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, leather, dye, probably wood, cowrie shells, metal
• Dimensions: Overall: 152.4 x 58.4 x 40.6 cm (60 x 23 x 16 in.)
• Collection: African Art
• Department: African Art
• Accession number: 1976.188

A detail from the museum

This masquerade costume is made from both imported and locally made fabrics.

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).
• 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.