KUMBUKUMBU: AFRICA, MEMORY, AND HERITAGE
Africa is a continent that encompasses over 30 million square kilometers, distributed throughout 54 countries and nine territories, with more than a billion people speaking around a thousand different languages. The continent possesses incalculable wealth in diamonds, petroleum, and various minerals, which exploitation contributes to the largest economic and social contrasts in the world. Since in antiquity, Africa was part of the longest and most important commercial routes, and, through them, came in contact with distant peoples and cultures. In the 7th century, Arabian caravans brought Islam to the North of Africa; in the 15th Century, Christians arrived at the Atlantic coast, and, from the end of the 17th Century on, the growth of the Atlantic commerce of slaves led to the largest forced migration in modern history. The expansion of colonial Europe over Africa in the 19th-20th Centuries ruptured the dynamic African history and established new political and economic patterns that were sustained by military force, alliances with African elites, and the implementation of European standards of modern life. In mid-20th Century, the victorious independence movements began to change this panorama. CONTINUE ---►
--- ► The collections that form the Kumbukumbu Exhibition of the National Museum presents various objects acquired by means of donations, purchases, and exchanges. Many were obtained during dramatic periods in African history and evidence the protagonism of Africans, Brazilians, and Europeans throughout the 19th and 20th Centuries, in diplomatic relations, slavery, colonial conflicts, civilization projects, and scientific studies. They are objects that were brought from different parts of the continent between 1810 and 1940, with the addition of other objects that either belonged to, or were produced by Africans or their descendants in Brazil, between 1880 and 1950. Besides the pieces’ beauty and anthropological significance, the exhibition is of historical importance due to having one of the oldest African collections in Brazil. We present here some of these pieces.
SECTION I: Africa, Past and Present
Africans are integrated in the modern world, but preserve habits, beliefs, production techniques, and rituals that are very old. Amidst many peoples and languages, they combine their differences with practices and habits that are today generalized all over the continent. The sophisticated work with metallurgy, the art of wood, music and its instruments, manual weaving, and various types of art, are all marks of the African cultures that are today admired all over the world and appropriated by contemporary Western culture. The fabrics are valuable and easy to transport, and, because of this, have already been used as a trading currency between merchants, who would use them to buy and sell other products all over the continent. Among the most valuable fabrics in sub-Saharan Africa are those made of loom and dyed in several colors in the traditional wells of African dyeing units. Musical instruments are, maybe, the strongest examples of the circulation of the African peoples’ cultural goods. Among the most widespread instruments, there are a great variety of drums. The lamellophone, or the marimba (also known as sanza, kisanji, mbira or kalimba), on the other hand, are little known today, but were greatly appreciated in the past, including by enslaved Africans who were brought to Brazil.
SECTION II: DIPLOMACY OF FRIENDSHIP, BRAZIL-DAHOMEY (BENIN)
This is one of the oldest collections of the National Museum. It arrived in Brazil in 1810, even before the Museum’s creation, which was in 1818. It is an outcome of diplomatic relations between the Kingdom of Dahomey, which is currently Benin, and Brazil. In the year of 1810, the king Adandozan of Dahomey sent many presents to D. João, Prince Regent of Portugal, who, in the occasion, lived with the royal family in Brazil. These were objects of his personal use, some of them having been for the restricted use of the King and the dignitaries of the kingdom. Knowing of the Treaty of Friendship and Alliance between Brazil and England, which in 1810 established the gradual end of the slave trade, the Dahomey embassy tried to negotiate with D. João privileges for the slave commerce in Brazil. At the time, the Kingdom of Dahomey was in war with neighboring peoples, and thus, had many prisoners, becoming one of the largest slave exporters to the Americas. CONTINUE --- ►
—► In coming to brazil, the ambassadors brought presents as well as a letter from the king Adandozan, which is today kept at the Historical and Geographical Institute of Brazil. Some of these gifts are in display. Highlight is given to the throne, which has always been exposed at the National Museum, and the flag, which shows images of prisoners and decapitated people. Sending messages through means of drawings on fabrics was an ancient practice in the Dahomey reign. The flag registers Andandozan’s victories in wars against his enemies.
SECTION III: THE PEOPLES OF THE EQUATORIAL FOREST
For over a thousand years, the equatorial forest - cutted by the Congo and the Lualaba rivers - was occupied by nomadic and gatherer peoples, ancestors of the current Bantu peoples. They began to migrate from the center of the continent to the West, until they arrived at the Atlantic coast. On the way they began to mix with local peoples, teaching agriculture and metallurgy and establishing new settlements. Those who remained nomads in the forest became pejoratively known as pygmies. This set of peoples occupy today the entire forest and its surroundings (Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, The Republic of Congo, The Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Angola). Despite a linguistic proximity, they have very distinct cultures and social organization. From this region came the slaves that are known in Brazil as congos, loangos, and angicos. CONTINUE ---►
--- ► During the colonial occupation, European explorers, especially art scholars and traders, took objects from these peoples’ material culture, collected them, and disseminated them across the world. The first African ethnographic and artistic collections that we know of today were created this way. The objects presented here belonged to the peoples that inhabited the territories that were occupied by the Germans (current Cameroon), Belgians (current Democratic Republic of the Congo), and French (The Republic of Congo). Almost all of them arrived at the National Museum through exchanges, in which indigenous objects from Brazil and African objects were traded by museological institutions.
