Elisabeth L. Cameron

Coming to Terms with Heritage: Kuba Ndop and the Art School of Nsheng

In 1989, I was in Zaïre (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) doing pre-dissertation fieldwork and trying to find the perfect research topic. The Kuba kingdom was an irresistible draw and I spent several months in the area exploring various topics. I was especially privileged to stay at Nsheng,1 the capital of the Kuba kingdom, as the guest of the king’s mother. One evening a young man approached me and gave me an ndop, a carved figure representing the seventeenth century king Shyaam aMbul aNgoong (Fig. 1). He introduced himself as Musunda-Kananga from the Sala Mpasu area and heritage and explained that he had aspirations of becoming a contemporary artist. He had applied to go to the Institut des Beaux Arts in Kinshasa but had decided to come to its sister school, the Institut des Beaux Arts in Nsheng, originally founded by Josephite priests forty years previously in an effort to preserve Kuba artistic heritage, because it was closer to home and cheaper. When Musunda-Kananga arrived, he was dismayed to discover that, while officially a government-sponsored art school, in reality he would be taught how to carve Kuba-style figures and cups. The Kuba ndop carved by a Sala Mpasu artist through a Flemish Catholic instructional heritage in a Zaïrian secular government fine art school seemed to epitomize the tensions of loss and renewal common to discussions of heritage. An ndop is an officially commissioned wood portrait figure of a specific Kuba king—originally only one ndop was produced for each king. Scholars differ on the exact number of surviving ndop, but perhaps eleven original figures are housed in European and American museums.2 All the known ndop are very similar in form: measuring between 10 and 30 inches tall, they represent the king seated with crossed legs on a cube-shaped pedestal, holding a ceremonial knife in his left hand, and ibol or the king’s individualized and identifying symbol attached to the pedestal at his feet. For example, Shyaam aMbul aNgoong banned gambling and introduced the lyeel game (Vansina 1978:60). He is also credited for bringing a time of peace that gave people leisure time to play games. Therefore, he chose the lyeel game as his symbol. The ndop was used during the king’s lifetime as his surrogate when he was absent from the capital. At his death, the incoming king slept with the ndop of the previous king to absorb his ngesh or bush spirit.3 The ndop then became a memorial figure that was kept by the king’s surviving wives and occasionally displayed. When the African American missionary William Sheppard arrived at the court in 1892, he described the scene: