This whimsical, unique object; not an iconic example of African art, but one that is both inventive and artistic. It is both male and female, but unlike other hermaphrodite objects this one has a vagina, a male body and an Adam's apple; unlike tribal objects generally (where the head is disproportionably larger than the body), here (as the figure is dancing wildly) the head is disproportionably smaller. The dancer is experiencing life through the motion of dance, not through its head. The arms are disproportionate to one another as well, as to the body, as the object depicts the dancer's arm as it moves in a fraction of a second and not, as usual, in a frozen instant of time.

Provenance:
Sotheby's Paris June 8, 2007: lot 166.
Galerie Elphenor/Tatiana Diakonoff, Geneva, 1970