Face Mask from Gabon (Art Negre)

Face Mask Ngil, Fang, Gabon, Wood, Kaolin, brass nails, height 66cm, 19th Century, Musee du Quai Branly; Depot Musee de l'Homme

Masks are haunting and frightful but at the same time utterly fascinating. I am always riveted by any masks I see be it from Japan, Asia or Africa. Some of them give me the feeling that they are alive and calling out to me. African masks, like all wooden artefacts, are appealing when they are scratched, worn and aged with a layer patina.

I read that in recent years, scholarly voices from the art circle pointed out two misconceptions regarding the aesthetic discourse of African masks. Firstly, African tribal masks were never intended as objects of arts meant purely for admiration. They are ritual artifacts. Secondly, instead of being artifacts of aesthetic autonomy, masks are only part of an aesthetic totality consisting of dance, movement, music, audience, narrative and ecstasy.

With these views brewing in my mind, it suddenly dawned upon me that masks are indeed incredible objects because they can be appreciated as standalone objects much like sculptures in addition to being appreciated as a process much akin to performing art.

Perhaps African masks show us that the power of rituals come from aesthetics. Indeed sacred activities cannot function without it. We must then ask ourselves whether religious experience is in large part no more than an aesthetic one and that it is only words convincing us otherwise?