New: the 2nd edition of Within Carved Lines: The Secret Meanings of African Masks is out now. Get the book → “African mask” is not one tradition. It is thousands of them, spread across fifty four countries, and most of those countries never carved a ceremonial wooden mask in their entire history. I want to…
New: the 2nd edition of Within Carved Lines: The Secret Meanings of African Masks is out now. Get the book → Many masks in this book exist to be seen, their entire function bound up in public display, in the crowd’s reaction, in being looked at. The Bemba of Zambia and the southeastern Democratic Republic…
New: the 2nd edition of Within Carved Lines: The Secret Meanings of African Masks is out now. Get the book → Many peoples documented in this book build their art around a single recurring symbol. The Tabwa, scattered along Lake Tanganyika between the southeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo and northeastern Zambia, built theirs around…
New: the 2nd edition of Within Carved Lines: The Secret Meanings of African Masks is out now. Get the book → Most masking traditions documented in this book carry at least a working consensus on what their masks were for, even when the deeper symbolism stays contested. The Boa of the northern Democratic Republic of…
Most masks in this book appear repeatedly, at funerals, at harvests, at initiations that recur every generation. The Temne of Sierra Leone built one that does the opposite: a mask representing the guardian spirit of a ruling dynasty, seen in public only once, during the enthronement of a new chief, after which it disappears and…