Lobi Figure Batebi: Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Ghana.
20 cm.
hardwood and inlaid with patina of use.
Here is another small (but large lobes). Beautiful patina, very especially the carving of the sculptor.
The hereafter becomes visible
Originality Lobi statuary lies, first, at the artist-sculptor. This art style so characteristic traits, it knows no time nor masters, nor formal restrictions.
The strength of the spirit and the power of social cohesion, the lobes push to seek protection, to find a meaning to suffering, pain, death, and groped to replace them with their life force to resolve it.
The hard wood of the trees around him, his calloused hands of farmers - the warrior, the weight of the archetypes that bind him to his ancestral village, his family, are its own resources.
each community, in its way, with the forces that oppress them. The harshness of the same material, and wear scars of time, bring out the delicacy of the ear or part of the enigmatic expression of a face lost in thought.
Each sculptor, materializes his feelings in the communities where it is located: each Batebi reflects well the identity of those who conceived.
(From Africa No. 25, 1995 / 1, Lobi Art: A Look eternity, John Franco Scanzi.)
