Bulul Ifugao statue; island of Luzon, Philippine Islands; 20th century.

Bulul Ifugao statue; Luzon Island, Philippine Islands; 20th century.
Wood with honey-colored patina.
Provenance: private collection Cologne, Germany.
Measurements: 29,5 x 5 x 4 cm.
Hardwood figure with a beautiful glossy honey patina and a strange conical base. The bulul are ancestral carved figures that were placed in barns to protect the rice harvest. This male figure has been carved with his hands resting on slightly bent knees in a typical bulul posture. The strength and firmness of the posture reflect the ancestral power of this figure.
In this type of magical and religious objects of traditional Africa, nothing is left to chance and everything, down to the smallest detail, responds to a codified and initiatory language, whose reading is not available to all individuals of the cultural group for which they have been conceived, but often only to the most experienced initiates, the elders who have gone through the various stages of training and initiation. If there is a common thread that allows us to travel through Africa through its artistic creations, that thread is that of a concept as intangible and unreal as that of magic, conceived as the path to follow for the control of supernatural forces and for the understanding of Nature. As part of this attempt to understand the natural and control the supernatural, in Africa, as in practically all pre-industrial societies, instruments suitable for the management of certain energies appear, sometimes in the form of a mask, sometimes in the form of a sculpture, or a fetish, or a conglomerate of elements, sometimes just a stone placed horizontally or a line drawn on the ground.