DOGON, MALI

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This ancient head is a remnant from a full-bodied male Dogon figure. The projecting, stylized beard identifies the subject as an elder, an individual whose age and experience entitle him to participate in all the most important affairs of Dogon society. Features of the face are minimal, with blank, almond-shaped eyes traced out in incisions above a prognathic mouth. The surrounding features of the head are heavy, helmet-like, framing the enigmatic visage, and supported by a stout neck. Extreme erosion enriches the surface with a rough and highly organic texture, transforming it, upon close inspection, into an abstract map of time-worn fissures and patinations.

The Dogon live in the elevated rocky heights of Mali's Bandiagara Escarpment, where the dry climate preserves Dogon antiquities far longer than is usual for African wood sculpture. If radiocarbon tested, this work and others like it would date back many hundreds of years.

 While the exact functions and meanings of Dogon figures remain unknown, scholars agree that Dogon sculptures were created for shrines. They depicted spirits of fertility, a group that included real and mythical ancestors, women who died in childbirth, and water spirits. Given their desert habitation, propitiation of fertility was a matter of survival. One of the most well-known figural forms in the Dogon corpus, a lone figure with raised arms, has been interpreted as an appeal for rain.

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