Eyema bieri (reliquary guardian head)

Those eyes see all—through generations past, present, and future.

Through the bieri religious rite, Fang peoples once both honored their families’ ancestors and asked for their help. Community members memorialized ancestors’ names and recited their deeds in bieri practice, while their physical relics were stored in a bark wood box guarded by an attached, carved wooden head or figure.
This head—with its prominent forehead, open relentless gaze, small mouth, and older style hairdo or wig—was not an individual portrait but an idealized representation. Its characteristic shine results from frequent rubbing with tree oil. This mobile guardian stood for the continued presence of ancestral memories among a people forced to migrate throughout the 19th century.
Eyes wide open, both to guard against threats but also, perhaps, to see and think into the future, such figures are open to new possibilities—indeed, they were themselves born from the necessity of invention.