Pulitzer Arts Foundation

Kota: Digital Excavations in African Art presented an installation of nearly fifty Kota reliquary guardian figures—unique wood-and-metal sculptures created to protect the bones of deceased ancestors. The exhibition examined a digital database created by Belgian computer engineer and independent researcher Frederic Cloth, whose combination of close looking and data-driven analysis yielded unexpected conclusions and new hypotheses about the hidden histories of Kota figures. Co-curated by Cloth and Kristina Van Dyke, a specialist in African art, Kota was the first exhibition to examine Cloth’s search engine and system of algorithms, as well as the first to focus exclusively on Kota reliquary guardians outside of the broader context of African sculpture.

Produced between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries in what is now Gabon and the Republic of Congo, Kota reliquary guardians depict abstracted human forms and were thought to bring the protection of ancestors and ensure the survival of communities. Kota range in size from eight to thirty inches and are unique among African sculpture for their incorporation of worked brass and copper over carved wood. As missionary efforts and colonialism swept through central Africa in the 1930s, much of the oral history and tradition relating to Kota was destroyed, and while many figures remain in collections today, few details are known about the objects’ specific provenances and uses.