African Masks

As custodians of an important section of Africa’s past and advocates for the value of the past in the present/future, archaeologists working in universities, museums and heritage agencies or as commercial consultants are in positions of high responsibility. Most often neither the scale of the work involved, nor its significance, are matched adequately by the number of people employed or the level of remuneration. Archaeologists struggle under recurrently difficult working conditions and yet manage to deliver astonishing levels of service across Africa. This paper considers best practice in African archaeology and then asks whether this is being achieved in all sectors of the archaeological discipline. It considers the set of ethical values that should underpin good practice in African archaeology and the actions that need to be taken to enact these values more widely.

This paper examines the rock art of the nyau secret society of eastern Zambia and central Malaŵi. The art dates principally from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It has been known to researchers since the 1970s but has given up few of its secrets. I examine the questions of why the art was made and why the tradition ceased. Key to answering these is the realization that the art belonged to a specific historical and geographic context: the era and area where nyau was forced to become an underground movement because of its suppression by Ngoni invaders, missions, and the later colonial government. The art provides us with detailed insights into the way nyau has served in the process of overcoming and manipulating the traumatic social changes faced by Cheŵa society in the last few centuries. Cet article examine l'art rupestre de la société secrète de nyau au est du Zambia et Malaŵi centrale. L'art date principalement aux dix-neuvième et bas vingtième siècles. Recherchers ont su l'art depuis les années soixante-dix, mais ils ont appris peu de ses secrets. J'examine les questions de pourquoi l'artétait fabriquer et pourquoi la tradition a cessé. Pour résoudre ces questions c'est importantà réaliser que l'artétaità sa place dans un milieu spécifique d'histoire et géographie: au temps et place où nyauétait forcerà devenir un mouvement clandestinà cause de sa répression par les envahisseurs Ngoni, les missions et, plus tard, le gouvernement colonial. L'art nous donne les aperçus détaillé sur comment nyau a servi dans le procèsà surmonter et manipuler les changements traumatiques que la société Cheŵa a bravé dans les siècles récents.

In his December 2018 letter, MSU Museum Director Mark Auslander refects on the Museum’s collections as he considers the curious symbolism of masks used during the holiday season, from Halloween masks, to the masked fgure of Santa Claus, to New Year’s masquerades. Speculatively, Auslander proposes an anthropological interpretation of the meaning of these masks, in light of many other masks in the
museum’s collections from around the world.

The mukanda was once an essential institution in Central Africa, comprising a men’s fraternity with boys’ puberty initiation. Thanks to the charisma of its masquerading, the initiation is still going strong among the Eastern Pende (Democratic Republic of the Congo). This photo essay documents the role of masks in core rituals and explores the emotional intensity of the initiation.

Parler de la représentation de l'objet au sein de la littérature subsaharienne c'est reconnaître non seulement les dimensions de perception que les personnages se font de celui-ci mais aussi l'ancrage socio-culturel et le travail de mémoire que les auteurs abattent à travers la figure de l'objet. Dans Les Noces sacrées 1 , l'intrigue se construit autour des conséquences des vols d'objets sacrés en Afrique pendant la colonisation du XIX e au XX e siècle. Il s'agit plus particulièrement du vol du masque sacré N'Tomo qui est d'une part convoité par l'Européen Besnier pour son carac-tère « exotique », et d'autre part sacralisé par la communauté africaine pour ses attributs divins. Ainsi, Seydou Badian met en place un jeu de perceptions qui se construit et s'établit entre le profane et l'initié dans la relation à l'objet de manière à démontrer la transition de la matérialité de l'objet à sa sacralisation, à travers le pro-cessus de passage de la personnification à l'hypotypose. Ces procédés stylistiques rendent conjointement compte du déclenchement de l'action violente des forces sur-naturelles que renferme le masque N'Tomo par suite des crimes de parjure et de profanation commis par Besnier et ses acolytes. Cet article vise donc à démontrer qu'à travers le processus de passage de la personnification à l'hypotypose, Badian parvient à déconstruire la croyance en la seule matérialité ou immanence de l'objet afin de dévoiler ses implications socio-culturelles sur la vie des individus au sein de certaines communautés africaines. REGARDS CROISÉS AUTOUR DU MASQUE N'TOMO L'ouverture au monde et la rencontre avec l'Occident, conduisant à la colonisa-tion, ont profondément transformé et secoué les repères socioculturels qui fondent la définition du rapport au monde des communautés africaines autochtones colonisées. Face à l'hybridité de la pensée et de la vision du monde résultant des chocs intercultu-rels entre modernité et tradition, les Africains vivent un écartèlement, un entre-deux. Le contact avec les objets sacrés déclenche inévitablement un jeu de perception qui se nourrit des représentations et des compétences socioculturelles de l'individu. Ces connaissances sont des préalables qui nous permettent de dessiner le profil des per-sonnages impliqués dans le vol et la profanation du masque sacré N'Tomo d'une part, et d'autre part de ceux qui vouent à N'Tomo ouvertement et/ou secrètement un culte.

