyu chiefs, represents chiefly power and authority. It also acts as a mediator between the human and spiritual realms.

Interpretation:

The panther likely signals the figure’s importance in rituals intended to invoke the spiritual world. Because it faces toward the male side, the object may be especially associated with male power, though the panther is also used in female rites of initiation.

At the same time, the figure is both male and female. This duality may carry several meanings. In ritual dances, masked performers are said to become spirits, yet at the end of the ritual they open their costumes and reveal themselves to be human. The object therefore seems to move across multiple domains: spirit and human, male and female.

Its possession of both sexes may also suggest wholeness, including the completeness of knowledge and power.

Reflect and Explore

1. Why might the panther face toward the male side rather than toward the female side, or outward to the side?

2. The feet also face toward the male side. This breaks with the bi-directionality of the rest of the piece. Does this pattern with the panther and its orientation, or might this be meaningful in another way?

3. Is it significant that the panther’s tail obscures the female face while the male face remains unobstructed? If so, what might that suggest?

4. The figure has two legs but four arms. In other words, it shares its legs but not its arms. Do you think this is significant? Why might the arms remain separate while the legs are joined?

5. Why might the panther face toward the male side rather than toward the female side, or outward to the side?

6. Is it significant that the panther’s tail obscures the female face while the male face remains unobstructed? If so, what might that suggest?

7. The figure has two legs but four arms. In other words, it shares its legs but not its arms. Do you think this is significant? Why might the arms remain separate while the legs are joined?

Learn More

Contextual Reading

• Keith Nicklin, “Kuyu Sculpture at the Powell-Cotton Museum,” African Arts 17, no. 1 (1983)

• Alfred Poupon, “Étude Ethnographique de la Tribu Kouyou,” L’Anthropologie 29 (1918)

• The Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Janus Figure,” in For Spirits and Kings: African Art from the Tishman Collection (1981)

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Kuyu double figure Janus African sculpture