MUMUYE FIGURES ARCHIVES, Nigeria

Mumuye 31 57", SOLD

Mumuye 32 55", SOLD

Mumuye 34 50", SOLD

Mumuye 35 SOLD

Mumuye 37 SOLD

Mumuye 39 SOLD

Mumuye 40 SOLD

Mumuye 41 SOLD

Mumuye 42 SOLD

Mumuye 43 SOLD

Mumuye 45 SOLD

Mumuye 46 SOLD

Mumuye 47 31", SOLD

Mumuye 48 28", SOLD

Mumuye 49 SOLD

Mumuye 50 SOLD

Mumuye 52 SOLD

Mumuye 53 28", SOLD

Mumuye 54 SOLD

Mumuye 55 SOLD

Mumuye 57 SOLD

Mumuye 59 SOLD

Mumuye 60 SOLD

Mumuye 70 SOLD

Mumuye Figure 44 SOLD

Mumuye Figure 51 SOLD

Mumuye Figure 56 SOLD

Mumuye Figures 72 SOLD

Mumuye artists are famous for their wooden statues known as iagalagana. Even though the Mumuye show great respect for their ancestors, their statuary does not depict ancestors, but rather incarnates tutelary spirits. The statues reinforce the status and prestige of their owner who, as he holds them in his hands, has a dialogue with them and thus ensures his personal protection. The functions of sculptural figures are varied. They are used by both diviners and healers, whose professions included diagnosis and cure of ill health and other kinds of misfortunes. The figures were used to greet rainmaker's clients, guard the house, serve as owner's confidant, and in trials when men in dispute swear on the statue. It is not unusual for a figure simultaneously to serve two or more functions.

The figures vary in size from 20 centimeters to 1.6 meters, are highly abstracted, and may have added elements: beads, belts, bracelets, chains, leather laces, ropes or braided vegetable matter, brass wires, or cowrie shells. The statues' principal characteristic, unique in African art, is the creation of positive and negative space with a pattern of openwork between the body and the arms, which forms a scroll or a spiral around the slender, cylindrical torso. The heads may display a coiffure in the form of a crest. Scarification on face and body is delineated and nasal septum may be perforated for the insertion of a short section of a stalk of Guinea corn. A number of such sculptures have large ears with pierced and distended earlobes for the insertion of plugs.