The workshop of Boukary Ouédraogo sits at the end of a laterite path in Yatenga province, where the Sahel dust turns everything the colour of burnt sienna. I arrived in January during harmattan season, when the dry wind carries red powder through every doorway. Boukary had already selected the néré tree — a hardwood that grows abundantly in the Sudanian zone — and the trunk lay across two trestles, split lengthwise but otherwise untouched.
The Geometry of Clan Memory
Each Mossi clan maintains its own vocabulary of geometric marks. The Ouédraogo lineage uses a repeating X-cross pattern — what Boukary called "the meeting of roads" — painted in kaolin white against charcoal black. The adjacent Zabré clan favours a zigzag that traces the path of water during rainy season. These are not decorative choices. They are territorial declarations, readable by any elder who attended the last funeral dance.
The mask does not represent the ancestor. The mask becomes the ancestor. When the dancer moves, the plank sways three metres above the earth, and the dead walk among us again. — Boukary Ouédraogo, master carver, Yatenga