Portrait mask (Mblo)

Portrait mask (Mblo). Baule peoples (Côte d’Ivoire). Early 20th century C.E. Wood and pigment.

• central Côte d’Ivoire in West Africa have a rich carving tradition.
• Many sculpted figures and masks of human form are utilized in personal shrines and in masquerade performances. This mask was part of a secular masquerade in the village of Kami in the early 1900s.
• The Baule recognize two types of entertainment masks, Goli and Mblo. To perform a Mblo mask, like the one depicted, a masker in a cloth costume conceals his face with a small, wooden mask and dances for an audience accompanied by drummers, singers, dancers, and orators in a series of skits.
• To the Baule, sculpture serves many functions and these can shift over time and within different contexts.
• Masks like this one were not intended to be hung on a wall and appreciated for their physical characteristics; A carving of a figure can be utilized by practitioners to communicate with ancestors and spirits. The physical presence of a mask can allow the invisible world to interact with and influence the visible world of humans.
•  It was meant to honor a respected member of Baule society. Portrait masks characteristically have an oval face with an elongated nose, small, open mouth, downcast slit eyes. Animal horns. 
• Most also have scarification patterns at the temple and a high gloss patina.
• Represents a good, honorable, respected, and beautiful person in Baule society. 
• The half slit eyes and high forehead suggest modesty and wisdom respectively.
• The triangular brass additions heighten the lustrous patina when danced in the sunlight, a suggestion of health.
• The nasolabial fold suggests age.
• This is not a realistic representation of the woman in the photograph, rather, it suggests an idealized inner state of beauty and morality.