African Bamana Wood Tyiwara Chi Wara Antelope Figure

Mali, 1940s-50s

Tyiwara (also spelled Chi Wara, Ci Wara, Tji-Wara) antelope headdress associated with  agricultural ceremonies that honors a mythic culture hero credited with teaching humans how to farm and embodying the ideals of hard work and fertility. The name is often glossed as “laboring wild animal” or “wild animal of the earth,” evoking a half-human, half-animal being who mediates between people and the life-giving soil.

Carved as a highly abstract antelope whose long, ridged horns suggest both actual antelope and the vertical growth of millet, while the elongated body and downward thrusting muzzle recall burrowing animals whose digging is likened to hoeing the fields. Many headdresses, like this vertical male type feature a high openwork arch and radiating crest that can be read as the path of the sun over the fields or the dynamic force of vegetative growth, and the surfaces are covered with finely incised geometric patterns echoing Bamana scarification and textile motifs that signal cultural identity and initiation.

Within Bamana society, Tyiwara designates not only the sculptural form but also an association devoted to agricultural instruction, moral formation, and the public celebration of exemplary farmers. Historically, elders used the society’s activities to train young men in proper cultivation techniques, instilling discipline, cooperation, and respect for the land through song, proverb, and performance. The oral narratives recount that when humans became complacent and wasteful after achieving abundance, the Chi Wara spirit withdrew into the earth, prompting the creation of headdresses and related power objects so his presence could still be invoked and honored. During planting and harvest festivals, the carved heads are attached to fiber or wicker caps and worn with full raffia costumes; masked dancers—often appearing as male and female pairs to embody the complementary forces of sun and earth, man and woman—leap, bow, and mimic the actions of antelope and farmers, dramatically “cultivating” the ground before the community’s eyes. In this way, the Tyiwara functions simultaneously as a visual distillation of agricultural cosmology, a didactic instrument for transmitting technical and ethical knowledge, and a performative device that ritually renews the relationship between people, animals, and the generative power of the earth each year

Size 45 inches H. 

Provenance: B & H Schoff, Collection; Palm Beach FL &  Fifth Ave NYC .