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 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 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 Benin Kingdom
The Kingdom of Benin, centred on Benin City in present-day Nigeria, was one of the most sophisticated polities in pre-colonial Africa. At its height from the 13th to the 17th...
The Dogon Tribe
The Dogon are an ancient people of the Bandiagara Escarpment in Mali, a 500-kilometre sandstone cliff rising dramatically above the plains of the Niger bend. They settled here, in cliff-face...