IDNO

N.13109.GIJ

Description

Part of the Nkporo Ifogu Masquerade.
Group of masqueraders wearing Ogu masks (an abstract face mask with a knife-like protrusion from the forehead, three cylindrical protrusions and slits for the eyes), short sleeved shirts, plant fibre cross over neck and chest ornaments, palm frond skirts, woven cloths. The seated male in the foreground is holding a pot, other males are holding musical instruments. At left are men in shirts, cloths, head-gear. Thatched buildings and trees in the background.

Physical Condition: Slight yellowing of buckling negative.

Place

W Africa; Nigeria; Eastern Nigeria; Cross River; Elugu village

Cultural Affliation

Igbo [historically Ibo]l; Nkporo

Named Person

Photographer

Jones, Gwilliam Iwan (known as G.I.)

Collector / Expedition

Date

1932 - 1938

Collection Name

Jones Collection

Source

Jones, Gwilliam Iwan (known as G.I.)

Format

Film Negative Black & White

Primary Documentation

Other Information

This negative was kept in a film storage album labelled “Masks & Plays - Nkporo.” by G. I. Jones, and numbered “C11/” by the cataloguer.

Publication: Same image published on John McCall’s G.I. Jones website with the following information: [Source: www.siu.edu/~anthro/mccall/jones/, AF ]
1. Index to Nkporo Igbo
2. Masquerade band, Boys initiation, Elugu (15th image).

Context: G. I. Jones describes the action of the masquerade which these characters later performed in in his article ‘Ifogu Nkporo’: “The band came first, with sweeping palm-leaf skirts, cotton singlets and great raffia headdresses which made them look like enormous maned baboons. Their faces were hidden behind black and white raffia bags and they played on slit drums, large and small, on wooden and iron gongs, and on a small membrane drum... Then came out two main dancers, a pair of strange creatures with scarlet jerseys, black velvet hats with a white ribbon around them, and terrifying masks with human eyes, a sword coming out of the forehead and three conical projections beneath it, the whole suggesting vaguely the prow of a Melanesian war canoe. Each carried an egg in one hand and cross between a vanity bag and a rattle in the other. They danced in turn like fencers, advancing and retreating and ending abruptly poised on one foot, and with the egg thrust towards the person at whom they were dancing. When they were not dancing they rested on two chairs beside the band. Then the band was joined by some more drummers dressed in white and wearing the same masks as the red dancers. The bigger slit drums stopped and two clay pots and some lighter drums replaced them. The drumming grew more gentle and some of the band crooned a lilting song rather like a lullaby. (Jones, 1939, p.120).

In the Ada Ibo area there were specific styles of masks which were used in initiation masquerades. The style resembled the Lower Niger but the particular forms used were their own, and in the case of the abstract ones, unique. In reference to the abstract masks he notes , “that they were composed of a white, red, and black arrangement of an oval face with the features reduced to a vertical row of three projecting cylinders surmounted by a knifelike crest and suggestive of the prow of a Venetian gondola (1984, p.211)

Bibliographical Reference: Jones, G.I., 1984. The Art of Eastern Nigeria (Cambridge University Press); Jones, G.I.., 1989, Ibo Art, (Shire); Jones, G.I. ‘Ifogu Nkporo’, Nigerian Field, Vol. VIII, pp. 119-121.

MAA Exhibition: This image is included in the G.I. Jones' slide show in the Nigerian case, Maudslay Gallery, with the following caption:
"Band members wearing Ogu (knife-farm) masks during the Ifogu Nkporo (Boys’ Initiation) masquerade.
The bigger slit drums stopped and two clay pots and some lighter drums replaced them. The drumming grew more gentle and some of the band crooned a lilting song rather like a lullaby.” [JD 5/12/2014]

Publication: The photograph has been digitised for the European Collected Library of Artistic Performance (ECLAP) and is accessible on the portal http://www.eclap.eu/drupal/. [SG 30/10/2012]

Exhibition: Digital reproduction of photograph exhibited in ‘Afrique, mille vies d’objects / Africa, a thousand lives of objects’ at Musée de Confluences, Lyon, France, from June 2023 – February 2024. See www.museedesconfluences.fr/en. [JD 25/01/2023]

This catalogue record has been updated with the support of the Getty Grant Program Two. [Alicia Fentiman 30/10/2007]