IDNO

N.13111.GIJ

Description

A group of masqueraders depicting different types of face masks and various forms of head gear. Three of the wooden masks have distinctive facial features of eyes, nose, and mouth. One mask is painted? white and is very human-like, two masks are two toned in colour. The mask on the right hand side of the photograph is a fibre head mask (no wood) and the mask on the left hand side of the photograph shows a side view of a face mask that has a curved beak and a carved figure on the top. Three of the masqueraders are wearing fibre costumes and two of the masquerades are wearing white shirts and shorts. In the far left of the photograph is another masquerader but the face is not visible. In the background are trees.

Physical Condition: Slight yellowing of buckling negative.

Place

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

Cultural Affliation

Nkporo; Ada group; Cross River Igbo; Igbo

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. A group of masks, Boys initiation, Obohia (4th 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.

This catalogue record has been updated with the support of the Getty Grant Program Two. [Alicia Fentiman 23/10/2007]

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]