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

An artist's perspective

Augie N'Kele's roots are plainly visible in his paintings and sculptures reflecting African people and culture. 

In his Forgotten Heritage collection, begun in 1991, he presents a stunning chronological overview of African and American history.  Selections from this collection are most often requested when he is invited to exhibit his work.

Fishermen, Ink Drawing

My African homeland is always in my heart although it has been many years since I have lived there.  I am from the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Congo ethnic group specifically. 

I love learning about different cultural groups. I enjoy looking for links that can unite people rather than divide them.  Having lived on three continents has given me a broader interest perhaps than if I had always lived in one community.  I chose sculpture as my medium of expression because I can feel and touch the material as I shape it.  I wanted to create a visual narrative of events reaching back hundreds of years.  There is so much knowledge to share about Africa.  I have only touched on tiny bits of glimpses of people, life, culture, music and dance.

...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

King Alvaro

Wire, Aluminum, Found, 1995

H 24"   W 30"   D 30"   Portfolio number 120

King Alvaro II of Kongo receives Dutch emissaries seeking to establish trade relations. 

Inspired by an engraving dated 1642.  

In ancient times Africa had many great kingdoms, that is part of our heritage that has been forgotten by some.

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

Two Fishermen

Wire, Aluminum, 1993

There are an estimated 8000 navigable miles of waterways in the Congo basin.

 

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 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)