Forgotten Heritage...a visual journey

1 Forgotten Heritage 2 Village Life 3 Music is Everywhere 4 African Kingdoms 5 Countries-Cultures 6 Slavers & Raiders 7 The Journey 8 The New World 9 The New World Africa's Children About Augie N'Kele What People Are Saying Stiftelsen 3,14, Bergen Exhibitions Two Dimensional Work Print Links Artist Residencies My Photos Critiques & Comments Motion

A collection of works by Congo born artist Augie N'Kele

In 1991 Augie N'Kele began a series of sculptures with an African history theme.  Consumed with a passion to tell a story about his people, he also wanted to create a memorial to the a people whose sacrifices have been little noted, and who have had few memorials erected in their memory.

Augie N'Kele puts finishing touches on one of his wire sculptures. Other sculptures are behind and beside him.

Bibi

30.5 x 12 x 9 inches
Wire
1991, Portfolio # 76

...the evidence that we have in the world points to Africa as the Cradle of Humankind...George Abungu, Director-General of the National Museums of Kenya

Relatives Witness A Birth II

24 x 18 x 18 inches
Wire, Aluminum, Found
1995, Portfolio # 5

Two Women In River II

. 

H.17 W.25 D.11 inches
Wire, Gutter Guard, Window Screen
1996 Portfolio #168

Fishing implements have been found in Congo in recent years that predate anything previously known

Man with Fish Trap 

24 x 44 x 13 inches
Wire, Aluminum
1991, Portfolio  

Two Hunters With Antelope

14 x 24 x 11 inches
Wire, Aluminum, Found
1994, Portfolio # 97

Food Preparation II

17 x 33 x 12 inches
Wire, aluminum, Found
1993, Portfolio # 7

Barbed points believed to be 80,000 years old have been found in Congo, according to a 1995 report by Alison Brooks, an archaeologist at George Washington University.

Made from bone, the tools may have come from a stone age fishing camp where early humans speared spawning giant catfish on the banks of a lake between Congo and Uganda. The implements show tool making skills that, until now, have been credited only to Europeans who lived thousands of years later, Brooks said.

In a 2001 correspondence with Forgotten Heritage, Brooks said that more recent work has confirmed these previously published dates.

"...our (tools) are in bone (we also have some very crude stone tools along with the bone ones) -- I would say "double-pointed bone implements"...We...have a kind of knife or dagger-shaped pointed bone tool without barbs, and also a cylindrical double-pointed bone tool without barbs." Brooks published a paper in the Journal of Human Evolution, arguing that the transition to modern human BEHAVIOR happened in Africa before it occurred anywhere else. (National Geographic Magazine, July, 2000)