(classical music)
- [Beth] We're at The Metropolitan Museum of Art
and we're looking at a mask called a D'mba mask
and it's made by the Baga people in Guinea.
- [Peri] And when you think about a mask,
we tend to think about something that goes on the face
or even in African tradition
something that's worn around the head like a helmet mask.
We have four legs so to speak
and the head of the wearer would have gone in there
surrounded by fabric and Raffia underneath,
but it doesn't read to me as a mask.
It reads as a sculpture.
- [Beth] It would have sat on the masker's shoulders
and on the top of his head.
It weighs about 80 pounds
so it was very difficult to maneuver.
- [Peri] Clearly, a female form.
Her breasts are very prominent but worn by a man
and the carver would have also been a man.
- [Beth] Carving, mask making, and the wearing of masks
is really the domain of men in West Africa.
So while it's female in form,
it has a female crested hairstyle and the pendulous breasts,
it would have been danced by a male masquerader.
- [Peri] It's so monumental
that you immediately get a sense of the power of the idea
that this sculpture represents.
- [Beth] In many masquerading traditions in West Africa,
masks are either the personification of a spirit
whether it is the spirit of an ancestor
or the spirit of a forest.
- [Peri] Or the spirit of an animal.
- [Beth] But in this case,
it's actually none of those things.
It's said to be a personification of beauty,
of goodness, of a woman at her zenith
in terms of her power and her potential.
- [Peri] And unlike other sculptures
that we see in African art where a female figure is shown
with breasts that are very high
at the prime of life in adolescence,
here we have a woman depicted as powerful later in life
after she has born and nursed and raised many children.
- [Beth] So her breasts are flat, downturn,
and it suggests that she's no longer able to nurse,
rather her children are grown, they're healthy,
and she has now entered into an important time in her life
where she can inspire others.
- [Peri] And must have garnered enormous respect
from the community.
- [Beth] It was danced as a way to inspire young men
and young women who were going to become parents.
- [Peri] And the audience would sometimes go up
and touch her breasts.
- [Beth] Well, the D'mba mask was worn historically
during times of harvest and planting
as well as lifecycle rituals.
With the introduction of the Marxist regime
after the fall of the colonial government in Guinea,
masquerades such as this weren't performed anymore.
But since the 1990s,
there has been a renewed interest in bringing them back
and so we find them again at festivals like marriage,
like birth where women's fertility is really celebrated.
- [Peri] We have three parts,
this body with the breasts, the neck,
and then this enormous head.
We see decorative patterning on her face, scarification.
We see a hairstyle that's also very specific.
- [Beth] For women, it's meant to help give them
the strength to go through childbirth
and then the years and years of caring for that child
until they make it to puberty.
And for young men,
it's thought to inspire them to provide for women
as they go through this very difficult process.
So in a sense while it's a female depiction,
it's intended to help the entire community
successfully support motherhood.
- [Peri] And what's so wonderful to me too in that light
is that there is this acknowledgement of the difficulty
of not only childbirth but also motherhood.
- [Beth] She seems massive and clunky.
She's not dainty with refined features.
This is power realized.
And in that sense, she is beautiful.
And it's intended to show the strength of women.
- [Peri] The strength of older women
because even though it is so abstract,
there is a sense of her age here not just in her breasts
but even in those abstracted facial features.
- [Beth] And that maturity is also conveyed with her gaze.
She looks very wise.
- [Peri] A stable force for the community.
(classical music)