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Guro Gu Mask

TITLE: Guro Gu Mask
TYPE: face mask
GENERAL REGION: Africa
COUNTRY: Côte d’Ivoire
ETHNICITY: Guro
DESCRIPTION: Gu Mask
CATALOG ID: AFCI005
MAKER: Unknown
CEREMONY: Celebration; Entertainment; Funeral
AGE: ca. 2010
MAIN MATERIAL: wood
OTHER MATERIALS: oil-based paint

The Guro gu mask represents a beautiful young woman. It forms part of the trio of sacred masks with the zamble and zaouli. In the past, gu was the wife of zamble, but in modern rituals she is represented as the wife of zaouli, and therefore zamble‘s mother. All three masks are cult objects to which sacrifices are periodically made to bring prosperity to the family that owns them and to drive away evil spirits.  They are danced for celebrations and as entertainment, and also at funerals and to honor ancestors. The gu represents a divinity, but her dance careens about, stamping her feet incessantly. She wears bells on her ankles to accentuate her foot movements and dances to the music of a few flutes.

This mask was made for the tourist trade, but it displays the exceptional skill and artistry typical of guro master carvers. The elaborate hair style is an important element of the gu‘s appeal.

For more on Guro masking traditions, see Eberhard Fischer, Guro (Prestel, 2008) or Anne-Marie Bouttiaux, Guro (5 Continents Editions, 2016).

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Abelam Bapa Tagwa

TITLE: Abelam Bapa Tagwa
TYPE: helmet mask
GENERAL REGION: Oceania
COUNTRY: Papua New Guinea
SUBREGION: East Sepik River, Maprik Area, Wosera
ETHNICITY: Melanesian (Abelam)
DESCRIPTION: Bapa Tagwa helmet mask
CATALOG ID: OCPG003
MAKER: Unknown
CEREMONY: Tambaran Society
FUNCTION: Adult Initiation; Agriculture; Purification; Secret Society; Spirit Invocation
AGE: ca. 1940s
MAIN MATERIAL: woven plant fiber
OTHER MATERIALS: natural pigments

The Abelam people of the Sepik River area of Papua New Guinea use several types of masks, many of them intricately woven of plant fiber. The bapa tagwa shown here is a helmet mask, with small eye holes to create a fierce, pig-like appearance. The masks are worn with shaggy leaf costumes by members of the Tambaran Secret Society during adult initiation (circumcision) rituals for boys to invoke nature spirits. The masqueraders guard the ceremony with bamboo or bone weapons to clear away evil spirits and deter women and children from witnessing the secret ritual. Before the ceremony, the bapa tagwa is painted bright orange. Such masks may also be used in yam harvests.

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Commedia dell’Arte Brighella

TITLE: Commedia dell’Arte Brighella
TYPE: face mask
GENERAL REGION: Europe
COUNTRY: Italy
ETHNICITY: Italian
DESCRIPTION: Brighella mask
CATALOG ID: EUIT006
MAKER: Denis “Den” Durand (Versailles, France, 1960- )
CEREMONY: Commedia dell’Arte; Carnival
AGE: 1995
MAIN MATERIAL: leather
OTHER MATERIALS: pigment; elastic strap

The Commedia dell’Arte was a form of public entertainment that succeeded the classical Roman theater in Italy.  Like classical theater, Commedia performers wore leather masks to represent stock characters and often performed in amphitheaters to large audiences.  However, the Commedia differed in having only a very basic plot sketch, with most of the lines invented extemporaneously by the actors.  The Commedia‘s ability to stay topical and its frequent resort to vulgar humor, combined with the considerable talent of Italian troupes that traveled throughout Europe, made this form of theater extremely popular throughout the early 17th to late 19th centuries. Masked actors had to compensate for their inability to convey facial emotion through posture, gesture, and vocal nuance.

Brighella was long among the most popular stock characters of the Commedia. Brighella was generally portrayed as an amoral opportunist. He could be a thief, a hustler, a jack-of-all-trades, and a layabout.  His mask was always represented with a cruel hooked nose or a slightly piggish rounded nose, and usually a beard and mustache.

This specific Brighella comes from a skilled French maker trained at the prestigious École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Appliqués et des Metiers d’Art in Paris.

To learn more about Commedia dell’Arte, see Pierre Louis Duchartre, The Italian Comedy (Dover Pubs., 1966).

