Female Figure with Raised Arm 15th–17th century Tellem civilization (?) This female figure stands erect facing forward with her right hand close to her thigh and her left arm powerfully extending towards the sky. The carver of this intimately scaled figure privileged the body’s volumetric forms. With an economy of lines and planes, the sculptor stylized her physique, underscoring elongated features and rounded surfaces, with some sharper angular transitions particularly evident in profile. The legs, torso and arms are rendered as cylindrical volumes whose facets are modulated to suggest a knee

Female Figure with Raised Arm 15th–17th century Tellem civilization (?) This female figure stands erect facing forward with her right hand close to her thigh and her left arm powerfully extending towards the sky. The carver of this intimately scaled figure privileged the body’s volumetric forms. With an economy of lines and planes, the sculptor stylized her physique, underscoring elongated features and rounded surfaces, with some sharper angular transitions particularly evident in profile. The legs, torso and arms are rendered as cylindrical volumes whose facets are modulated to suggest a knee joint, protruding navel, pointed buttocks, and small breasts. Sunken into the base, the feet are presented as one solid mass that heightens the figure’s poise and steadiness. Starting from the pedestal, the succession of vertically oriented lines and forms creates a strong visual tension that culminates in the elongated arm and enlarged hand pointing upwards. In contrast with the sculpture’s forceful upright posture, the left palm is open, delicately arching back as if to graciously accept something from the sculpture relates to a corpus of works that scholars have attributed to the Tellem people, who lived in Central Mali between the eleventh and sixteenth century. Ever since Tellem objects were first collected over a century ago, archeologists, art historians, anthropologists and historians have employed different disciplinary lenses to interpret them. Given that most of these were originally found in funerary caves, scholars tend to agree that they were employed in burial functions. In the case of this specific object, the raised arm has often been read as an invocation for rain. Yet, as there is no continuum between the people who created these works and those who now inhabit the region and have offered important clues about the Tellem, further research is needed to understand this extraordinary body of first became aware of the existence of

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