Superb statue in wood, pigment, kaolin and cowries, typical of the Ambete ethnic group of Gabon

Height: 72 cm

The Ambete ethnic group

The Ambete live in a region that now forms the border between Gabon and the Republic of Congo. Their number is estimated at less than 50,000 individuals

Ambete art

The Ambete have produced several types of sculptures: heads, busts, but are best known for their reliquary statues with an invariable style - a long cylindrical bust, short legs and undersized arms always bent in an L at the elbow, a flattened face, a pointed chin, an open mouth sometimes revealing teeth and a fluted hairstyle - which, freed from any figurative constraint, gives off a great impression of power.

Very attached to the cult of relics, like the Fang or their Kota neighbors, they nevertheless distinguish themselves from them in that the Ambete reliquary is not made up of a basket or a box surmounted by a reliquary figure, but rather of the statue itself which always has a dorsal cavity, the bilongo, in which the bones of the ancestors and other "magical" materials were inserted.

The M'bete statue

The contrast between the body and legs, which give off an impression of power, and the tiny arms, demonstrates that the artist Ambete who created this statue was completely free, as is often the case in African art, from all figurative constraints.

This statue is entirely representative of the Ambété style!

Variants of the name Ambete

According to the sources, we observe several names: M'bete, Bamba, Bambete, Mbede, Obamba, Umbete...