Tribal Art

The "inverted doubles" in the African art sculptures of Les Baule
Offering crystallized residues of ritual practices, this statuette Blobo bia, or bloblo bla, embodies a spiritual spouse. She adopts the traditional posture, hands enhancing the umbilical region. This type of object is carved according to the indications of the diviner. Chipped polychrome patina. Desication cracks.
About sixty ethnic groups populate Côte d'Ivoire, including the Baoulé, 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 masks carved. Two types of statues are produced by the Baoulé , Baulé , within the ritual framework: The Waka-Sona statues, "being of wood" in baoulé, evoke a assié oussou, being of the earth. They are one of a type of statues intended to be used as medium tools by Komien soothsayers, the latter being selected by the asye usu spirits in order to communicate revelations from beyond. The second type of statues are the "husbands" of the beyond, male, the Blolo bian or female, the blolo bia, which are similar to a quest of plenitude through the homage to the idealized sexual opposite.