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Seated monkey

Seated monkey

Cosmogram (Dikenga)

The Kongo cosmogram is the foundation of Kongo society. The circle made by the sun's movement is the first geometric picture given to human beings. We move the same way the sun moves: we wake up, are active, die, then come back. The horizon line is the kalunga line between the physical and spiritual world. It literally means "the line of God." It is also the name of God, and it means "what cannot be measured." The Kongo believe that this cosmology is one of the first instructions given to the human race by Kalunga, the highest living energy-Himself, Herself or Itself, as the Kongo prefer it. This cosmogram is in constant motion, as the circle is in motion.

When you have a circle of the Kongo cosmogram, the center is seen as the eternal flame. It is a way to come closer to the core of the community. If someone is suffering, they say "you are outside the circle, be closer to the fire." To stand on the cosmogram is to tie a social knot, bringing people together. Dikenga is from the verb kenga, which means "to take care, to protect," but also the flame or fire from inside the circle, to build and give life.

The first position is the sun at six in the morning, the second at the zenith of the day, the third setting at six in the afternoon, then the fourth at midnight. These positions are constant-the rising, zenith, setting and darkness.

#1 is musoni-yellow
The time of rising, when Kalunga the creator god is writing what the child
to be born will be.

#2 is kala-black
When the sun rises, it is when living beings are born, and enter the physical world.

#3 is tukula-red
It is the age of maturity and profound knowledge, leadership.

#4 is luvemba-gray/white.
When you grow older, you hair changes to grayness-literally mpemba is gray-a symbol of wisdom, of one who is ready to separate himself from the physical and spiritual world. He is prepared to give the best of his life to his community. People will come everyday to listen to them, every single night. An older man is seen as a living library. No one wants to see the library burned without rescuing what is inside. This color is the same as white. When the first white men came, this color had always related to the dead, the door to the physical and spiritual world-the ancestral world. So during the first days the white people came, the Africans opened their arms to receive them as ancestors. But the colonialists became deceiving, and then we had chaos. (Fu Kiau Bunseki, 2001)


Wood, glass, clay
9 x 4 5/8 x 3 7/8 in. (22.8 x 11.7 x 9.9 cm)
Nasli and Alice Heeramaneck Collection
68.68
location
Now on view at the Seattle Art Museum

Seattle Art Museum respectfully acknowledges that we are on Indigenous land, the traditional territories of the Coast Salish people. We honor our ongoing connection to these communities past, present, and future.

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