New: the 2nd edition of Within Carved Lines: The Secret Meanings of African Masks is out now. Get the book → Some masking traditions sort their spirits by clan, or by animal, or by rank within a secret society. The Ibibio, over two million strong between the Niger Delta and the Cross River in Nigeria,…
Kuba, Songye, Lega, Hemba, Yombe. A guide to Congo masks, what each tradition was built to do, and how to tell them apart on sight.
New: the 2nd edition of Within Carved Lines: The Secret Meanings of African Masks is out now. Get the book → Most masks in this book represent a single, coherent idea, an ancestor, a spirit of the bush, a moral category of the dead. The Chamba mask, worn along the Benue River in Cameroon and…
New: the 2nd edition of Within Carved Lines: The Secret Meanings of African Masks is out now. Get the book → Many masking traditions documented in this book treat individual masks as interchangeable instances of a single type. The Vuvi of central Gabon organized theirs differently: each bwiti association mask apparently carried its own specific…
The Ngil mask of the Fang people was used by secret societies to guard reliquaries and enforce social order. Discover its haunting beauty and purpose.
Museums preserve African masks beautifully. They also cut them off from everything that made them alive. Here is what is lost behind the glass.