Blolo bla figure
Blolo bla or female statue that perfectly repeats the canons of the ballet aesthetic: An important navel, because it is the image…
EFM-3
Documented paths
Baule figures: blolo bla, blolo bian and asie usu
Blolo bla, blolo bian and asie usu are names retained in the catalogue for figures attributed to the Baule. This route begins with EFM-3 and EFM-4 and continues through four male-figure records. It explores distinctions of function that cannot simply be read from appearance.
Arrimadas’s notes pay particular attention to bodily proportions, the head and the navel. They belong to the collection’s documentary history and remain available within each record. Reading them alongside other sources is more useful than assuming that every standing figure served the same purpose.
Documented context
Cornell’s museum describes blolo bian and blolo bla as representations of otherworld spirit spouses. Lombardia’s heritage record cautions that these figures and those associated with asie usu spirits can be formally indistinguishable. Visual resemblance alone does not establish function.
Herbert F. Johnson Museum, Cornell · Standing male figure (blolo bian) · Lombardia Beni Culturali · Statua, popolazione Baulè
Reading the catalogue
Original historical document in Spanish
Ombligo importante, pues es la imagen de la transmisión de la vida y además representa al antepasado.
Jesús Arrimadas Saavedra · original catalogue · EFM-3
This quotation retains the archive’s wording. Editorial context and comparative sources do not certify the objects’ attribution, age or provenance.
Objects to explore
Blolo bla figure
It is a Blolo blah or wife of the hereafter, that is, the wife we have left in the other world when…
EFM-4
Blolo bian figure
Mystical husband or from beyond in dry wood and patina color honey.
EMS-11
Asie usu figure
Statue of an ancestor in very dense wood.
EMS-12
Asie usu figure
It is the geniuses or spirits of nature that can intervene in the world of humans by granting them their favors or…
EMS-29
Asie usu figure
Dark and deep patina.
EMS-33
An editorial reading of the collection; complete documents remain in the object records.
Browse records for this culture · Baule
