Carved Wood Ancestral Tree of Life Sculpture

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Figures like these don't stand alone, they hold each other up, literally. Carved from a single length of wood, this … Read more Figures like these don't stand alone, they hold each other up, literally. Carved from a single length of wood, this vertical composition stacks human figures shoulder to shoulder and knee to shoulder, arms interlocking down the full height of the piece, a composition rooted in the Ujamaa, or Tree of Life, carving tradition of the Makonde people of Tanzania and Mozambique, where the design reads as extended family, generation supporting generation, quite literally holding one another up. Run a hand along the carving and you can feel where the tool left its mark, rounded shoulders, cupped hands, faces simplified just enough to read as expression rather than portrait.
At just under three feet tall on its custom iron stand, it doesn't need a pedestal or a corner of its own to work, a console table, a bookshelf end, the foot of a staircase where the light catches its silhouette from across a room. Pieces built around a single idea, repeated and varied down the length of the wood, are the ones that photograph as sculpture rather than souvenir. This is one of them.

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