A Dokamissa maternity

A Dokamissa maternity sits on a four-legged stool and holds her child firmly on her stomach while the child in turn snuggles against the mother's body with both arms. Huge breasts seem to protect it as if with this symbol they want to express the function of motherhood. Original cord windings on the right forearm and plait, which could be authentic repairs, have passed into the general patina due to the long ageing process, longer plaits point to a woman of higher rank such as that of the "Chief de Village" or the "Warlord". Dark patina with encrustations.

This sculpture was offered to me in an act of friendship a couple of days after we made the film about the ceremony. I hesitated to buy this sculpture because I normally refuse all objects which are pictured on so-called "field photos" without any scientific value only motivated by the well know European Voyeurism. The film we made was probably the first documentation of this specific Bamana ceremony. But the consequence of these Photo-Safaris with hundred of carvers or fetishers is a serious attack on the spiritual life of indigen people. Either an invitation to steal these figures, because of their value in a specific Tribal Art market or an invitation to Photo-Safaris into the last undiscovered parts of indigen people.

The Dokamissa is the second woman after Muso Masa, a type of sculpture we collected several times and it was sacrfied in the Bamana film clip, we published recently. According to the traditional Bamana law the first child of Muso Massa has to be given to Dokamissa - the second woman in the familial hierarchy of the women, if Dokamissa hasn´t at that moment no child, the first child of Muso Massa has always been the name Sujulu Kuruma and the first child of Sukulu Kuruma has always the name Sunjata Keita., which shows the Bamana society has much more named familial relations than we know. It would be a great challenge to find out the sociological reason for this particularity.

Height: 76 cm
Weight: 7,8 kg