African Arts Gallery

This African sculpture of a young man adopts some of the canons of the statues baule, known as "colonists". It is, however, a blolo bian figure, associated with the spouse of the afterlife. Polychrome patina. Abrasions. br> Some sixty ethnic groups populate Côte d'Ivoire, including the Baule, in the center, Akans from Ghana, people of the savannah, practicing hunting and agriculture just like the Gouro from whom they borrowed ritual cults and sculpted masks. Two types of statues are produced by the Baoulé, Baulé, within the ritual framework: The Waka-Sona statues, "being of wood" in Baoulé, evoke an assié oussou, being of the earth. They are part of a type of statues intended to be used as a medium tool by the komien diviners, the latter being selected by the asye usu spirits in order to communicate revelations from the beyond. The second type of statues are the "spouses" of the afterlife, male, the Blolo bian or female, the blolo bia, quest for wholeness through homage to the idealized sexual opposite. About sixty ethnic groups populate the Ivory Coast, including the Baule, in the center, Akans from Ghana, people of the savannah, practicing hunting and agriculture just like the Gouro from whom they borrowed their ritual cults and sculpted masks. Two types of statues are produced by the Baoulé, Baulé, within the ritual framework: The Waka-Sona statues, "being of wood" in Baoulé, evoke an assié oussou, being of the earth. They are part of a type of statues intended to be used as a medium tool by the komien diviners, the latter being selected by the asye usu spirits in order to communicate revelations from the beyond. The second type of statues are the "spouses" of the afterlife, male, the Blolo bian or female, the blolo bia, quest for wholeness through homage to the idealized sexual opposite.