250966 - African couple Yoruba carving of a male & female sculpture - Nigeria

Couple African Yoruba bone carving of a male & female sculpture from the Osogbo region in Nigeria. 

size; 19 cm and 17 cm high.

A Yoruba bone pair, Nigeria, Osogbo region.

This sculpted pair, carved from bone, reflects the Yoruba people's deep reverence for ancestors, duality, and spiritual balance. Among the Yoruba of southwestern Nigeria, coupled figures often symbolize harmony between male and female energies, fertility, and continuity of lineage. Although more commonly made of wood, bone figures are rarer and can indicate a special ritual or commemorative function. These figures can also serve as memorials or representations of ancestral spirits, reflecting the Yoruba belief in the ongoing relationship between the living and the deceased. Their stylized features radiate peace, strength, and the enduring presence of family and tradition.

Yoruba bone carvings occupy a subtle yet significant position within the wider landscape of Yoruba material culture. Unlike the more prominent wood sculptures or brass castings for which the Yoruba are widely known, bone as a medium appears in more intimate, esoteric, and often ritual contexts. These objects, typically small and carefully worked, reveal a nuanced relationship between form, function, and cosmology.

Many of the extant examples of Yoruba bone carving are linked to traditional healing practices or the paraphernalia of Ifá divination. Healers and diviners might carry small carved bones inscribed with symbols or anthropomorphic forms, charged with protective or communicative power. These objects were not made for public display but were instead tools of knowledge and intercession, handled only by those with specific ritual training. The carvings may depict stylized human figures, animals, or motifs associated with particular orisha, especially those governing thresholds, communication, or protection such as Èṣù and Ogun.

As a medium, bone also speaks to the Yoruba understanding of transformation and metaphysical presence. Its durability and whiteness evoke both permanence and the ancestral, while its origin in the animal body marks it as a conduit between material and immaterial realms. In this sense, the bone carving operates not merely as an artistic artifact but as a symbolic node within a broader system of meaning and ritual performance.

Despite their limited visibility in the canon of Yoruba art history, bone carvings demand attention for the way they condense spiritual, aesthetic, and epistemological values into compact, often enigmatic forms. Their marginal status in collections reflects more on curatorial and colonial hierarchies of value than on the objects themselves. For Yoruba practitioners, such objects remained potent, active, and meaningful—speaking across worlds even in their silence.