Mami Wata - Mali (No reserve price)

A superb figurine representing a bronze mermaid of Mami Wata from Mali.

Mami Wata is the Mother of the waters. Half-woman, half-fish, both terrestrial and aquatic, she is a divinity of the Vodun cult in Togo and Benin, a water spirit feared by fishermen in Nigeria and Ghana, but also a man-eater who, in popular imagination, wanders at night under the guise of a revenant. In Kinshasa, she is even regarded as the patron saint of prostitutes.

Mami Wata is thus a divinity with multiple faces, whose representations and cults vary depending on the place and those who worship her. Heroine of lake-dwelling tales, figure in urban legends, she gathers a multitude of symbols that change from one culture to another. She can embody both virtues and hopes, but also maleficence and fears. It is perhaps this ambivalence that gives her power and explains the unique place she occupies in African imaginaries.

This mermaid is one of the rare deities of African mythology to be represented so recurrently in visual arts. The deities of the Yoruba pantheon are among the few figures that have also given rise to effigies and human representations.

We must here recall one of the peculiarities of many African spiritual traditions: the ability to recognize a soul, a presence, and a force in beings and objects drawn from animal, plant, or mineral worlds. These elements are not regarded as mere things. They can be endowed with powers and symbols, and thus become intermediaries between humans and the invisible world — that of ancestors, the dead, and the spirits.

Mami Wata fully embodies this worldview. She belongs to that space where the visible and the invisible meet, where beliefs, fears, and hopes mingle, and where the same figure can take on meanings that are deeply different depending on the communities that tell her story.