This practice acknowledges that each person has a spiritual husband (blolo bian) or spiritual wife (blolo bla) in the spirit world (blolo), an individual that the human being met before being born into the mortal world.

Baulé believe a person is married to both an earthly and a spirit spouse. This sculpture honored its owner’s spirit partner to bring peace, luck, and money. Scarifications on her face and belly individualized and enhanced her idealized beauty.

Blolo bian figure (spirit husband) Blolo Bla = spirit wife Among the Baule peoples of Côte d'Ivoire, human experience evolves out of and remains inextricably linked to the ancestral spirit world, or blolo (roughly, "the village of truth"), which controls and determines the fate of the living.

To address the situation, a male or female figure of the type shown here will be commissioned to serve as the focal point for offerings to the spirit partner. The anatomy and decorations of this male example epitomize the Baule ideal of human beauty.

Standing Male Figure (blolo bian) Baule people, Côte d'Ivoire, African 20th century

The work proposed for acquisition is a blolo bla figure, as it represents a female. These spirit spouses remain in their owner’s bedroom and are washed, clothed, and fed with offerings by the owner.

This carving of the Baule people of the Ivory Coast is of a type sometimes referred to as an 'ancestor figure'. In fact, it represents a male spirit lover, blolo bian who would be partnered by a female spirit lover, blolo bla. They are frustrated partners left behind in the world of the spirits when people are born into this world.

The blolo bla is the beautiful and sexual spirit wife, who is wedded to a Baule man before his birth in the spirit world (blolo) and who lives with him for his earthly lifetime. Her role is to bring good forture to him and his family, but also to act as a substitute …

This carved representation of a spirit wife, or blolo bla, furnishes a lovely example of the “restrained naturalism” (Vogel 2011) for which Baule sculpture is so highly esteemed.

Whether carved to represent one's otherworld mate--the "otherworld woman" (blolo bla) of a man, or the "otherworld man" (blolo bian) of a woman--or a bush-spirit familiar, the sculpted Baule figure is a stand-in interlocutor for an unseen spirit.