The Akie or Attié, like other ethnic groups in Africa, often depict motherhood in art in the form of large-breasted nursing women, whether in carved wood, lost-wax bronze, ivory, stone or terracotta.

The Akie (Akye, Atie, Attié, Atche or Atshe) are an Akan tribe, similar to the Anyi and Baul, comprising some 50,000 individuals, of Christian religion, engaged in agriculture and fishing and living in southern Côte d'Ivoire.

The theme of motherhood is universal and recurrent in art throughout black Africa. African maternity statues do not usually express the emotional bonds between mother and child, as they symbolise the fertility of women and the earth, belong to the domain of the sacred and are often displayed on an altar. The mothers are in a hieratic position, very well sculpted, while the child, often a small adult, is barely sketched, especially the body, and there are almost never any glances between mother and child.

In many African ethnicities, the left side of the body is associated with the sacred: in most black African maternity wards, the child is positioned to the left of the mother or suckling from the left breast.