Chiwara - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

A Chiwara is a ritual object representing an antelope

Antelope

Antelope is a term referring to many even-toed ungulate species indigenous to various regions in Africa and Eurasia. Antelopes comprise a miscellaneous group within the family Bovidae, encompassing those old-world species that are neither cattle, sheep, buffalo, bison, nor goats...

, used by the Bambara ethnic group in Mali

Mali

Mali , officially the Republic of Mali , is a landlocked country in Western Africa. Mali borders Algeria on the north, Niger on the east, Burkina Faso and the Côte d'Ivoire on the south, Guinea on the south-west, and Senegal and Mauritania on the west. Its size is just over 1,240,000 km² with...

. The Chiwara initiation society uses Chiwara masks, as well as dances and rituals associated primarily with agriculture, to teach young Bamana men social values as well as agricultural techniques.

Stylistic variations

Chiwara masks are categorized in three ways: horizontal

Horizontal plane

In geometry, physics, astronomy, geography, and related sciences, a plane is said to be horizontal at a given point if it is perpendicular to the gradient of the gravity field at that point— in other words, if apparent gravity makes a plumb bob hang perpendicular to the plane at that point.In...

, vertical

Vertical direction

In astronomy, geography, geometry and related sciences and contexts, a direction passing by a given point is said to be vertical if it is locally aligned with the gradient of the gravity field, i.e., with the direction of the gravitational force at that point...

, or abstract. In addition, Chiwara can be either male or female. Female Chiwara masks are denoted by the presence of a baby antelope and straight horns. Male Chiwara masks have bent horns and a phallus

Phallus

A phallus is an erect penis, a penis-shaped object such as a dildo, or a mimetic image of an erect penis. Any object that symbolically resembles a penis may also be referred to as a phallus; however, such objects are more often referred to as being phallic...

. The sex of a Chiwara mask is much clearer on horizontal and vertical masks while abstract masks tend to be difficult to classify.

The appearance of the Chiwara form varies greatly both by region and time produced. Specific master wood carvers also subtly modified the accepted (or even religiously mandated) local forms, forming a distinct "signature" or "school" of Chiwara figures. These regional variations have been roughly assigned the stylistic categories above. Thus the Bougouni
Bougouni
Bougouni is a commune and city in Mali, the administrative center of Bougouni Cercle, which is in turn found in the administrative region of Sikasso. Bougouni is located 170 km south of Bamako and 210 km west of the city of Sikasso...

/ Southern region style are an amalgam of several animal motifs combined in the same work, in an abstract style; the Bamako
Bamako
Bamako is the capital of Mali and its largest city with a population of 1.8 million . Currently, it is estimated to be the fastest growing city in Africa and sixth fastest in the world...

/ Northern region style is usually of the horizontal style; the Segu
Segu
*Segu may refer to**Ségou, a city in south-central Mali, and former capital of the Bamana Empire**Sergi López Segú, a Spanish footballer**Segu , a novel by Maryse Condé...

/ Northern region style (the heartland of the Bambara Empire

Bambara Empire

The Bamana Empire was a large pre-colonial West African state based at Ségou, now in Mali. It was ruled by the Kulubali or Coulibaly dynasty established circa 1640 by Kaladian Coulibaly also known as Fa Sine or Biton-si-u...

) matches the vertical style with the unique "cut out" triangular body motif of the males. Other regional styles have been proposed, including the Sikasso
Sikasso
Sikasso is a city in the south of Mali and the capital of the Sikasso Region. With 130,700 residents, Sikasso recently passed Ségou to become Mali's second-largest city.-Geography:...

region style, with a thin, delicate, vertical form within almost human, snoutless face.

Ceremonial Usage

In Bambara

Bambara language

Bambara, more correctly known as Bamanankan , its designation in the language itself , is a language spoken in Mali by as many as six million people...

, chi wara means laboring wild animal, and is a representation of Bambara mythos

Mythology

The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...

about the creation of farming.

Mousso Koroni

While there are several versions of the story, the discovery of agriculture is credited to the hero Chi Wara, a half antelope, half human figure born from the union of the sky goddess Mousso Koroni and an earth spirit in the shape of a cobra. The Chi Wara came to earth to teach humans to sow crops, and thus is honored at both sowing and harvest festivals.

