Female Horizontal-Style Chi Wara Headdress

Female Horizontal-Style Chi Wara Headdress

Bamana Culture

before 1974

Bamana Culture

West Africa

The Chi Wara is most commonly depicted as a part-human, part-antelope creature, and the most common style is the Chi Wara. This style of Chi Wara is the horizontal Chi Wara. This Chiwara also usually incorporates human and antelope features, but its horns are horizontal and tend to curve upward at the tips. The figure is also usually carved from two pieced of wood. This style of Chi Wara tends to be more stylized, with an enlarged head: it ma also incorporate other parts of animals, and a baby Chi Wara figure may be represented only by its horns, as on the Stoneman collection horizontal Chi Wara. Horizontal-style Chi Wara later developed into a very abstracted form that is even more complex and stylized, incorporating as many as three digging animals, such as the antelope, the aardvark, and the pangolin or armored ant eater. The use of the Chi Wara headdress has changed and developed over time. Most recently it has become the headdress danced by the winner of agricultural competitions, and it is used in entertainment masquerades.

Researched by heather Nelson, MSU Student, 2011, Under the direction of Dr. Billie Follensbee

20th Century

26 cm h. x 9 cm w. x 156 cm d.

Sculpture

Carved Design

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Harold Stoneman

1985.17

1985

20200035 and 20200036