Mask (Emangungu) (possibly early 1900s): Art, History and Details

Mask (Emangungu) (possibly early 1900s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Rare anthropo-zoomorphic plank masks were once used by Bembe people in circumcision rites called butende. Recently initiated boys living in seclusion in the forest wore them with a bark-and-banana-leaf costume, disguising themselves to beg for food in the village. The sculpture’s short projections above the forehead are identified as an owl’s tufts. The two pairs of eyes could refer to divination. The rites associated with this mask had waned by the mid-1960s.

Object facts

• Title: Mask (Emangungu)
• Date: possibly early 1900s
• Culture: Africa, Central Africa, Democratic Republic of Congo, Bembe-style maker
• Type: Mask
• Technique: Wood, kaolin, colorant, and iron
• Dimensions: Overall: 46 cm (18 1/8 in.)
• Collection: African Art
• Department: African Art
• Accession number: 2006.116

A detail from the museum

White kaolin clay highlights the eyes of this carved wooden mask.

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Herreman, Frank, Constantijn Petridis, Dick Beaulieux, Etnografisch Museum (Antwerp, Belgium), and National Museum of African Art (U.S.). 1993. Face of the Spirits : Masks from the Zaire Basin. Gent: Snoeck-Ducaju.
• Arts d'Afrique et d'Océanie, exh. cat., Palais Miramar, Cannes (Cannes: Palais Miramar, 1957), fig. 282. Arts primitifs dans les ateliers d'artistes, exh. cat., Musée de l'Homme, Paris (Paris: Musée de l'Homme, 1967), fig. 98.
• Michel Leiris and Jacqueline Delange, Afrique noire: Univers des formes (Paris: Gallimard, 1967), fig. 241.

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.