The Lengola are a people in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, traditionally living in the forested region between the Lomami and Lualaba Rivers. (For a detailed look at groups in the forested eastern region of the DRC and arts associated with these groups, see Biebuyck 1976.) This beautiful wooden anthropomorphic mask has an elegant elongated face crowned with what could be a headdress or stylized hair. The abstracted face has tiny perfectly round holes for eyes and a long narrow nose, the bridge of which joins the upper brows in a continuous line, fanning out gracefully over both eyes like the two flukes of a whale. Below the nose, the mouth is a vertical rectangular opening. There is some faded pigment, perhaps originally red and white, on the two equal planes either side of the nose, and possibly red or brown pigment (also faded) on the headdress. A mask identified as Lengola whose image is in Yale University Art Gallery’s Van Rijn Archive of African Art sports a brilliant red headdress and has a pigmented white face, and white pigment was a common feature of masks from DRC and elsewhere in Central Africa. The mask in the Bët-bi collection is not dated but is similar in design to other masks of the Lengola from the early to mid-20th century.

There is no information accompanying the mask as to its use, but masks were used in initiation rituals by multiple groups within what has been called the “Lega cluster” of peoples, which includes the Lengola. (The Lega cluster refers to population groups in the eastern rainforest of DRC and nearby savannah areas, including the Lengola, Metoko, Bembe, and Songola who share multiple fundamental cultural traits. Biebuyck 2016.) There is a tradition among the Lengola (as well as the neighboring Metoko) of participation in Bukota, a voluntary hierarchical association open to both men and women that is similar to the Bwami society of the Lega, about which much more is known. Although not as central to Lengola society as it is to Metoko, and not the pervasive force that Bwami is to the Lega, Bukota still played an important structural role among the Lengola. (See object 2021.2.8 for more information about Bwami.)  Given what is known about Bwami and what we know about Bukota, it is likely that masks of some sort were used in Bukota rituals, for instance of initiation and circumcision, although there is more available research on various figurine sculptures used in Bukota (Biebuyck 1977; Biebuyck 1993).