Art with Fight in It: Discovering that a Statue of a Colonial Officer Is a Power Object from the 1931 Pende Revolt

Abstract

This article investigates a Kwilu Pende statue of a Belgian colonial officer (Fig. 1) through the combined perspectives of historical events, an unusual wealth of relevant documentation, and technical analysis. Its origin stems from the chance encounter now more than forty years ago by which Herbert Weiss, a political scientist and student of protest movements in the Congo, was able to acquire the work and learn the identity of the subject. More recently, examination by curator Richard Woodward and conservator Kathy Gillis at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts revealed a series of extraordinary channels—carefully planned and executed in the freshly carved green wood. These discoveries prompted further investigation and dialogue by Weiss, Woodward, and Z.S. Strother, a scholar of Pende art history, in wrestling with understanding this unusual work and seizing a rare opportunity to recover a fragment of African art history.