Like their neighbors in Cameroon and Gabon with whom they share many family and cultural ties, Equator Guineans and particularly the Fang people are among the best black sculptors in Africa. Their works of art are found in most of the big international museums which have African art and ethnology.

Although the Fang people probably originated from the Savannahs of North Africa, they finally settled in the giant forest of Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and South Cameroon where they found mood which they preferred most for their sculpture. They used this wood to sculpt statuettes and masks that were used during ceremonies of ancestral worship. Today, in Equatorial Guinea, these sculptures are extremely rare because traditional practices have almost completely disappeared with the advent of Catholicism.

The Fang Okak and the Fang Ntoumou art and black art in general arouses great enthusiasm of modern European artists. Painters like Picasso, Matisse and Derain got their inspiration from this art.

The cubist movement, launched in 1906 by Picasso with the famous painting of Avignon ladies, was borrowed to a greater extent from black masks. Great collectors then continued to make African art better known especially Joseph Müllar (Swiss) who created a museum in Geneva where exceptional works of the Fang people were gathered.

Ancestral worship or the worship of the dead constitutes one of the most important rites carried out by the Fang people. Fang sculptors usually made reliquaries in which mortal remains were kept as well as magic powder in gazelle horns. These reliquaries which were made with tree barks were called "coffins". The reliquaries were surmounted by an anthropomorphic statuette or a human head carved with a stick. According to European travelers like Professor Trilles who visited "Pahouin Land" at the beginning of the 20^th century, these reliquaries were placed on shelves in the chief’s hut when they were not used for rites.

As concerns reliquary statuettes, specialists in African distinguish two "regional" models, that of North Fang (Ntoumou in Equatorial Guinea and in Cameroon) and that of South Fang (Okak in Equatorial Guinea, Mvai and Betsi in Gabon).

Most of the statuettes carved by the artists of the North are tall and have a thin and slender trunk. According to a French ethnologist, Louis Parrois, whose several works are based on Fang sculptures, "the statuettes have lanky parts well detached from the body and a small or average head showing all the details in construction peculiar to all the models of the Fang people. The face is located in the middle, below an ample front the mouth is stretched forward with no chin and the hair is thrown backward (it is plaited and has a helmet with a crest in the centre).

There is equally the tendency of using metals like Copper, Brass and Iron as decorative veneer on the shoulders and chest or on the face and hair".

As for the statuettes of the Fang of the South, like those made by the Fang Okak, their structures are generally more huge. Louis Perrois made the following remark: "the statuettes have volumes which are more compact, round and powerful giving the impression of movement robustness, even the small statuettes. At the level of style, only their heads are considered as being of an earlier age with regard to the statuettes. It is difficult to establish this possibility because at the time of exploration, towards 1900, only heads and statuettes were already coexisting". He also stressed that in the Okak model has various sizes and forms with Squat busts and large legs.

Small heads can equally be placed in the reliquaries. They generally have the structure of a heart with stylized marks. The sculptor placed wig-helmets in these reliquaries and several early European travelers who met the Fang people were imprisoned by this work.

Although often considered as dreadful warriors, the Fang people were not so indifferent to their attires. From the numerous photos taken in the 20^th century, it is noted that their bare chest were crowded with highly decorative ritual sacrifices. They equally move hats in the form of a helmet, a kind of basket decorated with a line of copper nails, cowries and even mother-of pearl buttons.

Fang masks are much more scarce and that is why many big museums in the world scramble for them. These long masks which are carved using then wood like Kapok represent a human being in an almost complete abstract way.

They are covered with Kaolin and look like moonlight and even ghosts. These white masks are called "nle ngen ntân", the head of a young white girl. Today, during rituals, "ngotang" is worn by a man who hides his body and its parts.

"In the past, said J. Binet," raphia fibres hanging from the sleeves or trousers used to cover hands and legs. Today, ankle socks are worn and they give an unexpected look to hands. The dancer’s body is covered with clothes and a collaret made of fibers. The collared is attached to a helmet which protects the neck, shoulders and the height. Fibers and animal skins remind us of traditional attires." The dance this, one must have under gone specific initiation. The dancer had to take potion that gave him maximum ease in his movements. Before each ceremony, he had to rub his body with a protective balm, observe a strict sexual continence and wear charms. He was accompanied by a female dancer who was also initiated and both would be gradually possessed by the spirit of the "young white girl".

Today, in Fang land few white masks with various faces are still carved. They resemble helmets and are carried by dancers who were fibres. The dances have lost their ritual aspect and have become occasions for folklore like anywhere in the world. The Fang people were not only limited to carving statuettes for rituals but they also used metals to produce large number of objects, tools, weapons and ordinary utensils. So there existed brass necklaces in the form of manila. The metal for their production came either from mines in the DRC or from European traders.

Bangles and long daggers decorated in a geometric way were also produced by skillful blacksmiths. But it was with wood that the famous Mvet harps were made using the knowledge of a stringed- instrument maker worthy of the great European specialists from Crimean. Though typical to the Fang people, Mvet is not only a musical instrument, but equally an epic accompanied by a harp. The Mvet singer often unable to read and write is not in the least uneducated in his culture. He is a real "living library". He carries and spreads, from one village to another, the oral tradition and particularly epics which narrate the origin of the Fang people, their wars, their heroes and their gods. Some narrators of "mbon mvet" sometimes keep more than 70000verses in their brains. This shows the fragile nature of a tradition and knowledge stored in the memory of one person. Fortunately, more and more researchers comb villages looking for such venerated persons in order to register and faithfully transcribe this genre of literature that is disappearing.