IDNO

N.13125.GIJ

Description

Nkporo Ifogu masquerade.

Two male dancers dressed as women wearing small white face masks with diagonal protrusions and woolly hats. The small masks only cover part of the face. Sacking covers rest of the face, and a scarf and knitted hat cover the head. They wear small tight floral pattern tops, white shorts, neck and waist ornaments, and ankle rattles, and each carries a feather whisk and a hand mirror. At the right is their “attendant”, carrying a pot and wearing an Ogu mask (an abstract face mask with a knife-like protrusion from the forehead, three cylindrical protrusions and slits for the eyes), a hat with a cloth band into which two feathers are stuck, and a palm frond and cloth skirt and white ?socks. There is a crowd of onlookers and a building in the background.

Physical Condition: Slight yellowing of negative.

Place

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

Cultural Affliation

Igbo [historically Ibo]

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. Two Nwanyi Oma [beautiful women] with an attendant Boys initiation, Elugu (11th image).

Jones.G.I. 1989: 64, Plate 55 shows a close up profile of one of theses dancers. The caption reads: “Ifogu masquerade, Nkporo tribe, Cross River Ibo. The actor is impersonating a fashion-conscious young woman and wears a tight-fitting cotton blouse and bead necklace.”

Context: G. I. Jones describes this specific masquerade in his 1939 article ‘Ifogu Nkporo’: ”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. Two dancers came out, two strongly built young men made up as girls, with rattles on their ankles, coils of beads round their waists and very attenuated white shorts, tight short bodices covering the top half of their chests and with small white masks covering half of their faces. Each carried a white plume in one hand, and a looking glass in the other. They took up position facing each other and danced very sedately and in perfect time together, their feet moving quite fast and the rest of their body swaying slowly and gracefully fro fro m m side to side, taking off young girls admiring themselves.” (Jones.G.I. 1939a:120-21).

The same “attendant” is appears in N.13109.GIJ and N.13117.GIJ.

Bibliographical References: Jones, G.I.,1939, ‘Ifogu Nkporo’, Nigerian Field., Vol. VIII, pp. 119-121; Jones, G.I. 1989, Ibo Art, Shire Hall Press.

MAA Exhibition: This image is included in the G.I. Jones' slide show in the Nigerian case, Maudslay Gallery, with the following caption:
"Two Nwanyi Oma (Beautiful Women) during an Ifogu (Boys’ Initiation) masquerade.
Strongly built young men made up as girls, wearing tight short bodices and carrying looking glasses, swayed gracefully from side to side, taking off young girls admiring themselves.” [JD 5/8/2014]

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 27/11/2007]