Wole Soyinka: Twin Sculptural Wonders
Nobel laureate Prof. Wole Soyinka shares his top 20 antiquities, collected over six decades.
About Wole Soyinka
Wole Soyinka was born in 1934 at Abeokuta, Nigeria. Author of numerous, plays, collections of poems and books of memoirs, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1986. These sculptures are part of his collection and he explains their provenance
Exploring the uniqueness of pairs
Pairs hold a significant cultural and symbolic importance in Nigerian culture, reflecting a deep-rooted tradition that extends across various aspects of life. Pairs place a strong emphasis on balance and harmony. Pairs also have spiritual significance in traditional belief systems
Wole Soyinka Antequities (2020) by Wole SoyinkaBook Buzz Foundation
The Guardians
These I acquired from (the) Ikot Epene area. I was traveling through Akwa-Ibom, got to Ekpene and saw, first, one. Then after I got that one, I asked the dealer, when I came back, if he could find me another one because I wanted them as house guards, so to speak, on either side.
They represent life force. They are actually cultic figures. And they are meant to depict, to contain, in themselves, the force of existence of society. Very cultic. One of them looks like the symbol of authority because it has this kind of fan. And the other one, those objects,
are the cultic secrets—they are symbols of a tight social organisation. They are supposed to be guardians also of the community. That cult is actually the guardian cult of the entire community.
IbejiBook Buzz Foundation
The Ibeji
The most ubiquitous form of sculpture you will see in Yoruba land is the Ibeji because, you know, unlike certain other cultures where the ancient culture where twins were considered evil, the Yorubas defy twins, it's a cultural celebration.
The tradition is to sculpt a pair. The twin culture is very similar to the Abiku because when you have a twin, the sculpture is made, if one of the pair of twins dies which happens very often, then representation is kept there.
Wole Soyinka Antequities (2020) by Wole SoyinkaBook Buzz Foundation
It is symbolically fed, carried around, so there’s a kind of interweaving of the abiku theme and the twin theme. This commonest copy you'll find most prolific in Yoruba land. People do it on spec, waiting in case twins are born. They just do it anyway.
