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Lot 84

LOBI HYENA FIGURE, BURKINA FASO

Arts of Africa, the Pacific & the Americas
17 December 2024, 16:00 CET
Brussels, Chaussée de Charleroi

€3,000 - €5,000

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LOBI HYENA FIGURE, BURKINA FASO

thil yiire
wood
Length 19 cm

Provenance
Jean-Paul Delcourt (1925-2018), Abidjan
Giovanni F. Scanzi (1936-2017), Genoa
David Serra, Barcelona
The Grace Collection of African art, Belgium

Literature
Scanzi, G. F., L'Art traditionnel Lobi, Bergamo, 1993, p.331, ll. 276

Footnotes

Giovanni Franco Scanzi (1936–2017) was an Italian banker who lived in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ivory Coast from the 1960s onwards. A passionate collector, Scanzi published L'Art Traditionnel Lobi, a key publication celebrating the artistry of Lobi sculptures, created in collaboration with sociologist Jean-Paul Delcourt.

As described by Piet Meyer (Kunst und Religion der Lobi, Zurich, 1993, pp.116–118), the thila are spiritual beings tasked to oversee the Lobi people. These beings can appear in the form of a variety of animals. When encountered in the bush, a thil may speak in a human voice to deliver specific "prohibitions" (soser) that guide success in a chosen area. This event, called "seeing a head" (yoo yir), typically requires the animal to be killed after its announcement.

Meyer notes that thila often request shrines to be built following such encounters, with clay or wooden figures of the animal serving as the "eye of the shrine" (thil yiire). Some animal sculptures were also created at the demand of thila upset by the hunting of animals they favored.

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