York's Shona Gallery
The
Blog
Stories of the artists and peoples behind the work: the sculptors, tribes, and traditions that have shaped our collection.
The Kwele Tribe
The Kwele are a small Bantu-speaking people of the Sangha River region, straddling the border between the Republic of Congo and southeastern Gabon. Inhabitants of the dense equatorial rainforest, the...
The Bwa Tribe
The Bwa (also known as Bobo-Oulé) are a Gur-speaking people of central and western Burkina Faso and eastern Mali. They are renowned for producing some of the most dramatic and...
The Nafana Tribe
The Nafana are a small Gur-speaking people inhabiting the borderland between northwestern Ghana and northeastern Côte d'Ivoire. Despite their relatively small population, they are renowned across the...
The Lobi Tribe
The Lobi are a Voltaic-speaking people of southwestern Burkina Faso and northern Ghana, inhabitants of a semi-arid savannah frontier zone. Fiercely independent and historically resistant to both neig...
The Dan Tribe
The Dan are a Mande-speaking people of western Côte d'Ivoire and eastern Liberia, inhabiting the mountainous forest zone at the border of the two countries. Their mask tradition is one...
The Guro Tribe
The Guro are a Mande-speaking people of central Côte d'Ivoire, inhabiting a forested zone between the savannah cultures to the north and the coastal cultures to the south. Renowned for...
The Mossi Tribe
The Mossi are the largest ethnic group in Burkina Faso, organising themselves around a cluster of traditional kingdoms ruled by the Mogho Naba (Emperor of the World) in Ouagadougou. Their...
The Senufo Tribe
The Senufo are an agricultural people of the savannah zone of northern Côte d'Ivoire, southern Mali, and western Burkina Faso. Their culture is organised around the Poro, a male initiation...
The Kuba Tribe
The Kuba Kingdom, established in the 17th century in the Kasai region of present-day Democratic Republic of Congo, is one of the most celebrated art-producing civilisations in African history. At...
The Bamileke Tribe
The Bamileke are a cluster of related chiefdoms in the Western Highlands of Cameroon, a region of fertile volcanic plateaus known as the Grassfields. Each chiefdom is ruled by a...
The Fang Tribe
The Fang are a Bantu-speaking people of Gabon, southern Cameroon, and Equatorial Guinea, inhabitants of the great equatorial rainforest of Central Africa. They are known across the world for producin...
The Baule Tribe
The Baule are an Akan people of central Côte d'Ivoire, descended from a group that migrated west from the Ashanti kingdom of present-day Ghana in the mid-18th century. Their founder,...