About this object

Although the origins of the Kuba (or Bakuba, which means “people of Kuba”) are unknown, it is believed that they moved to the Kasai region in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the 16th century. There they became skilled farmers and fisher people. By the late 16th century the Kuba people had become a federation of eighteen distinct groups under the authority of a king. By the 17th century, the kingdom had become consolidated. The Kuba’s very productive agriculture fostered population growth and commerce; by the 18th century they had established relations with people throughout the region. Despite the constant influx of new groups into the Kasai region, the Kuba were able to maintain this empire until the late 19th century. At this time invasions from neighboring groups weakened the Kuba significantly, and probably would have destroyed the empire had King Leopold II’s Congo Free State not taken control of the area. The Kuba remained fairly cohesive during the colonial period and were active in the independence movement in the 1950s.

At the apex of its power in the mid to late 19th century, the Kuba kingdom contained all the features of a modern-day nation-state: a professional bureaucracy, a system of taxation, a constitution and a sophisticated legal system. Art and design were central to life in this kingdom: The Kuba display an unusual range of artistic expression, including poetry, skillful carvings, and spectacular costumes worn by men and women on special occasions. Houses were woven, currency was embroidered, and an individual’s wealth and power were reflected in the intricacy of the patterns sewn, dyed, and embroidered onto their clothing.

The textiles are made of woven and dyed raffia palm fronds and feature hypnotic geometric designs. In some, the designs are stitched; in others, cutouts are appliquéd onto raffia backing. Some pieces are five meters long and meant to be worn as a wrapped skirt; others are fifty-centimeters-square panels meant to be hung on display.

In terms of surface decoration, the most outstanding Kuba textiles are rectangular or square pieces of woven palm-leaf fiber enhanced by geometric designs executed in linear embroidery and other stitches. The designs likely did not carry a literal symbolic meaning, but were instead products of the creative invention of the artists—mostly women—who created them.

As Monni Adams has noted for these textiles, the Kuba have developed all the geometric possibilities of repetitive variations of border patterns, and of the seventeen ways that a design can be repetitively varied on a flat central field, the Kuba have exploited twelve. Composition of schematic designs on these Kuba textiles is often marked by notable irregularities or shifts in design that upset one’s expectation of order: either dissimilar motifs are juxtaposed or the orderly repetition of the motif is interrupted by a shift in texture, direction, or scale.

In this example for instance, it initially appears to be a repeating or symmetrical pattern, but at a closer look it becomes clear that it is not. The heterogeneity of this design refuses to yield to a viewer’s gaze; the eye can neither focus nor settle. There is always more to discover, and there is no center to focus on. As such, the viewer is encouraged to keep looking.