Egúngún Masquerade Dance Costume (1900s): Art, History and Details

Egúngún Masquerade Dance Costume (1900s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Swirling into motion, egúngún masquerade costumes appear during annual festivities to bless the community. Manifesting ancestral spirits, they serve as a bridge between the living and the otherworld. The fabric panels create a dwelling place for ancestral spirits. Arranged and selected according to Yorùbá design sense (ojú-ọnà), this mask incorporates hundreds of African, Asian, and European fabrics. These include imported damasks, velvets, faux furs, and embroideries, as well as local indigo-dyed cottons.

Object facts

• Title: Egúngún Masquerade Dance Costume
• Date: 1900s
• Culture: Africa, West Africa, Nigeria, Yorùbá-style maker
• Type: Mask
• Technique: cotton, velvet, flannel, dye, faux fur, leather, cowrie shells
• Dimensions: Overall: 167.6 x 66 x 40.6 cm (66 x 26 x 16 in.)
• Collection: African Art
• Department: African Art
• Accession number: 1976.187

A detail from the museum

The striped netting on the "face" of this masquerade costume allows the wearer to see out while keeping their identity concealed.

Collection credit

Gift of Katherine C. White

Further reading listed by the museum

• Aremu, P. S. O. "Between Myth and Reality: Yoruba Egungun Costumes as Commemorative Clothes." Journal of Black Studies 22, no. 1 (1991).
• Fitzgerald, Mary Ann, Henry J. Drewal, and Moyo Okediji. "Transformation through Cloth: An Egungun Costume of the Yoruba." African Arts 28, no. 2 (1995)
• Drewal, Margaret Thompson. Yoruba Ritual: Performers, Play, Agency. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.