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36. Shrine Figures: Couple (Zuzu or Mi Iri Ni)
Guro, Côte d'Ivoire
Wood, pigment, beads; male: H. 71.1 cm (28 in.); female: H. 63.5 cm (25 in.)
20th century
Private collection

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36. Shrine Figures: Couple
(Zuzu or Mi Iri Ni)

he relative rarity of Guro figurative sculpture, compared to the output of artists in neighboring Baule areas, suggests that members of Guro communities commissioned such works rather infrequently. They appear to have been acquired on the advice of foreign specialists, Wan and Mwa diviners, who prescribed the figures for their Guro clients.1 Conceived of as protective spirits (zuzu), these "small wooden people" (mi iri ni) were never intended to portray the features of any specific individual.

Kept in personal domestic shrines dedicated to the zuzu, mi iri ni safeguarded their owners, sometimes by appearing to them in dreams to prescribe solutions and cures to difficult problems. As a gesture of appreciation, libations were placed in a small bowl to "feed" them. Guro patrons may have obtained mi iri ni from local sculptors or from Mwa workshops. Most Guro figurative works depict female subjects; a male and female couple such as this is extremely rare.

There is a marked contrast between the depiction of the male figure and that of the female figure, although they are formally very similar and undoubtedly carved by the same hand. Both stand in a stiff attitude with hands held out at the sides and knees slightly bent, their weight evenly balanced on both feet. Their faces share the same meditative gaze, and their heads are each crowned by elaborate and slightly asymmetrical coiffures. However, she is shorter, and her torso is slightly broader and physically more dominant; also, a strand of beads adorns his neck, and a series of raised decorative patterns on her stomach and lower back distinguish her body from the smooth, uninterrupted surface of her companion's body.

1. Eberhard Fischer and Lorenz Homberger, Die Kunst der Guro: Elfenbeinküste, exh. cat. (Zurich: Museum Rietberg, 1985), pp. 227–30.