La dynamique des masques en Afrique occidentale/Dynamics of Masks in West Africa ed. by Anne-Marie Bouttiaux (review)

The cover of this collection shows a Guro mask in action. It’s a lively picture—the dancer wears a red mask and a colorful costume with many shades of red that make it stand out against a background of sandy soil and youthful onlookers. The photo obviously registers as performance.

Seeing it for the first time prompted me to do some research on the Internet, and You-Tube has yielded a wealth of clips showing the same type of mask in movement¹: the very specific, virtuosic, energetic dance that belongs to this mask has changed my view of the image completely; the horizontal bands of different colors, so typical of this mask’s costume, reinforce in a very theatrical way the dancer’s movements, to mention only one aspect of how looking beyond an object can enhance the understanding and appreciation of it.

The book offers essays alternating between English and French, with no translations provided. In her introduction, editor Anne-Marie Bouttiaux explains that the collection of studies in this volume printed here is a kind of sequel to her exhibition “Persona” in Brussels in 2009–2010. Many vital aspects that can’t be treated within a museum space are addressed here through contributions by several scholars. Whereas museums reduce masks to static objects (thus permitting them to embark upon a second life as aesthetic and economic artifacts), the authors, by way of detailed research, set out to demonstrate the range of actions, thoughts, intentions, and emotions connected to masked performances, thereby shedding light on the dynamics of their first life.

West Africa is the focus locale for its abundance of masked performances and practices in very different contexts spread out throughout this vast region: contributors have studied material from Senegal to Benin, passing through Guinée-Conakry, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Mali, and Burkina Faso.

Joël Noiret’s article presents an unusually engaging description of Egun ceremonies in southern Benin. The emphasis he places on the emotional reactions elicited by the Egun, and especially Ago, performances is quite justified: I remember them well from a ceremony I witnessed in the same city a couple of years prior to Noiret’s visit. Contemplating an Egun mask in a museum’s collection in itself would never conjure up this essential aspect of the ceremony.

Bouttiaux’s contribution on Guro masks in the northern part of Guro country of Côte d’Ivoire strikes me as ongoing research. After a short and very adequate historical and geographical introduction of the region, addressing its political and religious life, she zooms in on a category of masks reportedly regarded with disdain by collectors and museums because of their ostentatiously modern look, concluding that those are the masks that are most appreciated locally, precisely because of their bright colors and shiny surfaces.

She identifies and compares three types of female masks in the category of entertainment. She carefully avoids stereotyping and thus succeeds in presenting the masks in all their complexity in a continuously changing world. Her discourse interweaves gender issues, but she draws no conclusions other than maintaining the earlier viewpoint that Guro men compensate for loss in warfare and hunting through the control of masking practices, including the exclusion of women. Recent instability and violence in Côte d’Ivoire would justify further study of this subject.

The most striking aspect of her description is how much the mask rituals, ceremonies, and performances kick up an atmosphere of danger and risk. She successfully stresses this very important point in the context of mask rituals, important because the sense of danger related to these rituals does influence everyday lives in many parts of West Africa.

Bony Guiblehon’s essay analyses how an essential part of Wè traditional...