A couple of Lobi headstakes

Among the Lobi of present-day Burkina Faso, Ghana, and Côte d'Ivoire, carved wooden headstakes occupy a place at once utilitarian, sculptural, and cosmological. To approach them solely as domestic implements is to miss the density of meaning condensed into their compact forms. They emerge from a cultural field in which architecture, ritual practice, and figural carving are deeply entangled, and in which the human head is understood as the locus of identity, intention, and spiritual vulnerability.

Formally, Lobi headstakes are often carved from a single block of hardwood, their silhouettes echoing the abstracted anthropomorphic and zoomorphic idioms that characterize Lobi shrine figures. The vertical support may recall the stance of a protective spirit image, while the horizontal platform above creates a measured distance between the individual and the earthen ground. This elevation is not a trivial gesture. In a region where the compound is both a familial and ritual space, the ground is saturated with memory, sacrifice, and the latent presence of unseen forces. The headstake thus establishes a subtle architecture of separation and protection, articulating a boundary without severing connection.

The Lobi religious universe is structured around relationships with thila, spirit beings who demand recognition through divination and the commissioning of sculptural forms. Although headstakes are not shrine figures in a strict sense, they share in the same visual language and ontological assumptions. The carved support becomes an object through which the integrity of the person is quietly maintained. Its form, sometimes severe and geometric, sometimes suggestively figural, participates in a broader aesthetic of vigilance and containment. It is an object that stands guard without spectacle.

Art historical discussions, including those shaped by scholars such as Roy Sieber, have emphasized the inadequacy of Western categories that sharply divide art from utility in African contexts. The Lobi headstake exemplifies this critique. It is shaped by a sculptor’s hand, attentive to proportion and abstraction, yet it remains embedded in everyday life. The surface bears the polish of long use, acquiring a patina that testifies to intimacy and duration. In this way, the object accrues biography; it becomes inseparable from the person whose presence it supports.

To consider the function of the Lobi headstake, then, is to recognize a layered operation. It supports and stabilizes, but it also signifies care for the head as the seat of personhood. It mediates between body and environment, between domestic interior and spiritually charged earth. Within its compact form, one encounters a philosophy of containment and protection rendered in wood. Far from being a marginal artifact, the headstake stands as a concentrated expression of Lobi understandings of self, space, and the unseen agencies that inhabit both.

Piet Meyer, Kunst und Religion der Lobi, München, Prestel, 1981.
Eine grundlegende Monografie zur religiösen Vorstellungswelt und zur Skulptur der Lobi mit ausführlicher ikonographischer Analyse.

Roy Sieber, „African Furniture and Household Objects“, in: African Art in the Cycle of Life, Washington, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1987.
Behandelt funktionale Objekte im Kontext afrikanischer Kunst und problematisiert die Trennung von „Gebrauchsgegenstand“ und „Kunstwerk“.

Till Förster, Die Macht der Masken: Gesellschaft und Ritual bei den Lobi in Burkina Faso, Berlin, Reimer, 1997.
Ethnographische Studie zur sozialen und rituellen Organisation der Lobi, mit wichtigen Kontextualisierungen materieller Kultur.

CAB30163

Height: 47 cm / 50 cm
Weight: 3,3 kg / 3,5 kg (incl. stand)