(You can take this up to 400% to see the detail really well.

Also, she’s in the kitchen because it was the only place I could get enough light to beat the flash!)

I don’t know the date of this bronze, though I guess it’s probably the second half of the 19th century. It was once in a museum (again!) where the label referred to the women warriors of King Gezu (Gezo) of Dahomey, West Africa. In fact, this corps of warrior ‘amazons’ was in existence for much longer than his reign (He reigned 1818-1858).  The link below is to a PDF file on the subject - which includes some curious anthropological material on the sexual practices of ancient Dahomey, amongst other things.

http://people.uncw.edu/deagona/amaz/dahomey_3.pdf

These women warriors were NOT decorative! They were considered at least the equal of the male warriors of the time, it seems. I gave her as a present to my partner Hacina, partly because she seems to represent a certain form of female self-assertion, though the context could hardly have been more different than that of contemporary western society. Despite her trade, I feel that she is not in any way a dark presence here. Perhaps she is a reminder that the concept of the ‘weaker sex’ is a male construct of a particular time and place.