Ibeji

Nobel Laureate Professor Wole Soyinka has collected Nigerian antiquities for over six decades. This pair of sculptures is part of the collection, and here he explains it's provenance:

"Yes, the most ubiquitous form of sculpture you will see in Yorubaland is the Ibeji.

You know, unlike certain other cultures like the ancient Igbo culture where twins were considered evil, the Yoruba deify twins. It's a cause for celebration.

The tradition is to sculpt a pair. The twin culture is very similar to the Abiku, because when you have a twin and these sculptures are made, if one of a pair of twins dies, which happen very often, then the representation is kept there, is symbolically fed, carried around.

There's a kind of interweaving of the Abiku theme and the twin theme.

The commonest sculptures you'll find, most prolific Yoruba land, people do it on spec, waiting, in case twins are born, and we just do it anyway."