SECTION IV: COLONIAL WARFARE
The National Museum’s collection of African weapons offers us study possibilities that go beyond the functional idea of “attack and defense.” They invite us to think of them as carriers of power and stories. We cannot conceive of them only as instruments of war, hunting, or other activities related to everyday survival. Some of them are ritual objects and denote the social status of the individual who detains it. They all possess a cutting or perforating metal part. Metallurgy was a technology created by the Bantu linguistic root peoples, today represented by more than 500 ethnic groups distributed all over sub-Saharan Africa. The set of weapons displayed were collected in the 19th Century and almost all come from the Zambezi River Valley. The region, rich in minerals, permitted the abundant use of some metals, such as zinc and copper — and the binding formed by the two, which gives origin to brass. The work with brass wire is present in most of the weapons at display in the Kumbukumbu room. There are references that this technique was developed by the Shona, a Bantu root ethnolinguistic macrogroup. The Shona were the largest group to settle in the Zambezi Valley. Today, these weapons, adorned in brass wire, are greatly appreciated by the Western market of African art. CONTINUE ---►
---►Hammers with a blade similar to a “duck beak” were of Nama (or Namaqua) origin, a people that inhabit the territories of Namibia, South Africa, and Botswana. In the first years of the 20th Century, the German, then colonizers of Namibia, expelled the Nama and the Herero from their lands. In 1904, after a series of conflicts, the German army advanced over the territory of these populations, who were practically decimated (many were made prisoners or slaves). More than 70% of the people expelled from Namibia died of hunger and thirst in the desert, unleashing the first genocide of the 20th century. As such, the set of these weapons evidences another type of power: the power affirmed by colonial domination. The “weapons" were taken from their original peoples during the European exploration of the African continent and suffered a process of resignifinition. It stopped being a symbol of bravery, courage, and resistance, to turn into a representation of the inferiority of the conquered. It became a “primitive" piece of contemplation. Today, it is fundamental that museums decolonize their collections so as to “liberate" the objects and their histories, opening up space for the occupation of other narratives.
SECTION V: ANGOLA AFTER THE ATLANTIC SLAVERY
The territory that today corresponds to Angola exported over three million enslaved people to Brazil between 1530 and 1850, when the Atlantic trade was officially abolished. In Angola, slavery endured until 1878, year in which it became prohibited by the Colonial Portuguese legislation. However, in practice, slavery extended there until 1910. Angola remained a colony of Portugal until 1975. During the colonial period, the local population was submitted to forced work, very similar to the times of slavery, and also to a compulsory process of “assimilation,” which intended to instill in the Africans European cultural standards. Besides colonial employees, Catholic and Protestant missionaries of many nationalities established themselves in several parts of the country to convert the peoples of Angola to the Christian faith, in collaboration to the process of assimilation. CONTINUE ---►
---►The objects presented here represent distinct peoples of Angola: the Tchokwe (or Quiôco) and the Ovimbundu. The Tchokwe (situated to the North and East of the country) are recognized by their exquisite work on wood and are world-famous in the art world. Here we have exemplars of batons. Although they look similar, the batons have various functions. The most simple are the clubs, used in hunting as a hand or propulsion weapon. The adorned batons are used as ceremonial objects. The Ovimbundu objects represented the everyday life of the peoples of the Central Plateau of Angola and were donated to the National Museum in 1936 by the Pernambuco teacher and Protestant missionary in Angola, Celenia Pires Ferreira. The collection includes, in its majority, objects of domestic use and adornment.
SECTION VI: AFRICANS IN BRAZIL
The presence of Africans and their descendants in Brazil is marked by the violence of slavery and post-abolition. We present here objects that show how the Africans established themselves and recreated their world from the end of the 19th Century on, in particular in Bahia and Rio de Janeiro. We have objects from the old Candomblés of Rio de Janeiro, known as zungus or “fortune giving houses”. There they worshiped Inkices (bantu), orixás (yorubá) and yodels (jêje-mahi). Persecuted, these houses were invaded and had their objects confiscated by the police and used as material proof of the practice of rituals that were prohibited at the time. The frequenters of these houses were persecuted and arrested. Knowing of the existence of these objects at the Court Police, the director of the National Museum then, Ladislau Netto, throughout the decade of the 1880s, began to ask to have them sent to him for his studies. The National Museum, then, formed a collection that contains old techniques of metallurgy and of wood art, material examples of religious practices of this last generation of Africans and their direct descendants. CONTINUE ---►
--- ► We also have a collection of objects of Candomblé Nagô from Bahia, formed in 1940 and complemented in 1953 by the anthropologist Heloísa Alberto Torres, who was at the time director of the National Museum. The Candomblé Nagô was elaborated by enslaved Africans of Yorubá language, brought to Bahia. The wooden sculptures, representing the orixás, were sculpted by the artisan José Afonso de Santa Isabel.
Credits: Story
DIRECTOR
Alexander Wilhelm Armin Kellner
VICE DIRECTOR
Cristiana Silveira Serejo
ADJUNCT DIRECTORS
Wagner William Martins
Lygia Dolores Ribeiro de Santiago Fernandes
Luiz Fernando Duarte
CREATION/EXECUTION TEAM
Antonio Ricardo Pereira de Andrade
Valéria Maria Fonseca de Lima
Marci Fileti Martins
Lydia Maria Gomes da Silva
Lorrana Gonçalves de Alcântara
Déborah Rezende Gouvêa
Christina Aparecida de Lélis
PHOTOGRAPHY
Rômulo Fialdini
Valentino Fialdini
Credits: All media
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