 Asante (Ashanti) or Akan/Sefwi people, Ghana Female Fertility Figure (akua’ba), late 19th – early 20th century carved wood, beads, string Purchase, 1975 (4294.1) Akuaba figures are carried against their backs by Akan women who hope to conceive
a child. The name comes from the Akan legend of a woman named Akua who was
barren but desired to bear children. She consulted a priest, who instructed her to
commission a small carving of a wooden child and carry the surrogate on her back as
if it were real. Akua cared for the figure as she would a living baby, even giving it gifts
of beads and other trinkets. She was laughed at and teased by fellow villagers, who
began to call the wooden figure Akuaba, or "Akua's child." Eventually Akua conceived
and gave birth to a beautiful baby girl; thereafter, the same practice was adopted by
women who wanted to get pregnant. The flat, disk-like head is an exaggerated depiction of the Akan convention of ideal
beauty—high, oval, slightly flattened forehead, achieved in actuality by gentle shaping
of an infant's soft cranial bones. This Akuaba is rare among other extant examples in
that the body is not abstracted and flat but rendered with naturalistic body, arms and
legs. Akuaba also protect against deformity or even ugliness in a child. During pregnancy,
Akan women are not supposed to gaze upon anything unattractive, lest it influence the
features of her own child. Families also keep Akuaba as memorials to a child or
children. The figures become family heirlooms, appreciated not for their spiritual
associations, but because they are images that call to mind a lost loved one. |