Window mode follows your eyes with your camera, in this browser only: no picture or position leaves your device.
Equestrian Figure
Dogon (Bandiagara region, Mali; Northern Africa and the Sahel)
16th/19th century
- Medium
- Wood and sacrificial material
- Classification
- Sculpture
- Dimensions
- 35.2 × 6.4 × 12.1 cm (13 7/8 × 2 1/2 × 4 3/4 in.)
- Culture
- Mali
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Arts of Africa
- Credit line
- Gift of Raymond Wielgus
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
In the 15th century, Dogon people fleeing hostilities in their homeland—caused by slave raiders’ incursions and the expansion of Islam—migrated to the rocky Bandiagara Escarpment in present-day Mali, where they encountered the Tellem people. While the Dogon eventually expelled the Tellem from the region, the two peoples appear to have influenced each other’s sculptural styles. This horse-and-rider features the pared-down style and encrusted surface associated with sculptures made by the Tellem.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
