The Djennenké androgynous figure with raised arm
tenth to eleventh century
A tall, thin figure of dark wood stands with one arm raised straight up, the other hanging by its side, its long face lifted as if in prayer or command. It has a beard and a small breast, male and female at once, and its body is covered with fine carved marks and rows of small figures. The wood is cracked and eroded, and yet the pose is so charged that the statue seems to be in the act of calling down something from the sky. It is one of the oldest wooden sculptures from sub-Saharan Africa to survive, and one of the icons of the museum's African collection.
The figure comes from the cliffs of Bandiagara in Mali, and its style is called Djennenké because it relates to the terracotta art of the ancient city of Djenné on the inland Niger delta. Radiocarbon dating places it in the tenth or eleventh century, before the Dogon people settled the cliffs, so it was made by their predecessors, sometimes called the Tellem, and perhaps kept in a cave or shrine for centuries. Look closely at the surface and you can see the raised scarification patterns, the tiny figures carved on the body and the crusted patina left by libations. The raised arm may be a gesture of asking for rain, a theme that runs through later Dogon sculpture.
The statue was bought in 2004 with the help of the insurer AXA from the dealer Hélène Leloup, who had owned it for decades, for a sum reported at about four million euros. When the museum held its great Dogon exhibition in 2011 it moved the figure to the end of the show as a climax. Objects like this are also at the centre of debates about the colonial removal of African heritage from Mali, a question the museum now addresses openly. Whatever its future, the figure stops most visitors in their tracks.
Did You Know? The wood has been radiocarbon dated to around a thousand years ago, making the figure older than the Dogon culture it is usually linked with.
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