Twilight of the Idols (Fetish) 3

2005

Kendell Geers

(South African, b. 1968)

Culture

South Africa

Medium

Wood, plastic tape (polyethylene, polypropylene, nylon, or vinyl), and iron

Measurements

Overall: 140 x 43 x 39 cm (55 1/8 x 16 15/16 x 15 3/8 in.)

Credit Line

Purchased with funds donated by Scott Mueller 2018.4

This artwork is known to be under copyright.

Location

Not on view

Did You Know?

The underlying figure is much larger than minkisi figures were in the past; its "supersize" reflects that it is an object made for the tourist market, not for ritual use.

Description

To create this sculpture, Kendell Geers appropriates a nkisi nkondi (singular) sculpture of the Kongo people that was mass-produced for the tourist market. Minkisi (plural) figures were typically used as protective relics; the nails on it represent the many times the object would have been ritually activated. Geers wraps the object with white and red chevron tape—the South African equivalent of yellow and black caution tape used in the US to mark off the scene of a crime—simultaneously signaling danger and acting as a shield. The artist’s deliberate use of the term fetish recalls African ritual objects’ fetishization as art and global commodities by the West since the turn of the 20th century. While once used in scholarship to describe African religious objects like nkisi, the word 'fetish' is now understood as both inaccurate and inappropriate.