From my book, Within Carved Lines We have the hardware, not the software People ask whether I am giving our secrets away. Think of it this way. Imagine an enemy seized your most powerful weapons and put them in a museum, but you still held the launch codes. Europe holds thousands of our masks. What…
New: the 2nd edition of Within Carved Lines: The Secret Meanings of African Masks is out now. Get the book → Most funerary objects documented in this book are built to last, kept in a shrine or passed down as a lineage’s most protected possession. The Ntomba, 5,000 people living on the banks of the…
The Egungun represents the collective ancestors made visible among the living.
African masks sell for sums that could change the villages they came from. The economics of masks and the ethics of masks turn out to be the same question.
The Wabele is a Senufo zoomorphic helmet mask related to the firespitter type, and its purpose is to combat harmful forces.