Page 115

T84 EN Online

113 FIG. 8 (left and right): Gwandusu seated mother and child. Bamana, Mali. Wood. H: 117.8 cm. Private collection. FIG. 9 (far right): Seated male with a lance. Bamana, Mali. Wood. H: 85.8 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, gift of the Kronos Collection in honor of Martin Lerner, 1983, inv. 1983.600ab. and most respected accomplishment… .”10 A woman is powerful enough to pass greatness on to her children, as stated in a proverb, “everyone is in his mother’s hands,” and in a song: “a man’s power comes from his mother,” again a reference to her fadenya components.11 Gwan is a female initiatory association, with the purpose of promoting childbirth, but it is also the association of blacksmiths who carve Gwan fi gures. Explicitly, Gwan celebrates both childbirth and the metaphoric “birthing” of iron from the furnace, as the word gwan also means “smelting furnace.”12 In formal terms, the two sculptures illustrated here appear to refl ect ideas espoused by fadenya and badenya. The male (fi g. 9) holds his tall spear projecting into open space above, keeping it between his surroundings and his body,


T84 EN Online
To see the actual publication please follow the link above