An Widekum four-headed Headdress

Four-headed headdress Widekum, Cameroon Ohne Sockel / without base Wood, leather, hair. H 27 cm. Provenance: Gérald Minkoff (1937-2009) and Muriel Olesen (1948-2020), Geneva. The Italian-Swiss writer and artist Sandro Bocola dealt extensively with art from Africa and was particularly interested in the artifacts of the Ekoi, which he collected himself. He wrote the following self-published text on the subject on his 90th birthday: The skin-covered masks from the Cross River region of Nigeria and Cameroon are unique in that their design concept and technique are not known in any other part of the world. It is assumed that they spread from the Ekoi people, who number about 200,000 souls, to the other Cross River tribes (the Widekum, Egjaham, Bi-fanka and Anang), which are linguistically related to them, each of these tribes creating their own type of mask. There has been much speculation about the origins of this practice, but there are some clues. The Ekoi were not only slave traders supplying European customers working in the port city of Old Calibar, but were also headhunters who originally regarded and displayed their captured human heads as trophies. In his famous book In the Shadow of the Bush, published in 1912, Amaury Talbot, a British civil servant and anthropologist with many interests, who undertook several trips to research the Ekoi, reports how the natives performed a war dance in his honor, in which they presented the bleeding heads of their enemies, which had just been cut off and impaled on poles. Several museums also have masks in which the skulls of the decapitated enemies are covered with skin (see the specimen on display). Since this practice was banned by the colonial powers, wood-carved headdresses covered with antelope skin were used as dance masks. In rare cases, however, these were also covered with human skin. One such example can be found in the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. The broad spectrum of these works is astonishing. In addition to human heads and those that combined human and animal features, skeletons of crocodiles or other animals were also covered with skin. The aesthetics and naturalistic design of these heads caused such a sensation that the Ekoi created a corresponding, equally naturalistic but general type of mask, which they sold in many variations to the European traders, explorers and travelers of Old Calibar. The famous example of this type in the Musee de l'Homme corresponded to Le Corbusier's design ideals, while the surreal, frightening and disturbing Ekoi masks probably did not interest him. Another highly unusual custom of the Ekoi is that after the death of important members of the tribe, their portrait is made as a naturalistically carved, skin-covered head with the hair of the deceased and used as a mask for dances. Further reading: Wittmer, Marcilene K. / Arnett, William (1978). Three Rivers of Nigeria. Atlanta: The High Museum of Art. ----------------------------------------------------- Gérald Minkoff and Muriel Olesen Muriel Minkoff-Olesen (1948- 2020) completed her training at the School of Design in Geneva. Gérald Minkoff (1937-2009) was a trained anthropologist and biologist. Both achieved fame as artists and from their meeting in 1967, the emblematic couple of contemporary art were inseparable. The travel-loving Olesen-Minkoff duo explored life like curious nomads, roaming the globe from Africa to Asia, Oceania, America and Patagonia. As artists and experienced collectors of contemporary art, they understandably had a keen sensitivity to the aesthetics and concepts of non-European art. The couple's Geneva apartment, perhaps their most beautiful joint work, thus became a place where the works of close friends such as Daniel Spoerri, Arman and Man Ray, as well as their own photographs, lived together with almost a thousand objects from Africa, Oceania, Asia and South America. CHF 300 / 600 Condition: The condition (wear, eventual cracks, tear, other imperfections and the effects of aging etc. if applicable) of this lot is as visible on the multiple photos we have uploaded for your documentation. Please feel free to contact Hammer Auktionen for all questions you might have regarding this lot ([email protected]). Any condition statement given, as a courtesy to a client, is only an opinion and should not be treated as a statement of fact. Hammer Auctions shall have no responsibility for any error or omission. In the rare event that the item did not conform to the lot description