Dogon Mother-and Child

The carving depicting a Mother-and-Child figure may be the focal point in an altar complex, intended to enhance the worshiper's potential for fertility (Perani & Smitt 1998: 50). This fine seated Mother-and-Child figure is acorrding to LeLoup, a Bombu-Toro hermaphrodite, more femal than a male. She is sitting on a stool with caryatids, carries a child and holding a tubular shaped object. She has prominent breasts and ornamented with engraved armlets. The object she is holding may refer to the calabash ladle, the "ceremonial spoon" that in Dogon's iconography signifies "a matriarch or woman of importance". But her chin ic decorated with a tab-beard or lip-plug, a male attribute; furthermore, she is sitting in a chiefly position on a stool carved in the image of the world: the top disc represetns the sky and the bottom one, the earth (H. Leloup 1994).