War / Delusion is a sculptural work carved from a salvaged tree, drawing inspiration from the Nkisi Nkondi tradition of the Kongo people of Central Africa—objects believed to be spiritually charged and created for protection, accountability, and communal witness. Historically marked with nails and offerings, Nkondi figures held memory, intention, and consequence within their bodies.
This work reimagines that ancestral form as a meditation on the collapse between violence and belief. War / Delusion explores how conviction hardens into destruction, how fear disguises itself as righteousness, and how the stories we tell ourselves can become weapons. Standing as both monument and warning, the piece asks what happens when protection becomes possession, and when devotion loses its grounding in care.
In keeping with the Nkisi Nkondi tradition, community members were invited to participate by adding nails to the sculpture. Each nail was placed as an act of witness—marking intention, accountability, grief, or protection—echoing the original role of Nkondi figures as communal vessels rather than solitary objects. Through this gesture, the work becomes not only carved form, but a shared record of belief, tension, and responsibility held together in public view.
