African Arts Gallery

Carved wooden fig or "Waka -Sona" in Baoulé, representing a young woman wearing braids gathered into shells. This type of Blolo bia statue. forms a mystical wife, whose hands resting on the abdomen underline the value of the lineage. Grainy brown-gray patina. Minor chips.
Around sixty ethnic groups populate Ivory Coast, including the Baoulé, in the center, Akans from Ghana, a people of the savannah, practicing hunting and agriculture just like the Gouro from whose cults and masks they borrowed. Two types of Waka-Sona statues are in fact produced by the Baoulé in the ritual framework: those which evoke an assiè oussou, being of the earth, and which are part of 'a set of statues intended to be used as medium tools by Komian diviners, the latter being selected by the asye usu spirits in order to communicate revelations from the afterlife. The second type of statues are the spouses of the afterlife, male, the Blolo bian or female, the blolo bia.