Boli: The Mystical Power Objects of the Bamana

A remarkable exhibition of boliw—mystical power objects from the Bamana culture in Mali—was held at the Johann Levy primitive art gallery in Paris. The exhibition, which took five years to assemble, is now over, but a book documents it with stunning photographs and an essay by anthropologist Jean-Paul Colleyn. Boliw are composite objects made from sacrificial materials like animal blood, earth, and human bones, believed to be living beings that require feeding. They can be phallic, spherical, anthropomorphic, or shaped like bovids or hippopotamuses. One boli revealed a rare wooden statuette inside via CT scan. The Bamana culture along the Niger River has largely disappeared due to Muslim and colonial conquests. In 1931, the Dakar-Djibouti mission led by Marcel Griaule and including Michel Leiris collected about 3,500 objects for the Musée du Trocadéro, with a boli gaining attention from Surrealists. The book's preface is by Daniel Cordier, who describes boliw as radiating 'the black light of nothingness.'