Walking outside the limits of a Senufo town, one might have encountered this hornbill sculpture blocking a path. The figure was a warning that the men’s society was meeting nearby. The hornbill is considered the foremost bird of the region, and is therefore a symbol of wisdom. The bird’s phallic beak and swelling stomach refer to human fertility and the continuation of society. The red and white palette—in stripes on the neck and beak, and in geometric passages on one wing and curving lines on the other—also suggests the dual role of men and women in creating life.




In some Senufo communities, the Poro (men’s society) elders instruct boys and young men on spirituality, behavior, ethics, and leadership, so that they may gain the wisdom needed to become productive men. After full initiation into the society, often completed by the age of 30, men are considered ready to lead their communities. The triangular holes decorating the bird’s wings are functional places to tie ropes: a new initiate might be selected to carry this heavy sculpture on his head, holding the ropes to balance it, when the group returns to the village or during a member’s funeral, showing off the young man’s physical strength.




Beginning in 1893, the Senufo region of Côte d’Ivoire was under French rule. This period of colonialism caused great political and social upheaval, and waves of religious conversion as communities sought new ways to cope with the heavy taxes and forced labor of the colonial regime. Massa, a religion and independence movement founded by M’Peni Dembele in Mali in 1946, reached upper Côte d’Ivoire by the 1950s. Conversion to Massa, or alternatively to Catholicism, made sculptures like this one increasingly obsolete. Although bird figures have become a readily identifiable emblem of Senufo culture in the modern tourism industry, by the middle of the twentieth century few communities had the resources or desire to commission a master artist to create such a large-scale sculpture for the men’s society.

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