West Africa, Mali, Sanga region, Dogon people, ca. 1940s CE. A classic example of one of the most striking Dogon artifacts, a highly abstract mask known as a "kanaga", adorned with white and black paints. Hand-carved from wood, the mask presents a rectangular form with a high central crest that extends to the top of the head and deep, hollowed out channels for the eyes. A sharply acute angle in the center of the face acts as the nose, and a protruding conical embellishment is featured where the mouth should be. Decorated with black-painted parallel and zigzag striations, the stylized visage is flanked by a pair of pointed ears and topped with an openwork geometric design leading to a huge superstructure composed of a tall, flat board that projects from the top of the head crossed by two horizontal strips of wood with petite rectangular boards at their ends, all attached to one another using leather straps. The smallest boards point upwards on the top tier and downwards on the bottom, while the towering central board is capped by two points. Size: 19.125" W x 38.5" H (48.6 cm x 97.8 cm)

Masks like this one are worn at dama, which is a funerary rite for Dogon men. Dogon dancers wear them to honor the dead, and to communicate with them as they travel to the spiritual realm. They rotate their upper bodies, swinging the masks in wide circles in imitation of the creator god, known as Amma, with the long reach of their masks and arms meant to symbolically spread creation throughout the world. These masks are made by the members of the Awa male initiation society, who are also the performers. At first glance, many interpret the kanaga mask literally and believe that it represents a bird with white wings and a black forehead. However, the elaborate vizard bares a deeper meaning and symbolizes both God, with the crossbars being his arms and legs, and the universe, with the upper crossbar as the sky and the lower as earth.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art provides a wonderful detailed description of the intricate costume that accompanies this mask: "When the mask is worn, the back of the dancer's head is covered with a hood of plaited fiber fringe at the bottom edge. The dancer wears a vest made of black strip-woven cloth and red broadcloth strips embroidered with white cowrie-shells; strands of glass and plastic beads dangle from its edges. The kanaga dancer also wears a pair of trousers made of indigo-dyed, strip-woven cotton cloth, over which he ties a long skirt of curly, loosely strung, black-dyed sanseveria fibers and short overskirts of straight red and yellow fibers. For a traditional dama, the preparation and dyeing of the fibers are undertaken with as much secrecy and ritual as the carving of the wooden mask."

See a very similar example at the Brooklyn Museum (1995.171.11a-c).

This piece has been searched against the Art Loss Register database and has been cleared. The Art Loss Register maintains the world’s largest database of stolen art, collectibles, and antiques.

Provenance: private Houston, Texas, USA collection, acquired 2018; ex-Andrew Berz at Berz Gallery of African Art, San Francisco, California, USA

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#162806

Chip to central crest on face. Missing leather on left side of crossbars with bottom board retied with rope. A few stable fissures, nick/chips, and abrasions. Otherwise, very nice with great remaining pigments.