Upcoming Exhibition
Upcoming Exhibition
Kimi masquerade ensemble in honor of André Sanou’s Qui Dit Mieux?, 2022 (headpiece by David Sanou in the studio of André Sanou; the maker of the body requests anonymity). Collection of the Fitchburg Art Museum. Photo courtesy of the New Orleans Museum of Art.
The first exhibition of its kind, New African Masquerades presents the work of four artists working today in four different regions: Chief Ekpenyong Bassey Nsa (Nigeria), Sheku “Goldenfinger” Fofanah (Sierra Leone), David Sanou (Burkina Faso), and Hervé Youmbi (Cameroon). Focusing on each, we learn about masquerades that honor family, support the livelihoods of their makers, offer images never before seen, and circulate through twenty-first century technology. Along with thirteen masquerade ensembles made from wood, cloth, fabric, sequins, raffia, beads, feathers, and shells, the exhibition includes an immersive video experience, with 360-degree views showing masquerade ensembles as they are performed.
Unlike in historical collecting practices, the artworks included in New African Masquerades were newly commissioned for museum display, with artists and communities actively negotiating how each artwork would be presented. To upend the idea of the “anonymous African artist,” the exhibition recounts in-depth stories about the lives, motivations, and ideas of each of the four participating masquerade makers.
Expanding the exhibition’s audience, it is made up of two parallel, simultaneous tours: one through US institutions, and the other to museums in Africa. Most centrally, the exhibition offers a vision of African masquerades as contemporary art, of and speaking to our moment.
New African Masquerades: Artistic Innovations and Collaborations is organized by the New Orleans Museum of Art in partnership with the Musée des Civilisations noires in Dakar, Senegal, and received generous support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Kimi masquerade ensemble in honor of André Sanou’s Qui Dit Mieux?, 2022 (headpiece by David Sanou in the studio of André Sanou; the maker of the body requests anonymity). Collection of the Fitchburg Art Museum. Photo courtesy of the New Orleans Museum of Art.
Hervé Youmbi, Cameroonian (active in Douala), Tso Scream Mask, Visages de masques (IX) series, 2015–2023. Wood, pigment, fiber, beads, textile, glue, velvet and cotton fabric, silk embroidery, horse-hair. Collection of the New Orleans Museum of Art, museum purchase, Robert P. Gordy Fund, 2023.38.1-.7.
Sheku “Goldenfinger” Fofanah, Sierra Leonean (active in Freetown), “Fairy” Masquerade Ensemble, 2022. Fabric, sequins, wood, paint, glue: life-size. Commission for the Fitchburg Art Museum. Photo courtesy of the New Orleans Museum of Art.
Chief Ekpenyong Bassey Nsa, Nigerian (active in Calabar), Afia Awan Masquerade Ensemble, 2022. Polyester fabric, raffia, leather: life-size. Collection of the New Orleans Museum of Art, museum purchase, Françoise Billion Richardson Fund, 2022.85.a-.h.
Hervé Youmbi, Bamiléké-Kwele Ku'ngang Gorilla Mask and Single-faced Rhino Mask, during a ceremony in Fondanti village, 2019. Photo by Hervé Youmbi. Courtesy of the artist and Axis Gallery, New York and New Jersey.
A pair of Kimi masks (headpiece carved by David Sanou in the studio of André Sanou) performing greetings with the lead griot Tchiedo playing his drum behind them, Bindougosso district, Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso, May 3, 2022. Photo by Lisa Homann.
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