Motherhood is a recurring theme in African art. The symbolism is always the same, whether the child is carried on the back, in the arms, breastfeeding, or resting on the knees.
The divination of “mother and child” is important in African art and is often explored in figurative sculptures that express concerns for motherhood, fertility, and continuity. The sculptures are carried out and repeated through similar imagery in various tribes in Africa such as Asante, Yoruba, Senufo, and Dogon.
To ensure a healthy pregnancy and birth, Africans employ spiritual aids and most mother and child sculptures are meant for protection and invocation of the spirit, to empower a state of natural purity, ceremonial purity, and spirituality; fertility and continuity; healing and power.
Although most mother-and-child sculptures are intended to ensure fertility, some pieces are more concerned with the high status of the female in that matriarchal society.
Fertility and children are the most frequent themes in the wooden sculpture of the Asante thus, the most numerous works are “akua’ba” fertility figures and mother-and-child figures. In traditional Asante society (19th to 20th century), in which inheritance was through the maternal line, a woman’s essential role was to bear children, preferably girls to continue the matrilineage. Sculptured mother-and-child figures show the mother nursing or holding her breast. Such gestures express Asante ideas about nurturing, the family, and the continuity of a matrilineage through a daughter or of a state through a son.
According to Yoruba belief (19th to 20th century), children are blessings from the gods. Before the advent of modern medicine, women petitioned certain deities for fertility and the birth of a healthy infant. The shrines to deities were adorned with sculptured figures representing a mother and child.
Afo maternity figures from Nigeria (19th Century) are thought to represent an ancestral mother and are owned by individual villages. These figures are brought out of their shrines once a year for the Aya ceremony. At this time, men pray for increased fertility for their wives and make gifts of food and money to the ancestor.
We have several of these amazing maternity sculptures at the Amba Gallery!! Come check them out!!!
