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Description

A Haya Figure

Articulated figure Haya, Tanzania Mit Sockel / with base Wood. H 112 cm. Provenance: - Walter and Molly Bareiss, Munich / New York. - Neumeister, Munich. 10.11.2005, lot 156. - Swiss private collection, Basel. Published: - Roy, Christopher D. / Haenlein, Carl (1997). Kilengi. African Art from the Bareiss Collection. An exhibition of the Kestner Gesellschaft in the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus. - Roy, Christopher D. / Haenlein, Carl (1999). Kilengi: African Art from the Bareiss Family Collection. Washington: University of Washington Press. Exhibited: Exhibition: "Kilengi. African Art from the Bareiss Collection": - Hanover: Kestner Gesellschaft, 1997. - Vienna: Mak - Austrian Museum of Applied Arts, 1998. - Munich: Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, 1998. - lowa City: The University of lowa Museum of Art, 1999. - Purchase: Neuberger Museum of Art, State University of New York, 2000. Christopher D. Roy describes this figure in 1997 in "Kilengi. African Art from the Bareiss Collection" as follows: "Female figure, HAYA, Tanzania, wood, height 112.5 cm The Haya live in the far north-west of Tanzania on the south-western shore of Lake Victoria. Their neighbors to the west are the Rwanda and to the south the Zinza (Gulliver1955, p.70, map). Their main staple food is the banana. Their capital is Bukoba on the western shore of Lake Victoria. Like their neighbors in the kingdoms of Ankole and Rwanda, the Haya can be divided into two main social groups according to their occupation. The bailu are farmers and form the bourgeois class, whereas the balangila are herders and comprise the royal families, a political elite. Their king was the omukama ("chief milker"), reflecting the importance of herding for the ruling class. (Carlson 1993, p.316) The omukama was a divine king: "The king's power lay largely in his ability to mediate convincingly between the normative and the transcendent commands. By mediating between the temporal sphere of living people and the timeless, transcendent sphere of the ancestors, the omukama gave vitality to the kingdom and ensured the productivity of cultivated fields, banana groves, livestock and women." (Carlson 1993, p.317) As with most inter-lake peoples in Tanzania and Uganda, music was an essential art form among the Haya, and dance was an important means of cultural expression. The omukama had a group of musicians, ama- kondere, who played horn trumpets, drums and stringed instruments. According to Carlson, a court jester, omushegu, was allowed to make jokes and blasphemies about the king. The jester woke the king every morning with a flute, the high notes of which he accompanied with grimaces. The sacred space that the king occupied was marked by carved wooden poles that symbolized the contrast between the king and the kingdom, the pure and the impure. (Carlson 1993, p.318) Wooden posts were used to mark out rooms for the members of the king's family, the fathers of his wives and for his bodyguard. An altar (ekikalo) stood opposite the entrance so that the ancestral spirits worshipped there could prevent any evil from entering the palace. Representations of women might be expected at the court of Haya, "where women dominated the center of the building, the hearth, a symbol of nurturing and fertility. In contrast, the men ruled over the peripheral areas of the building, both at the ancestral altar and in the courtyard area. The building illustrated the men's control of the women's creative powers. The king's symbolic control over the fertility of women and the annual crops they grew was an important aspect of Haya kingship." (Carlson 1993, p.320) This imposing figure is over a meter tall and has attached arms with joints at the shoulders so that her gesture could be altered or the figure could be clothed. It is tempting to imagine that this female figure is somehow It is tempting to imagine that this female figure was somehow used in connection with Haya kingship, perhaps as one of the markers that demarcated the royal household. The size, dramatic gesture and expressiveness of the face support the suggestion that the figure is a Haya version of the large dancing figures used by the Sukuma, who live not far to the east. It could also have served as a marker for the grave of a respected person. However, since the literature on Haya sculptures lacks any description of large female figures with articulated limbs, such statements are pure conjecture." ----------------------------------------------------- Described by Neumeister in 2005 as follows: "TANSANIA. Standing female figure presumably

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A Haya Figure

Estimate 3 000 - 6 000 CHF
Starting price 1 500 CHF

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