Headdress – Wood – Budja – DR Congo

Rare African mask from the north east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, in the Oubangui region. This wooden crest mask represents a faceless migratory bird.
The traditional African Budza / Budja artistic corpus remains limited to crests with geometric shapes and abstract masks worn during agricultural festivals.
The fifty thousand Budja are an ethnic group in Zaire who mainly practice agriculture as a means of subsistence, and live on the right bank of the Lualaba River.

Provenance: former private Italian collection.