{
"data": {
"id": 308829,
"accession_number": "2018.4",
"share_license_status": "Copyrighted",
"tombstone": "Twilight of the Idols (Fetish) 3, 2005. Kendell Geers (South African, b. 1968). Wood, plastic tape (polyethylene, polypropylene, nylon, or vinyl), and iron; overall: 140 x 43 x 39 cm (55 1/8 x 16 15/16 x 15 3/8 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Purchased with funds donated by Scott Mueller, 2018.4. \u00a9 Kendell Geers",
"current_location": null,
"title": "Twilight of the Idols (Fetish) 3",
"creation_date": "2005",
"creation_date_earliest": 2005,
"creation_date_latest": 2005,
"artists_tags": [
"male"
],
"culture": [
"South Africa"
],
"technique": "Wood, plastic tape (polyethylene, polypropylene, nylon, or vinyl), and iron",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "African Art",
"collection": "African Art",
"type": "Sculpture",
"measurements": "Overall: 140 x 43 x 39 cm (55 1/8 x 16 15/16 x 15 3/8 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"overall": {
"height": 1.4,
"height_inch": 55,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.125,
"width": 0.43,
"width_inch": 16,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.9375,
"depth": 0.39,
"depth_inch": 15,
"depth_inch_fraction": 0.375
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": "\u00a9 Kendell Geers",
"inscriptions": [],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [],
"legacy": [
{
"description": "AfroPunk. Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels, Belgium. (September 7-October 28, 2017)",
"opening_date": "2017-09-07T04:00:00Z"
},
{
"description": "Kendell Geers, 1988-2012. Haus der Kunst, Munich, DE (February 1-May 12, 2013)",
"opening_date": "2013-02-01T05:00:00Z"
},
{
"description": "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Blandy-les-Tours Castle, in collaboration with Galleria Continua, Blandy-les-Tours, France (June 30-July 10, 2012)",
"opening_date": "2012-06-30T04:00:00Z"
},
{
"description": "Fin de Partie. Galleria Continua, Beijing, China (March 19-August 27, 2011)",
"opening_date": "2011-03-19T04:00:00Z"
}
]
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "(Studio Kendell Geers, Brussels, Belgium, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "2018",
"sortorder": 1
},
{
"description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "2018-",
"sortorder": 2
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": "The underlying figure is much larger than minkisi figures were in the past; its \"supersize\" reflects that it is an object made for the tourist market, not for ritual use.",
"description": "To create this sculpture, Kendell Geers appropriates a nkisi nkondi (singular) sculpture of the Kongo people that was mass-produced for the tourist market. Minkisi (plural) figures were typically used as protective relics; the nails on it represent the many times the object would have been ritually activated. Geers wraps the object with white and red chevron tape\u2014the South African equivalent of yellow and black caution tape used in the US to mark off the scene of a crime\u2014simultaneously signaling danger and acting as a shield. The artist\u2019s deliberate use of the term fetish recalls African ritual objects\u2019 fetishization as art and global commodities by the West since the turn of the 20th century. While once used in scholarship to describe African religious objects like nkisi, the word 'fetish' is now understood as both inaccurate and inappropriate.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60781253"
],
"internet_archive": []
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Geers, Kendell and Jerome Sans. \u201cKendell Geers: A TerroRealist in the house of Love.\u201d In Looking both ways: Art of the contemporary African diaspora. (New York: Museum for African Art; Gent: Snoeck, 2003), 84-97, 179.",
"page_number": null,
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Kendell Geers: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 34 and 37. Exh. Cat. Blandy-les-Tours: Galleria Continua, June 30-July 10, 2012.",
"page_number": "p. 34, 37",
"url": "http://kendellgeers.com/dbfiles/news/5booklet_final_version.pdf"
},
{
"citation": "Kellner, Clive, et al. Kendell Geers 1988-2012, 159. Exh. Cat. Munich; London; New York: Prestel, February 1-May 12, 2013.",
"page_number": "p. 159",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Geers, Kendell, Jens Hoffman, and Z. S. Strother. AniMystikAKtivist: Between Traditional and the Contemporary in African Art. Brussels: Mercatorfonds, 2018.",
"page_number": null,
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Nzewi, Ugochukwu-Smooth C. \"Contemporary African Art.\" Cleveland Art (September/October 2018): 8-9.",
"page_number": "Reproduced and Mentioned: P. 8.",
"url": "https://www.clevelandart.org/print/magazine/cleveland-art-septemberoctober-2018/contemporary-african-art"
},
{
"citation": "Ugochukwu-Smooth, C. Nzewi. \u201cContemporary African Art: Two new works add a twist to canonical forms.\u201d Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 58, no. 5 (September/October 2018): 8-9.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: P. 9; Mentioned: P. 8, 9",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/CMAMM2018-05/page/n3/mode/2up"
},
{
"citation": "Nzewi, Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Second Careers : Two Tributaries in African Art. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2019",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p. 20; reproduced: p. 21, fig. 7.",
"url": ""
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/2018.4",
"images": {},
"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "Purchased with funds donated by Scott Mueller",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 308829,
"creators": [
{
"id": 308821,
"description": "Kendell Geers (South African, b. 1968)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": null,
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1968",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "2018-02-26T00:00:00-05:00",
"sortable_date": 2005,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "2005",
"collapse_artists": false,
"on_loan": false,
"recently_acquired": false,
"record_type": "object",
"conservation_statement": null,
"has_conservation_images": false,
"cover_accession_number": null,
"is_nazi_era_provenance": false,
"impression": null,
"alternate_titles": [],
"is_highlight": true,
"updated_at": "2026-05-01 06:53:50.715000"
}
}