IDNO

N.13143.GIJ

Description

Ifogu masquerade depicting two masqueraders wearing loose raffia costumes. The one in the centre of the image is wearing an Ogu mask (an abstract face mask with a knife-like protrusion from the forehead, three cylindrical protrusions and slits for the eyes) probably painted red, black and white. The rest of his head is covered with sack cloth, and at the back of his head is a hair-piece in a bun shape with two stick-like protrusions. The mask character at the left is wearing a striped raffia net-bag hood which he is pulling down to a point in front of his face.

Physical Condition: Slight yellowing of buckling negative.

Place

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

Cultural Affliation

Igbo [historically Ibo]; Nkporo

Named Person

Photographer

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

Collector / Expedition

Date

1932 - 1939

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.

Context: In the Ifogu masquerade their are several actors; this photograph depicts two of the characters wearing very different types of masks - one is abstract and the other is a netted snout;
Jones describes the abstract mask as “three conical projections beneath it, the whole suggesting vaguely the prow of a Melanesian war canoe (1939, p.119) and he further describes the colours as white, red and black arrangement of an oval face with the features reduced to vertical row of their projecting cylinders surmounted by a knifelike crest and suggestive of the prow of a Venetian gondola (Jones, 1984, p. 211). “Over their faces they wore the same raffia bags as the band. One corner of the bags hung down in front of their faces like the drooping snout of a tapir, and when they wanted to see what they where they were going they stroked their snouts with their hands and drew them out in front.” (Jones, 1939, pp.119-120)

Bibliographical Reference: Jones, G.I. 1939 ‘Ifogu Nkporo’, Nigerian Field, Vol. VIII, pp.119-121; Jones, G.I., 1984. The Art of Eastern Nigeria (Cambridge University Press); Jones, G.I. 1989 Ibo Art. Shire Hall.

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 24/10/2007]