Nkisi Kozo power figure

Object photography by Hannah Smiles (hannahsmiles.com)

So Nicola White is the mudlark to whom this little dog with a big spirit chose to reveal itself in the summer of 2021. Nicola documented the process of discovering-deliberating-leaving-tweeting-returning, then deciding-collecting-cleaning-caring for this rare, bizarre, intimidating, intriguing… thing. What is it? Can it harm me? Should I take it home? These are some of the uncomfortable but understandable interrogations Nicola shared in her YouTube video ‘The Mysterious Wooden Dog with nails in his back found on the Thames’. [8] Being transparent about what was unknown and unfamiliar to her has enabled others with different knowledges to come forward and create new layers of understanding about this piece of African sculpture.

It’s possible that our object was once part of the collections at the Horniman Museum in Forest Hill, but we may never know how it ended up in the river only a few miles away in Greenwich. In 1936, the Horniman’s collection guide described in detail some of the ‘nail fetishes’ it had acquired for its ethnographic gallery. [9] However, there is ‘no information about where, when and by whom they were collected’. [10] If he were reading this now, the institution’s founder, Frederick Horniman, would probably be mortified to discover that a Black woman originating from that ‘primitive’ Kongolese tribe claims not only to be civilised enough to publish cultural research, but actually to be British!

Undercurrents of many histories are dancing on these pages as intensely and freely as they do through my blood; as playfully and brightly as the mirror that once reflected things visible and invisible off the back of this Nkisi Kozo. We are now in an era when heritage is being contested and confronted. So are you gonna be brave enough to face this grimacing canine, laughing at the thrill of chasing you through the forest of your own psyche? Are you tough enough to stand up tall too, even though you ain’t had ten nails hammered inna your flesh? Or have you? Maybe you do know what it’s like to be backstabbed, but still have to hold your head high and keep chasing what you were born, designed, assigned to do. Maybe you do got that dog in you…

It is difficult, confusing and painful diving into the dark history of maritime encounters and transactions between my ancestors and the Europeans that saw them as so savage that they deserved to be dehumanised. But times have changed, despite the legacies that remain. A thousand words can barely express the magic of this object; how it was once crafted in the capable hands of an unrecorded Mukongo artisan thousands of moons/ngondas ago. Yet is still intact enough to be held in my Mukongo hands, thousands of ocean miles away – thanks to the anaerobic mud of the tidal River Thames, which preserved the wood, nails, paint, glass and feathers of this Nkisi Kozo until she was ready to let the dog out.

Footnotes