African Arts Gallery

African art and statues of the Baoulé
A voluminous head with multiple braided shells, facial and body scarifications, a protruding umbilical, muscular legs adapted to agricultural work, characterize this effigy male baoulé. The soft, sainy surface is locally encrusted with ritual anointing residues. Kaolin chipped on the seat. Desication cracks. Two types of statues are produced by the baoulé in the ritual framework: the statues Waka-Sona , " being wood " in baoulé, evoke a asssousou , be of the earth. They are part of a type of statues intended to be used as a medium tool by the komiefoué soothsayers , the latter being selected by the spirits asye usu ("genies of the earth") in order to communicate the revelations of the afterlife. The second type of statues are the spouses of the afterlife, male, Blolo bian or feminine, the blolo bia . Some 60 ethnic groups populate Côte d'Ivoire, including the Baoulé in the centre, Akans from Ghana, a people of the savannah, hunting and farming, as well as the Gouro from whom they borrowed the cults and masks.