一件木质雕塑 - Venavi - Ewe - 多哥 (沒有保留價)

Sculpture Venavi, Ewe, Southwest region, Togo.

This pair of wooden effigies likely represents a female and a male figure, standing nude and rendered in deliberately compact proportions: large heads, elongated and ringed necks, cylindrical torsos, short arms held close to the body, and broad feet ensuring stability. The female figure is distinguished by a full bosom, a hairstyle of long, longitudinal ribs, and a necklace of small white, red, and black beads; the male figure has a more compact hairstyle, modeled in rounded masses, and displays explicit sexual characteristics. The faces, calm and almost introspective, are constructed around oval eyes without pupils, a straight nose, a narrow mouth, and broadly carved ears. The light wood provides a smooth surface, locally glossy and darkened on the hairstyles, faces, and feet; this patina may be the result of handling, the application of substances, or repeated maintenance.

In the Ewe communities of Togo, the term venavi means "twins" and refers specifically to wooden figures commissioned by parents after the death of one or more twin children. An ethnographic study conducted in Aného documents venavi figures kept in domestic or ritual spaces, ritually washed and adorned with beads along with their owner, demonstrating that the effigy is not simply a commemorative portrait, but rather the material support of a lasting relationship with the deceased. The beads worn by the female figure are thus consistent with these practices of care and identification, though they are not sufficient to prove a specific ritual use. Related figures from the Adja-Ewe cultural area, made of wood and sometimes embellished with beads or indigo, are preserved in museum collections and generally date from the 19th–20th centuries.

The twins, called Hoho in Benin, Ibeji in Nigeria and Venanvi in Togo and the Volta region in Ghana, are considered sacred. The names given to the twins vary according to language, tradition, region and culture.
Among the Yoruba, a large ethnic group in Africa represented in Nigeria and Benin, the firstborn is called Taiyé, which literally means "the first to taste the world". The second-born, called Kehindé, comes after the first-born. Kehindé sends Tayie out as a scout to find out if life is worth living according to African tradition. Among the Baatonou people of Benin, twins are given the baptismal name Séni if they are boys, and Assana if they are girls.
The birth of twins is considered a happy event. At the birth, family members go to the bokônon or fortune teller and perform some rituals. When twins die in Benin, they are carved into sacred wooden dolls to replace them in the lives of those left behind.
The rituals for those Ibeji include washing, dressing, feeding and protecting the dolls. A festival is celebrated in their honour every year in Benin from mid-September to mid-October.

Lit.: Stoll, Ibeji, 1980. Jantzen, Bartsch, Doppel-Leben. Ibeji, 1993. Polo, David, Catalogue of the Ibeji, 2001. Polo, Enzyklopädie, 2008.

Lit.: Bernard Bardouillet (Société des Missions Africaines), a collecté auprès de François Gbedevi.

Some of the information is generated by artificial intelligence and is based on published sources from the fields of ethnography, archaeology, and art history.

Invt. No. MAZ20343

Height: 19 cm / 19 cm
Weight: 120 g/ 150 g