The apparent visual simplicity of Hazoumè’s masks belies their true complexity. Made from plastic jerry cans—gasoline or petrol cans—they are not casually recycled art. Hazoumè’s masks are objects that are plastics re-formed, re-made by hand. Yacouba Konaté, the Ivorian philosopher and curator, calls Hazoumè’s masks “Extreme Petrol Can[s],” “found objects,” each one speaking to Hazoumè “by its shape, its pedigree, its patina, or inscriptions, [then Hazoumè] negotiates its retirement from the field . . . from active duty, withdraws it from the trafficking world and reinvests it with an aesthetic mission.” (“The Art of the Extreme Petrol Can,” p. 112.)

This essay was an assignment for an Arts of Africa course offered in the Department of Art and Art History at my university by Dr. Kathryn Floyd. The class notes cited throughout refer to class lectures and discussions, and the other sources were provided by the professor. In the following paragraphs, I explore the visual manifestations of certain African cultures’ investments in and concerns for spaces of transition. This essay and other writings can also be found at http://jordanphilson.wordpress.com

E aku nei, e aku rahi, e aku rau rangatira, tēnā koutou katoa. Ko tēnei taku mihi ki te rohe nei. Ahumairangi, tēnā koe. He mihi ki te marae, ki Te Herenga Waka, ki ngā rangatira o tēnei whare wānanga. E ngā kaihautu i whakarite i tēnei wāhi mō tatou, ki a Tina, ki a Stephen.

Tom R. Chambers used an African Traditional mask from the Dan Tribe in Eastern Liberia (a piece from the National Gallery of Zimbabwe Permanent Collection: PC-6400-0147) as the object for the photogram, then manipulated the non-exposed area generated from this original mask form to v ary the look. There's a transference from a traditional form to a contemporary one, or in other w ords, this contemporary treatment remains w ithin the confines of the traditional form (through direct contact), and borders on Abstract Art that reduces natural appearances to simplified forms.

In his own words, Gael Froget (born 1986, Quatre Bornes, Mauritius) is an artist "sitting on the fence between pop art and primitivism: he explores the trends, paints and vandalises to create unique, grotesque and sarcastic artworks that clearly bares his identity." Provoked by this statement, I wanted to dig deeper into his practice and ways of thinking. He gladly accepted it. We spoke over internet throughout the month of May 2015, just before the opening of his exhibition LOVE IS REAL. These are the outcomes of our lively conversation.

[English text below]

Maska afrykańska jako przedmiot sztuki stała się już klasycznym, nie wymagającym uzasadnień elementem, na trwale wpisanym w historię sztuki światowej. Choć fakt ten nie budzi sprzeciwu, zauważalna jest jednak pewna niekonsekwencja i niejednoznaczność związana z traktowaniem podmiotu rozważań.
Wyjątkowość, inność, wreszcie wymiar estetyczno-religijny budują podstawy europejskiej tożsamości maski afrykańskiej, która swoimi początkami sięga czasów kubistycznego odkrycia. Wówczas maska jako jedyny, ale najbardziej dystynktywny element kultur Czarnej Afryki zaistniała trwale w świadomości europejskiego odbiorcy, wcześniej traktowana jak curiosum zamykana była w gabinetach osobliwości. Przetworzona przez europejską estetykę i wrażliwość zmieniła swoje przymioty, tworząc nową wartość.

The African mask, as an object of art, has become a classic element requiring no justification and an inherent part of the art world. Although this fact no longer raises objections, there is still some inconsistency and ambiguity involved in the treatment of the subject of this discussion.
Uniqueness, otherness, as well as the aesthetic and religious dimension build the foundations of the African mask’s European identity whose origins date back to the emergence of Cubism. It was then that the mask, the only element of Black Africa’s cultures and simultaneously the most distinctive one, which had, up until that time, been treated as an oddity and locked up in cabinets of curiosities, became permanently embedded into the consciousness of the European recipient. Transformed by European aesthetics and sensitivity, it changed its attributes creating a new value.