Tribal Art

Door made up of three panels to which horizontal slats are nailed. The central motif represented is the African mask of the Bwa symbolizing the hornbill or nwo bird. Saurian figures, also sculpted in low relief, refer to the spirits of nature. The dark patina was usually obtained from charcoal and gum tree pods.
Desication cracks, erosions.
A population established on both sides of the Black Volta in Burkina Faso and Mali, the Bwa are divided into three endogamous castes: blacksmiths, griots and farmers. The Bwa believe in a god Difini creator of the world, who later abandoned it to his son Do. Do, whose emblem is an iron rhomb named alive, is supposed to intervene during funerals and agrarian rites. The sheet masks are made by the villagers, only the Bwa of the South, the nieguegue, produce often zoomorphic wooden masks, and the famous abstract plank masks, representing the spirits of nature, the naw.(C.Roy)