BOBO-FING POST-FIGURE, YORUBA HOUSEPOST, DOGON TOGUNA POST
Photographs © Tim Hamill
This page is a record of an exhibit that took place in 1996. The individual links below will take you to the CURRENT VERSION of the pages that formed part of that exhibit. |
This is an exhibit that shows traditional architectural and commemorative
posts. Many African figurative pieces are post-like in form but we are showing
only those intended to be placed not on, but in, the ground. They share
a spiritual monumentality reserved for pieces fused by contact with the
earth.
The architectural support posts are dominated by a large collection of Dogon
toguna posts from Mali. The Y-shaped posts support beams of the village
men's toguna house and are embellished with figures, breasts or symbols.
The impressive grouping, carved to last from the incredibly dense local
hardwood, ranges in style and in size to over 7 feet tall and 195 Ibs. The
bottom several feet are usually buried in the ground, some posts have discoloration
of this area, others have it rotted away to varying degrees. Muslim conversion
of villages and closure of some of the Togunas has vacillitated the legal
purchase and exportation of the posts. We also have a Yoruba chiefs housepost
and an abstract Nupe post, both from Nigeria.
The second major grouping is of Fon Boccio figure/posts from the Rep. of
Benin. Mostly modest in scale, often inelegantly carved, but wonderfully
aged by exposure,they honored past chiefs and kings. Two are very tall head/posts.
Similar head or figure/posts of the Yaka and Songye of Zaire, the Bobo-Fing
of Burkina Faso, and the Igbo and the Benue of Nigeria add to the show,
which is completed by some abstract Taureg screenposts from Niger. Not intended
as art, but to support and honor, all of these posts have survived to create
a show of unusual power, carved by man and aged by the earth.
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