A rare and superb Bamana ntomo power figure

rising from wedge-shaped feet, the bent slender legs supporting the swayed torso, the notched rim at the neck representing the dancer's costume beneath the rounded head with large disc-like ears, the elongated arms bent to hold the Ntomo mask to the face; decorated overall with finely incised motifs; '328' in white pigment at the base; exceptionally fine encrusted dark brown surface.

Acquired before 1968

Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Milwaukee Public Museum, Selections from The William W. Brill Colllection of African Art, May 5 - August 31, 1969 (see bibliography for additional venues)

This extraordinary sculpture follows a rare iconographic tradition known as ntomo koun mogoni, which translates approximately as ‘small man with a ntomo mask’. Represented is a dancer appearing in ones or twos during the rituals of the ntomo initiation society of young uncircumcised Bamana male children. Every performer would wear a costume covering the entire body, usually including feet and hands. The performer’s face is hidden behind a wooden face mask of stylized human features and surmounted by a frontal crest of horns. Small figures like the present example were owned by the members of the ntomo. The thick and incrusted patina stems from offerings during numerous libation ceremonies. When not in use ntomo koun mogoni were either carried along or stored in the ntomo huts. The finely carved mask with incised jaw lines is typical for a particular region in the Bamana area and allows us to localize the origin of the present example in the region of Ségou.

The ntomo is the second initiation society through which each Bamana male would advance from a very early age. According to Cissé (in Dapper 2000: 149-150), the ntomo was placed under the patronage of Faro, god of water, the third divinity to appear in the Bamana creation myth. Combining the opposing forces of culture and nature, the divinity is described as the ‘pivot’ and the ‘head of all things’ (Dieterlen 1950).

Ntomo dancers represent primordial man and human perfection. They appear harmonious, androgynous and in possession of a multitude of human virtues. The Bamana believe the mouth to be a part of the anatomy intimately linked to the establishing of social interaction. By the same token, it can also be an origin of serious social disruption, especially through the spoken word. Thus the ntomo dancer is aphonic, uttering no sound while performing. In the Brill example, the mouth of the mask appears indeed closely shut, indicated only by two small horizontal slits.

Still more interesting from an artistic-conceptual point of view, however, is the representation of the human body. The costume of the ntomo dancer is a dress in which the body of the performer is entirely enclosed and out of which only the head emerges. The enclosure of the human body is striking as the guiding concept of this sculpture: skinny arms, any muscular shapes of which are eclipsed, are seemingly trapped inside the costume and just manage to hold the mask tenderly with the fingertips. The only visible part of the human body is the head, the face of which however is hidden behind the face mask. In depicting the collar of the costume as a ridge between shoulders and neck, the sculpture puts an emphasis onto the contrast of costume and human body – such that the human part is virtually, visibly evolving from the asexual, undifferentiated mass and morphing into the mask, silently and humbly fulfilling a newly gendered role.

Especially remarkable, then, are the incisions on the back of the figure, a common way of representing body scarification and found in many examples of Bamana sculpture. The interest lies here in the fact that the actual ntomo costume is always of a uniform color and without decoration, so the patterns on the back are not part of the costume but the artist’s virtuosic display of scarifications on the outside. In a kind of X-ray effect, this constitutes not only a visualization of the invisible but also a merger of skin and costume into a powerful metaphor for the sacredness of human nature.

The iconography of the Brill ntomo statuette is thus imbued with a set of essential Bamana cosmological beliefs. The closed mouth marks silence, secrecy, and emphasizes the gravitas in the action of initiation. Also, the complete covering of the performer with cloth alludes to the primordial androgynous state of humans. However, at the same time all this exposes an intriguing dialectic between particularity and abstraction, detail and concealment: the digits of the hands and feet are exhibited, along with scarification, while the central body is cloaked and its mouth is sealed.

Special thanks to Pascal James Imperato and Bernard Roque for invaluable insights derived from their fieldworks.