5 - Standing female figure

Standing female figure body and face scarred Polychrome wood, natural pigments, signs of wear and age, small crack. Mossi, Burkina Faso. 45 x 13.5 cm Among the Mossi, young women receive their scarifications between the ages of thirteen and eighteen. Drawn on the torso and abdomen, they signify, according to ethnologist Suzanne Lallemand, future motherhood. Sculptors faithfully reproduce these marks on their female figures—images of the fulfilled woman—which, as Christopher Roy has shown, ancestral lineages and chiefs regarded as symbols of their authority. This figure is a striking example: the engraved scarifications, highlighted in white, run around the face, form a rectangle on the torso, and create a cruciform pattern on the abdomen, contrasting with the smooth surfaces of the wood; a sagittal crest crowns the head. General Bibliography: Christopher D. Roy, *Art of the Upper Volta Rivers*, Meudon, Alain and Françoise Chaffin, 1987.