At Home: In Tiebele

the Kassena who live in the West African village of Tiebele in Burkina Faso. They having been using mud, chalk and the tree pods since the 16th century to do this:

and this.

It’s the women who do all this bold and graphic fresco work – its considered a collective task and it is beautiful.

Different coloured clay mud and chalk make up a ‘paint’ with each colour being burnished with stones in separate areas to avoid them bleeding into each other. Finally the whole lot is  sealed with a natural varnish made by boiling pods of néré, the African locust bean tree.

The designs are geometric with ancestral symbols and figures of animals also used.

 

 It feels like every painting holds secrets that are centuries old, turning the whole village into an otherworldly place. It has kept itself tucked away off the  tourist track up until now but it seems times are changing and people will be able to come and admire this fabulous work of art.

In a remote corner of Burkino Faso West Africa lies a village unlike any other.

The clay walls of the low buildings that make up Tiebele, Burkina Faso, have been decorated with elaborate frescoes and geometric patterns, turning each of the circular structures into a striking work of art.

The isolated village is home to the royal court of the Kassena people, one of the oldest ethnic groups in Burkina Faso, who first settled the region in the 15th Century.

Tiebele’s ‘Cour Royale’ is a complex of earthen huts covering roughly 1.2 hectares and lying within circular, walled confines at the base of a hill overlooking the surrounding West African savannah.

The clay walls of the buildings are covered with patterns to differentiate them from the homes of the common people, with the chief’s heavily decorated residence the Tiebele equivalent of a royal palace.

But not all of the striking structures are lived in. Some of the most elaborately patterned buildings are actually mausoleums for the dead, who are laid to rest in the same compound.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2260910/African-village-building-canvas-house-palace-tomb-dead.html#ixzz4mc3Uf7H9
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Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2260910/African-village-building-canvas-house-palace-tomb-dead.html#ixzz4mc3Kpzko
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