Nkisi Nkondi Blolo pombilele: Arrival of the Gods

The Arrival of the Gods

Barakat Seoul is proud to present Nkisi Nkondi Blolo pombilele: The Arrival of the Gods, an exhibition from Tuesday, July 10 to Sunday, August 12, 2018, featuring works of African sculpture produced by minority tribes in the 19th and 20th centuries. Barakat’s African sculpture collection consists mainly of ceremonial pieces produced in the 19th and 20th centuries by various minority ethnic groups. Africans believed figure statues in particular to harbor the power to communicate with spirits. To emphasize that power, they would often use different formative languages shared by individual tribes to stress particular parts of the body, including the head, mouth, stomach, and genitals.

The exhibition’s title Nkisi Nkondi Blolo pombilele comes from a combination of languages spoken by minority African tribes. Each of the words holds a meaning collected to sorcery or the spiritual world.

As an exhibition, Nkisi Nkondi Blolo pombilele: The Arrival of the Gods is an attempt to broaden horizons in terms of interpreting and contemplating the artwork by situating Barakat’s African sculpture collection within the “digital space” that has established itself one of the chief forms of culture today. The spaces are used mainly as virtual open source software for film production, and the African sculpture that arrive like gods within them gradually and unknowingly form relationships with the strange settings. 

 The exhibition, Nkisi Nkondi Blolo pombilele: The Arrival of the Gods will be an opportunity to imagine moments of collapse in the real-world boundaries that have constrained human beings, as well as new landscapes to be drawn for the future. It will be an occasion for fundamental reflection on the interactions of humanity and life and the process of thinking.