Bambara gazelle

Carved Biche-Robert Gazelle (Bamako, Mali)

Can it be said that an object made with no other purpose than to be sold is false (or fake, as violet scholars now call it)? We suppose so, if what you want is to pass it off as a classic work by Leonardo or Giacometti; but if you are not ashamed to admit and tell that what you have in your hands is an object gracefully carved by an anonymous craftsman with the sole intention of selling it to a lieutenant of the French Foreign Legion returning to Lyon, then everything changes and the object It becomes true with a story that deserves to be told.

That is what probably happened with this gazelle carved in Mali, as graceful as it was far from the traditional canons of Bambara, Dogon or Senufo imagery. Nothing to do with that Chiwara antelope that fertilizes the millet or onion fields, nor with the terracotta sheep modeled a thousand years ago by the hands of a woman in a suburb of Djenné: it is just a female Biche-Robert gazelle watering in a puddle on the banks of the Tilemsí or the Ezgueret, the same species that the Lebel rifles managed to extinguish in a few years. All the grace of Mali put at the service of the colonizing powers... Because your children must eat every day.

Height: 30cm; Length: 19cm; Width: 8cm; Weight: 1.37 Kg