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Yoruba Gelede Puppet Mask

TITLE: Yoruba Gelede Puppet Mask
TYPE: crest mask
GENERAL REGION: Africa
COUNTRY: Benin
ETHNICITY: Yoruba
DESCRIPTION: Gelede mask with a mounted puppet
CATALOG ID: AFBN001
MAKER: Unknown
CEREMONY: Gelede Society
AGE: ca. 1990s-2000s
MAIN MATERIAL: wood
OTHER MATERIALS: dyed cotton cloth; string; oil-based paint

The highly populous Yoruba people inhabit much of Nigeria and parts of Benin. The Gelede Society originates in cultural myths about Yemoja, the mother of all living things, who could not conceive children until she learned a dance with a wooden image on her head. The Gelede is named after Yemoja’s chubby daughter, and the dance therefore has a close connection with fertility rites. Nonetheless, the Gelede ceremony performs diverse functions in Yoruba society, including to pray for rain, purify the village of disease, to enlist spiritual help in wartime, and to honor the dead.

This mask is an example of a work made for sale to the tourist market.  It has been lightly but artificially aged to appear older. Nonetheless, the care and artistry of the mask make it suitable for ceremonial use. The puppet on the head has strings that pass through the wooden plank on which it sits, allowing the wearer to move his arms about by pulling the strings.  Most Gelede masks are static, but animated masks sometimes make an appearance, especially in the Efe dance, which satirizes and ridicules immoral behavior.

For more on the Gelede ceremony, see Babatunde Lawal’s incomparable monograph, The Gelede Spectacle (University of Washington Press, 1996).

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Baining Asaraigi Mask

TITLE: Baining Asaraigi Mask
TYPE: helmet mask
GENERAL REGION: Oceania
COUNTRY: Papua New Guinea
SUBREGION: East New Britain Islands
ETHNICITY: Melanesian (Baining)
DESCRIPTION: Uramot Asaraigi Mask
CATALOG ID: OCPG006
MAKER: Unknown
CEREMONY: Day Dance
FUNCTION: Adult Initiation; Agriculture; Celebration; Funeral; Spirit Invocation
AGE: ca. 1960s-1970s
MAIN MATERIAL: tapa cloth
OTHER MATERIALS: bamboo, vines; pigment from chewed roots and coconut husk ash

The Baining people live in eastern New Britain Island area known as the Gazelle Peninsula, in a mountainous tropical forest.  They are a Melanesian people closely akin to other groups in Papua New Guinea.  They traditionally live in small villages with dispersed political authority.  The Baining use their masks to unify the otherwise dispersed villagers, usually in celebrations of major events such as yam harvest, births, deaths, or adult initiation for both boys and girls.  Some dances are for the day time, mostly those centered around female tasks such as sowing, harvesting, and births.  Night dances center around male activities such as hunting.

The masks are mostly made of mulberry or breadfruit tree bark mashed and pounded into a cloth (“tapa cloth”) over bamboo frames.  Unlike most masking cultures, they make these masks specifically to be burned or discarded after the ceremony.  This specific mask, the asairigi, is used in day dances by the Uramot group of Baining people.  The black triangles represent tears of the spirit represented by the mask.  Day dance masks are made cooperatively by both men and women.

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Haida Dogfish

TITLE: Haida Dogfish
TYPE: face mask
GENERAL REGION: North America
COUNTRY: Canada
SUBREGION: British Columbia
ETHNICITY: Haida
DESCRIPTION: Dogfish Mask
CATALOG ID: NACA003
MAKER: Dalbert A. Weir (Masset, Queen Charlotte Islands, 1941- )
CEREMONY: Potlatch
AGE: 2007
MAIN MATERIAL: cedar wood
OTHER MATERIALS: paint

A potlatch is a culturally important ceremony among the coastal indigenous Americans of British Columbia, held on many different occasions.  It could be held to celebrate a family member’s change in social status, such as a marriage, birth, death, or initiation into adulthood.  It could also be held to restore a person’s prestige after a loss in dignity, such as falling out of a canoe or making a hunting error.  The ceremony could last for one day or as long as three weeks, depending on the occasion and the wealth of the giver.

A potlatch typically included three important components: a feast, entertainment, and gift giving to the guests.  The entertainment consisted of singing and masked dancing.  The more lavish the gifts, feast, and entertainment, the greater the prestige gained by the giver.  Because masks and costumes were expensive and time-consuming to make, larger and more elaborate masks raised the prestige of the potlatch giver.  The masks themselves represented totemic animals such as the killer whale, raven, beaver, or shark, or else mythical figures and beasts, such as the Komokwa, Dzunukwa or Bukwus. This mask represents the dogfish, a small relative of the shark that is an important totem for the Haida people.  The Haida believe that they had a female ancestor who could transform herself into a dogfish to experience the undersea world.

For more on masks of the coastal peoples of western Canada, see Peter MacNair, Robert Joseph & Bruce Grenville, Down from the Shimmering Sky: Masks of the Northwest Coast (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre Ltd., 1998) and Edward Malin, A World of Faces: Masks of the Northwest Coast Indians (Portland: Timber Press, 1978).