The Chi Wara figure

The Chi Wara itself is usually represented as a Roan Antelope

Roan Antelope

The Roan Antelope is a savanna antelope found in West, Central, East Africa and Southern Africa.Roan Antelope stand about a metre and half at the shoulder and weigh around 250 kilograms. Named for the "roan' colour , they have a lighter underbelly, white eyebrows and cheeks and a black face,...

with an almost human face, but also takes shapes of other creatures and emblems of farming. The hero descends from the sky goddess, and thus represents the sun, its body is often elongated and short legged to represent the aardvark

Aardvark

The aardvark is a medium-sized, burrowing, nocturnal mammal native to Africa...

who burrows into the earth like a farmer. Its high horns echo the stalks of millet

Millet

The millets are a group of small-seeded species of cereal crops or grains, widely grown around the world for food and fodder. They do not form a taxonomic group, but rather a functional or agronomic one. Their essential similarities are that they are small-seeded grasses grown in difficult...

, and it stands on a dancer clad in a mass of raffia stalks to represent both flowing water and a bountiful harvest. The zig-zag patterns echo the movement of the sun across the sky, and the penis of the male figure stands low to the ground, fertilizing the earth.
The Chi Wara figures always appear as a male/female pair, combining the elements of fertility of humans with fertility of the earth. The female figure usually carries a young antelope on her back, and is said to represent human beings carried by the Chi Wara hero, as well as a newborn human carried on a mother's back.

chi wara ton

As farmers of the upper Niger river

Niger River

The Niger River is the principal river of western Africa, extending about . Its drainage basin is in area. Its source is in the Guinea Highlands in southeastern Guinea...

savanna

Savanna

A savanna, or savannah, is a grassland ecosystem characterized by the trees being sufficiently small or widely spaced so that the canopy does not close. The open canopy allows sufficient light to reach the ground to support an unbroken herbaceous layer consisting primarily of C4 grasses.Some...

, the blessing of agriculture is of central importance to Bambara society. These traditions survive in part because the Bambara were one of the last cultures in the area to embrace Islam

Islam

Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...

, after the fall of the Bambara Empire

Bambara Empire

in the late 19th century.
Bambara culture has traditionally had a strict set of age and caste cofraternities (ton/jo/jow), and the chi wara ton society is one of the more important. It gathers all young adult males of the Soli age group to work the fields at clearing, sowing and harvest, when the greatest number of laborers in needed. Secret teachings of the chi wara ton pass the needed skills for this work, upon which the very survival of the community depends.

The chi wara ton is also the only major Bambara society which includes both sexes. Women's labor is needed for agriculture, just as both sexes are needed for human reproduction.

Dance

The Chi Wara is always danced with each wooden figure attached to a basket on the dancer's head, and the body covered in a huge pile of raffia. Often the face is obscured with raffia that has been colored or decorated, and the dancer carries a long staff. The figures are always in one or more male/female pairs, with the female usually dancing behind the male, fanning him and spreading his powers into the gathered community. The Male figures leap to represent the antalope, and then scratch the earth with their staves or horns as the Chi Wara teaches humans to cultivate crops. In some communities the Mousso Koroni figure also appears.

World Influence

African sculptural forms became fashionable amongst European artists and collectors at the beginning of the Twentieth century, and the Chiwara, especially in its more abstract forms, became one of the icons of what Europeans called Primitive Art. The artist Guillaume Apollinaire

Guillaume Apollinaire

Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki, known as Guillaume Apollinaire was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic born in Italy to a Polish mother....

and collector Paul Guillaume

Paul Guillaume

Paul Guillaume was a French art dealer. Dealer of Chaim Soutine and Amedeo Modigliani, he was one of the first to organize African art exhibitions...

published images of the Chiwara in their Sculptures nègres in 1917, while Picasso, Braque, and Les Fauves became fascinated with African sculpture and masks in general, and the Chiwara figure in particular.

A vertical, male, semi-abstracted Chiwara figure was included in the 1935 Metropolitan Museum of Art

Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...

exhibit African Negro Art, and the Masterpieces of African Art at the Brooklyn Museum

Brooklyn Museum

The Brooklyn Museum is an encyclopedia art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At 560,000 square feet, the museum holds New York City's second largest art collection with roughly 1.5 million works....

in 1954, (as well as shows in London and Paris) shows which were highly influential to western artists and collectors. Variations of its triangual cut-out pattern are echoed in mid-20th century Modernist art, and its outline remains one of the most recognizable of African art forms.

External links

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