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Busójárás Mask

TITLE: Busójárás Mask
TYPE: face mask
GENERAL REGION: Europe
COUNTRY: Hungary
SUBREGION: Mohács
ETHNICITY: Šokci
DESCRIPTION: Large Busó mask
CATALOG ID: EUHU001
MAKER: Unknown
CEREMONY: Busójárás (Farsang)
AGE: 1960s-1970s
MAIN MATERIAL: wood
OTHER MATERIALS: ram horns; plant fiber; string; pigment

Busójárás is the Hungarian festival held annually in Mohács to celebrate the end of winter. Although the event has a pre-Christian origin as a ritual to frighten away the winter, it has been adapted to coincide with Christian ideology and timed to end with Carnival (Farsang). Masqueraders parade in devil masks of the kind shown here, wearing goat-skin suits and carrying staves or playing traditional folk music.

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Rey Moro Mask

TITLE: Rey Moro Mask
TYPE: face mask
GENERAL REGION: Latin America
COUNTRY: Ecuador
SUBREGION: Latacunga
ETHNICITY: Mestizo
DESCRIPTION: Rey Moro (King Moor) Mask
CATALOG ID: LAEC001
MAKER: Unknown
CEREMONY: Fiesta de la Mama Negra
AGE: 1920s-1930s
MAIN MATERIAL: wood
OTHER MATERIALS: pigment

The Fiesta de la Mama Negra (Festival of the Black Mama) is a celebration held in September and again in early November in Latacunga, Ecuador. The event originates in pre-colonial indigenous practices and was adapted to honor the Virgin of Mercy (Virgen de la Merced) after Catholic conversion, in thanks for her supposed  intervention to protect the population from eruptions from the nearby Cotopaxi volcano.  The festival has become one of the most important in Latacunga, and includes a parade (comparsa) featuring the Mama Negra prominently as an African version of Mary, mother of Jesus.

Other important masks include animals, the Rey Moro (King Moor, showing the influence of the Conquistadors), angels, clowns (payasos abanderados), shamans (huacos), and miscellaneous other characters.  This mask, dating back to the early twentieth century, most probably represents the Rey Moro, judging by the Islamic star on his forehead.

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Yangju Beyolsandae Nojang Mask

TITLE: Yangju Byeolsandae Nojang Mask
TYPE: face mask
GENERAL REGION: Asia
COUNTRY: Korea
SUBREGION: Yangju, Gyeonggi Province
ETHNICITY: Korean
DESCRIPTION: Nojang (Buddhist Monk) Mask
CATALOG ID: ASKR006
MAKER: Unknown
CEREMONY: Byeolsandae Drama
FUNCTION: celebration; entertainment
AGE: 1980s
MAIN MATERIAL: wood
OTHER MATERIALS: cotton hood; paper; paint

Sandae noli is the type of masked drama in Gyeonggi Province and the Seoul region.  The drama is accompanied by music played on a small samhyeon yukgak ensemble, consisting of three aerophones, one chordophone, and two membranophones. The full performance involves dozens of characters in different masks.

This mask represents an old, corrupt Buddhist monk, or nojang, who has a fondness for liquor and women. The black color of the mask is meant to convey the monk’s advanced age.

For more on Korean masquerade, see Jeon Kyung-wook, Korean Mask Dance Dramas: Their History and Structural Principles (Gyeonggi-do, Rep. of Korea: Youlhwadang Pub. 2005).

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Maringuilla Mask

TITLE: Maringuilla Mask
TYPE: face mask
GENERAL REGION: Latin America
COUNTRY: Mexico
SUBREGION: Michoacán
ETHNICITY: Purépecha
DESCRIPTION: Maringuilla (Little Mary) Mask
CATALOG ID: LAMX069
MAKER: Manuel Horta Ramos (Tocuaro)
CEREMONY: Pastorela
AGE: 2015
MAIN MATERIAL: wood
OTHER MATERIALS: plaster; maque; plastic eyelashes; metal and enamel earrings

The Pastorela is the ceremonial dance drama of Michoacán state in Mexico. Pastorelas, performed in February during the Shrovetide season, are primarily religious in significance. The main characters of the Dance of the Shepherds are the Devil, the Archangel Michael, shepherds, and a hermit (who paradoxically represents the ancestors of the performers).  The drama revolves around the attempts of Lucifer and his demon minions to steal the baby Jesus.  Other dramas performed on the occasion include the Dance of the Negritos (dance of the little blacks), relating to the importation of African slaves into Mexico by the Spaniards, and which includes an army of elegantly dressed “little Maries” (Maringuillas), like the one represented by this mask, and feos, or ugly clowns.

This mask was carved by Manuel Horta, one of a famous extended family of carvers from the town of Tocuaro, in 2015.

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